Obama's deployment of a major portion of the U.S. thermonuclear capabilities in multiple theaters threatening both Russia and China is basically daring them to respond in kind. If they do, that's it, game over. We are as close to nuclear annihilation as we've ever been, and we cheer for our demise so loud, we drown out any cries of dissent.
Showing posts with label iran. Show all posts
Showing posts with label iran. Show all posts
Tuesday, October 2, 2012
Sunday, May 13, 2012
US Concerned Israel May Attack Iran "at Any Moment"
Friday, May 11, 2012 by Common Dreams
The Obama administration is worried that Israel's new coalition
government in could signal an attack on Iran's nuclear facilities at
"any given moment," one of Israel's leading TV stations reported
Thursday night.
Channel 10 News.
The televison station quoted unnamed Obama administration officials as saying they believed a Likud-Kadima coalition government could make a decision about an Israeli attack on Iran before the U.S. presidential elections in November.
Channel 10 News.
The televison station quoted unnamed Obama administration officials as saying they believed a Likud-Kadima coalition government could make a decision about an Israeli attack on Iran before the U.S. presidential elections in November.
* * *
Israel's Arutz Sheva Channel 7 reports:U.S. Concerned Netanyahu, Mofaz May Attack Iran
U.S. worried that Israel's new unity government could result in an attack on Iran at any given moment.
The United States is worried that Shaul Mofaz and his Kadima party’s joining a unity government with Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu could result in an attack on Iran's nuclear facilities at any given moment, according to a report on Channel 10 News on Thursday.
US worried that Israel's new unity government could result in an attack on Iran at any given momentU.S. government officials told Channel 10 News that they believe a Likud-Kadima joint government could make a decision about an Israeli attack on Iran at any moment and perhaps even before the U.S. presidential elections in November.
The report said that when the Americans believed early elections would be held in Israel on September, they thought it meant the attack in Iran would be postponed at least until after the election. Now, with the stabilization of Israeli politics and the current government likely to end its term on schedule, the situation has changed and the Americans are concerned.
According to the Channel 10 report, in order to try and prevent or at least postpone the Israeli decision on the issue, the Americans recently held marathon talks with Israeli officials at all levels.
Sunday, April 29, 2012
Ex-Israeli spy boss attacks Netanyahu and Barak over Iran
By Harriet Sherwood, The Guardian
Saturday, April 28, 2012
Israel’s former security chief has censured the country’s “messianic” political leadership for talking up the prospects of a military stike on Iran’s nuclear programme.
In unusually candid comments set to ratchet up tensions over Iran at the top of Israel’s political establishment, Yuval Diskin, who retired as head of the internal intelligence agency Shin Bet last year, said he had “no faith” in the abilities of the prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, and the defence minister, Ehud Barak, to conduct a war.
The pair, who are the foremost advocates of military action against Iran’s nuclear programme, were “not fit to hold the steering wheel of power”, Diskin told a meeting on Friday night.
“My major problem is that I have no faith in the current leadership, which must lead us in an event on the scale of war with Iran or a regional war,” he said.
“I don’t believe in either the prime minister or the defence minister. I don’t believe in a leadership that makes decisions based on messianic feelings. Believe me, I have observed them from up close … They are not people who I, on a personal level, trust to lead Israel to an event on that scale and carry it off.
“They are misleading the public on the Iran issue. They tell the public that if Israel acts, Iran won’t have a nuclear bomb. This is misleading. Actually, many experts say that an Israeli attack would accelerate the Iranian nuclear race.”
There was no immediate comment from the prime minister’s office.
Diskin’s remarks followed a furore over comments made on Wednesday by Israel’s serving military chief, Benny Gantz, which starkly contrasted with Netanyahu’s rhetoric on Iran. Gantz said he did not believe the Iranian leadership was prepared to “go the extra mile” to acquire nuclear weapons because it was “composed of very rational people” who understood the consequences.
In what was seen as a veiled rebuke to the prime minister, Gantz added: “Decisions can and must be made carefully, out of historic responsibility but without hysteria.”
The chief of staff later attempted to gloss over suggestions of a breach between the military and political leaderships, telling reporters there was “really no distance” between his view and the prime minister’s.
Neither Netanyahu nor Barak have moderated their rhetoric. The prime minister recently said that those who downplayed the threat from a nuclear Iran “have learned nothing from the Holocaust”. He added: “The Iranian regime is openly calling for our destruction and working frantically for the development of nuclear weapons as a means to that end.”
On Thursday, Barak said the chances of Iran halting its nuclear programme in response to international sanctions appeared low. Iran, he said, was not “rational in the western sense of the word”.
Diskin’s comments also put him in agreement with the former head of the Mossad, Meir Dagan, who has said that attacking Iran was “the stupidest thing I have ever heard” and that the Iranian regime was rational.
Saturday, April 28, 2012
Israel’s former security chief has censured the country’s “messianic” political leadership for talking up the prospects of a military stike on Iran’s nuclear programme.
In unusually candid comments set to ratchet up tensions over Iran at the top of Israel’s political establishment, Yuval Diskin, who retired as head of the internal intelligence agency Shin Bet last year, said he had “no faith” in the abilities of the prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, and the defence minister, Ehud Barak, to conduct a war.
The pair, who are the foremost advocates of military action against Iran’s nuclear programme, were “not fit to hold the steering wheel of power”, Diskin told a meeting on Friday night.
“My major problem is that I have no faith in the current leadership, which must lead us in an event on the scale of war with Iran or a regional war,” he said.
“I don’t believe in either the prime minister or the defence minister. I don’t believe in a leadership that makes decisions based on messianic feelings. Believe me, I have observed them from up close … They are not people who I, on a personal level, trust to lead Israel to an event on that scale and carry it off.
“They are misleading the public on the Iran issue. They tell the public that if Israel acts, Iran won’t have a nuclear bomb. This is misleading. Actually, many experts say that an Israeli attack would accelerate the Iranian nuclear race.”
There was no immediate comment from the prime minister’s office.
Diskin’s remarks followed a furore over comments made on Wednesday by Israel’s serving military chief, Benny Gantz, which starkly contrasted with Netanyahu’s rhetoric on Iran. Gantz said he did not believe the Iranian leadership was prepared to “go the extra mile” to acquire nuclear weapons because it was “composed of very rational people” who understood the consequences.
In what was seen as a veiled rebuke to the prime minister, Gantz added: “Decisions can and must be made carefully, out of historic responsibility but without hysteria.”
The chief of staff later attempted to gloss over suggestions of a breach between the military and political leaderships, telling reporters there was “really no distance” between his view and the prime minister’s.
Neither Netanyahu nor Barak have moderated their rhetoric. The prime minister recently said that those who downplayed the threat from a nuclear Iran “have learned nothing from the Holocaust”. He added: “The Iranian regime is openly calling for our destruction and working frantically for the development of nuclear weapons as a means to that end.”
On Thursday, Barak said the chances of Iran halting its nuclear programme in response to international sanctions appeared low. Iran, he said, was not “rational in the western sense of the word”.
Diskin’s comments also put him in agreement with the former head of the Mossad, Meir Dagan, who has said that attacking Iran was “the stupidest thing I have ever heard” and that the Iranian regime was rational.
Sunday, March 4, 2012
Why Can’t Americans Have Democracy?
Wars of Naked Aggression
by PAUL CRAIG ROBERTS
Syria has a secular government as did Iraq prior to the American invasion. Secular governments are important in Arab lands in which there is division between Sunni and Shi’ite. Secular governments keep the divided population from murdering one another.
When the American invasion--a war crime under the Nuremberg standard set by the US after WW II--overthrew the Saddam Hussein secular government, the Iraqi Sunnis and Shi’ites went to war against one another. The civil war between Iraqis saved the American invasion. Nevertheless, enough Sunnis found time to fight the American occupiers of Iraq that the US was never able to occupy Bagdad, much less Iraq, no matter how violent and indiscriminate the US was in the application of force.
The consequence of the US invasion was not democracy and women’s rights in Iraq, much less the destruction of weapons of mass destruction which did not exist as the weapons inspectors had made perfectly clear beforehand. The consequence was to transfer political power from Sunnis to Shi’ites. The Shi’ite version of Islam is the Iranian version. Thus, Washington’s invasion transferred power in Iraq from a secular government to Shi’ites allied with Iran.
Washington’s hostility toward Assad is hypocritical. On February 26, the Syrian government held a referendum on a new constitution for Syria that set term limits on future presidents and removed the political monopoly that the Ba’ath Party has enjoyed.
The Syrian voter turnout was 57.4%, matching the voter turnout for Obama in 2008. It was a higher voter turnout (despite the armed, western-supported rebellion in Syria) than in the nine US presidential elections from 1972 through 2004. The new Syrian constitution was approved by a vote of 89.4%.
But Washington denounced the democratic referendum and claims that the Syrian government must be overthrown in order to bring democracy to Syria.
Washington’s allies in the region, unelected oil monarchies such as Saudi Arabia and Qatar, have issued statements that they are willing to supply weapons to the Islamist rebels in order to bring democracy–something they do not tolerate at home–to Syria.
For Washington “democracy” is a weapon of mass destruction. When Washington brings “democracy” to a country, it means the country’s destruction, as in Libya and Iraq. It doesn’t mean democracy. Libya is in chaos, a human rights nightmare without an effective government.
Washington installed Nouri al-Maliki as president of Iraq. He lost an election, but remained in power. He has declared his vice president to be a terrorist and ordered his arrest and is using the state police to arrest Sunni politicians.
For a decade Washington has misrepresented its wars of naked aggression as “bringing democracy and human rights to the Middle East.” While Washington was bringing democracy to the Middle East, Washington was destroying democracy in the US. Washington has resurrected medieval torture dungeons and self-incrimination. Washington has destroyed due process and habeas corpus. At Obama’s request, Congress passed overwhelmingly a law that permits US subjects to be imprisoned indefinitely without a trial or presentation of evidence. Warrantless searches and spying, illegal and unconstitutional at the turn of the 21st century, are now routine.
Obama has even asserted the right, for which there is no law on the books, to murder any American anywhere if the executive branch decides, without presenting any evidence, that the person is a threat to the US government. Any American anywhere can be murdered on the basis of subjective opinion in the executive branch, which increasingly is the only branch of the US government. The other two “co-equal” branches have shriveled away under the “war on terror.”
Why is Washington so determined to bring democracy to the Middle East (with the exception of Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Qatar, and the Emirates), Africa, Iran, Afghanistan, Russia, and China, but is hostile to constitutional rights in America?
The rights that Americans gained from successful revolution against King George III in the 18th century have all been taken away by Bush/Obama in the 21st century. One might think that this would be a news story, but it isn’t.
Syria has a secular government as did Iraq prior to the American invasion. Secular governments are important in Arab lands in which there is division between Sunni and Shi’ite. Secular governments keep the divided population from murdering one another.
When the American invasion--a war crime under the Nuremberg standard set by the US after WW II--overthrew the Saddam Hussein secular government, the Iraqi Sunnis and Shi’ites went to war against one another. The civil war between Iraqis saved the American invasion. Nevertheless, enough Sunnis found time to fight the American occupiers of Iraq that the US was never able to occupy Bagdad, much less Iraq, no matter how violent and indiscriminate the US was in the application of force.
The consequence of the US invasion was not democracy and women’s rights in Iraq, much less the destruction of weapons of mass destruction which did not exist as the weapons inspectors had made perfectly clear beforehand. The consequence was to transfer political power from Sunnis to Shi’ites. The Shi’ite version of Islam is the Iranian version. Thus, Washington’s invasion transferred power in Iraq from a secular government to Shi’ites allied with Iran.
Washington’s hostility toward Assad is hypocritical. On February 26, the Syrian government held a referendum on a new constitution for Syria that set term limits on future presidents and removed the political monopoly that the Ba’ath Party has enjoyed.
The Syrian voter turnout was 57.4%, matching the voter turnout for Obama in 2008. It was a higher voter turnout (despite the armed, western-supported rebellion in Syria) than in the nine US presidential elections from 1972 through 2004. The new Syrian constitution was approved by a vote of 89.4%.
But Washington denounced the democratic referendum and claims that the Syrian government must be overthrown in order to bring democracy to Syria.
Washington’s allies in the region, unelected oil monarchies such as Saudi Arabia and Qatar, have issued statements that they are willing to supply weapons to the Islamist rebels in order to bring democracy–something they do not tolerate at home–to Syria.
For Washington “democracy” is a weapon of mass destruction. When Washington brings “democracy” to a country, it means the country’s destruction, as in Libya and Iraq. It doesn’t mean democracy. Libya is in chaos, a human rights nightmare without an effective government.
Washington installed Nouri al-Maliki as president of Iraq. He lost an election, but remained in power. He has declared his vice president to be a terrorist and ordered his arrest and is using the state police to arrest Sunni politicians.
For a decade Washington has misrepresented its wars of naked aggression as “bringing democracy and human rights to the Middle East.” While Washington was bringing democracy to the Middle East, Washington was destroying democracy in the US. Washington has resurrected medieval torture dungeons and self-incrimination. Washington has destroyed due process and habeas corpus. At Obama’s request, Congress passed overwhelmingly a law that permits US subjects to be imprisoned indefinitely without a trial or presentation of evidence. Warrantless searches and spying, illegal and unconstitutional at the turn of the 21st century, are now routine.
Obama has even asserted the right, for which there is no law on the books, to murder any American anywhere if the executive branch decides, without presenting any evidence, that the person is a threat to the US government. Any American anywhere can be murdered on the basis of subjective opinion in the executive branch, which increasingly is the only branch of the US government. The other two “co-equal” branches have shriveled away under the “war on terror.”
Why is Washington so determined to bring democracy to the Middle East (with the exception of Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Qatar, and the Emirates), Africa, Iran, Afghanistan, Russia, and China, but is hostile to constitutional rights in America?
The rights that Americans gained from successful revolution against King George III in the 18th century have all been taken away by Bush/Obama in the 21st century. One might think that this would be a news story, but it isn’t.
Tuesday, February 28, 2012
The Economic Crisis and Iran
Regenerating Global Capitalism
On February 21, to great media fanfare, the Dow Jones Industrial Average surpassed the 13,000 mark for the first time since the 2008 collapse. Appearing on NBC’s Today Show the following morning, Jim “Bear Sterns is not in trouble” Cramer jubilantly prophesied “the future is better than the past.” A more ominous indication of lurking economic peril is perhaps difficult to imagine.
Indeed, for despite growing optimism on Wall Street (where profits have been ascendant through the course of the Great Recession), the economy remains teetering precariously on the precipice. The potential collapse of the eurozone, along with mounting signs of a bursting Chinese growth bubble both still loom along the horizon. Each of which could threaten to send the world economy barreling toward the abyss. Hardly indicative of what one might deem a better future.
In fact, given the protracted nature of the current crises, it is increasingly evident that we are in the thralls of a systemic crisis. That is to say, we are in the midst of a crisis that can no longer be resolved within the present neoliberal framework—try as one might.
Nowhere is this more apparent than Greece. For as the “market” (i.e., the transnational financial elite) dictates a neoliberal inspired cocktail of deeper and deeper austerity as a way out of the crises, Greece becomes further ensnared in a downward spiral of unending economic depression and societal unrest.
To glimpse the utter failure of such bankrupt policies one need look no further than Greece’s burgeoning youth unemployment. Staggeringly, nearly one out of every two Greeks under 25-years of age is currently without a job. Although, Greece is by no means alone, as equally high youth unemployment now menaces Italy, Portugal, Spain, and beyond.
Of course, much the same is unfolding, albeit on a lesser magnitude, the world over. Seen from the push to privatize education in Chile to the attack on public sector workers in the United States. Needless to say, imposing such economic despair is simply unsustainable. Hence, the correspondent worldwide revolts seen from the Indignatos to the Occupy movement.
Yet, as the system falters, and popular unrest mounts, the ruling elites have largely remained blinded by their neoliberal thinking, leaving them incapable of offering any viable solutions for resolving the entrenched global economic crisis.
Still, there remains one last means left for global capitalism’s regeneration. For as Marx and Engels wrote in the Communist Manifesto, along with heightening levels of exploitation, the capitalist class can always resort to the “enforced destruction of a mass of productive forces.” In other words, the capitalism can ultimately be renewed via war.
Regenerating Capitalism Through War
War functions as a bailout of sorts for the system of capitalism on two levels. First, war unleashes the power of what Joseph Schumpeter so fondly deemed “creative destruction.” For by destroying capital—i.e., crudely addressing the chronic affliction of overproduction—war creates the opportunity for renewed growth. As General Smedley Butler famously argued (and the likes of Lockheed Martin know all too well): war is a racket.
Second, and perhaps most important in the minds of the ruling classes, war functions to quell domestic social unrest. For war paves the way for both domestic repression and the ultimate fracturing of the working class itself. The former is seen in measures dating from the Espionage Act of 19 17 to the latest National Defense Authorization Act. The latter occurs once elements of the working class, particularly elements directly benefiting from increased military spending, eagerly rally to the flag. The resultant splintering of the working class between such opportunists on one side and the more politically advanced on the other renders it as a whole rather impotent.
And so it is that we now see a growing war fever gaining traction amongst the capitalist class, as they search for a way out of the present crisis. And in this regard, all eyes are cast towards Iran.
Target Iran
Iran, of course, has been on the imperial hit list since 1979, when it first broke free from its U.S. shackles. Something all war lusting neocons have not since forgot. As they are known to proclaim: real men go to Tehran.
We are now told, however, that the present belligerence towards Iran is solely related to its nefarious nuclear program. But such claims are merely ruses—disputed by no less than both the U.S. and Israeli intelligence communities—and are posited in an attempt to shroud imperial motivations. It’s a ploy we have all seen before (most recently in regards to Iraq).
The targeting of Iran is really then a byproduct of both the opportunity it presents and the great economic potential it holds in regards to regenerating global capitalism. For sitting atop vast energy reserves, Iran possesses the world’s third largest oil reserves, and the world’s second largest natural gas reserves. And according to investment bank Goldman Sachs (the Mecca of U.S. capitalism), Iran is one of the 11 countries outside of the BRICs (Brazil, Russia, India, and China) forecast to drive world economic growth.
Therefore, the aim in the escalating showdown with Iran is to ultimately seize control of the country’s sizable energy reserves, and envelop its largely un-integrated economy more fully into the global capitalist system. And least one wonders, concerns over the inevitable human carnage of a potential conflict factor little into any such calculus. The system of capitalism simply must be saved, whatever the costs.
The only hope then, if one truly seeks a future better than our past, is for the working classes within the U.S. (the locus of global capitalism) to transform any impending imperial war against Iran into, as Lenin would no doubt argue, a class struggle between the ruling elite and the working class at home—into a struggle between the 1-percent and the 99-percent.
Perhaps not much in the way of hope, but it’s certainly high time the American working class came to realize that all wars are class wars.
by BEN SCHREINER
On February 21, to great media fanfare, the Dow Jones Industrial Average surpassed the 13,000 mark for the first time since the 2008 collapse. Appearing on NBC’s Today Show the following morning, Jim “Bear Sterns is not in trouble” Cramer jubilantly prophesied “the future is better than the past.” A more ominous indication of lurking economic peril is perhaps difficult to imagine.
Indeed, for despite growing optimism on Wall Street (where profits have been ascendant through the course of the Great Recession), the economy remains teetering precariously on the precipice. The potential collapse of the eurozone, along with mounting signs of a bursting Chinese growth bubble both still loom along the horizon. Each of which could threaten to send the world economy barreling toward the abyss. Hardly indicative of what one might deem a better future.
In fact, given the protracted nature of the current crises, it is increasingly evident that we are in the thralls of a systemic crisis. That is to say, we are in the midst of a crisis that can no longer be resolved within the present neoliberal framework—try as one might.
Nowhere is this more apparent than Greece. For as the “market” (i.e., the transnational financial elite) dictates a neoliberal inspired cocktail of deeper and deeper austerity as a way out of the crises, Greece becomes further ensnared in a downward spiral of unending economic depression and societal unrest.
To glimpse the utter failure of such bankrupt policies one need look no further than Greece’s burgeoning youth unemployment. Staggeringly, nearly one out of every two Greeks under 25-years of age is currently without a job. Although, Greece is by no means alone, as equally high youth unemployment now menaces Italy, Portugal, Spain, and beyond.
Of course, much the same is unfolding, albeit on a lesser magnitude, the world over. Seen from the push to privatize education in Chile to the attack on public sector workers in the United States. Needless to say, imposing such economic despair is simply unsustainable. Hence, the correspondent worldwide revolts seen from the Indignatos to the Occupy movement.
Yet, as the system falters, and popular unrest mounts, the ruling elites have largely remained blinded by their neoliberal thinking, leaving them incapable of offering any viable solutions for resolving the entrenched global economic crisis.
Still, there remains one last means left for global capitalism’s regeneration. For as Marx and Engels wrote in the Communist Manifesto, along with heightening levels of exploitation, the capitalist class can always resort to the “enforced destruction of a mass of productive forces.” In other words, the capitalism can ultimately be renewed via war.
Regenerating Capitalism Through War
War functions as a bailout of sorts for the system of capitalism on two levels. First, war unleashes the power of what Joseph Schumpeter so fondly deemed “creative destruction.” For by destroying capital—i.e., crudely addressing the chronic affliction of overproduction—war creates the opportunity for renewed growth. As General Smedley Butler famously argued (and the likes of Lockheed Martin know all too well): war is a racket.
Second, and perhaps most important in the minds of the ruling classes, war functions to quell domestic social unrest. For war paves the way for both domestic repression and the ultimate fracturing of the working class itself. The former is seen in measures dating from the Espionage Act of 19 17 to the latest National Defense Authorization Act. The latter occurs once elements of the working class, particularly elements directly benefiting from increased military spending, eagerly rally to the flag. The resultant splintering of the working class between such opportunists on one side and the more politically advanced on the other renders it as a whole rather impotent.
And so it is that we now see a growing war fever gaining traction amongst the capitalist class, as they search for a way out of the present crisis. And in this regard, all eyes are cast towards Iran.
Target Iran
Iran, of course, has been on the imperial hit list since 1979, when it first broke free from its U.S. shackles. Something all war lusting neocons have not since forgot. As they are known to proclaim: real men go to Tehran.
We are now told, however, that the present belligerence towards Iran is solely related to its nefarious nuclear program. But such claims are merely ruses—disputed by no less than both the U.S. and Israeli intelligence communities—and are posited in an attempt to shroud imperial motivations. It’s a ploy we have all seen before (most recently in regards to Iraq).
The targeting of Iran is really then a byproduct of both the opportunity it presents and the great economic potential it holds in regards to regenerating global capitalism. For sitting atop vast energy reserves, Iran possesses the world’s third largest oil reserves, and the world’s second largest natural gas reserves. And according to investment bank Goldman Sachs (the Mecca of U.S. capitalism), Iran is one of the 11 countries outside of the BRICs (Brazil, Russia, India, and China) forecast to drive world economic growth.
Therefore, the aim in the escalating showdown with Iran is to ultimately seize control of the country’s sizable energy reserves, and envelop its largely un-integrated economy more fully into the global capitalist system. And least one wonders, concerns over the inevitable human carnage of a potential conflict factor little into any such calculus. The system of capitalism simply must be saved, whatever the costs.
The only hope then, if one truly seeks a future better than our past, is for the working classes within the U.S. (the locus of global capitalism) to transform any impending imperial war against Iran into, as Lenin would no doubt argue, a class struggle between the ruling elite and the working class at home—into a struggle between the 1-percent and the 99-percent.
Perhaps not much in the way of hope, but it’s certainly high time the American working class came to realize that all wars are class wars.
Saturday, February 18, 2012
Once Again: Panetta Says Iran Is NOT Developing Nuclear Weapons
Worth repeating for those who remain clueless...
Though Iran is enriching uranium, Panetta explained, they have not demonstrated any intention of building a bomb
Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said Thursday that Iran is enriching uranium in a peaceful nuclear program but that Tehran has not decided to develop an atomic bomb.
Top U.S. military and intelligence officials gave separate testimonies in congressional hearings on Thursday regarding Iran, and while they all reiterated the consensus that Iran’s nuclear program is purely civilian in nature, they also kept up the tough talk, hoping to satisfy hawks eager to preemptively strike Iran.
Panetta explained emphatically that any move from Iran to develop nuclear weapons is a "red line" for the U.S. "We will not allow Iran to develop a nuclear weapon," he said. "That is the red line that would concern us and that would ensure that the international community, hopefully together, would respond."
"But the intelligence does not show that they have made the decision to proceed with developing a nuclear weapon," Panetta added. This has been a bit of an inconvenient truth for Washington as they continue to heap crippling economic sanctions on Iran supposedly out of suspicion of their nuclear program. They have also continued to support Israel – and refuse to criticize it – even while Tel Aviv has supported terrorist operations against Iranian nuclear scientists.
Though Iran is enriching uranium, Panetta explained, they have not demonstrated any intention of building a bomb
by John Glaser
February 16, 2012
Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said Thursday that Iran is enriching uranium in a peaceful nuclear program but that Tehran has not decided to develop an atomic bomb.
Top U.S. military and intelligence officials gave separate testimonies in congressional hearings on Thursday regarding Iran, and while they all reiterated the consensus that Iran’s nuclear program is purely civilian in nature, they also kept up the tough talk, hoping to satisfy hawks eager to preemptively strike Iran.
Panetta explained emphatically that any move from Iran to develop nuclear weapons is a "red line" for the U.S. "We will not allow Iran to develop a nuclear weapon," he said. "That is the red line that would concern us and that would ensure that the international community, hopefully together, would respond."
"But the intelligence does not show that they have made the decision to proceed with developing a nuclear weapon," Panetta added. This has been a bit of an inconvenient truth for Washington as they continue to heap crippling economic sanctions on Iran supposedly out of suspicion of their nuclear program. They have also continued to support Israel – and refuse to criticize it – even while Tel Aviv has supported terrorist operations against Iranian nuclear scientists.
Iran, on the defensive, has made announcements about new, domestically-made centrifuges were installed at the main uranium enrichment site at Natanz, branding that and other such developments as some nuclear "milestone." But U.S. State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said Wednesday the announcement was "hyped" for a domestic audience.
"Our view on this is that it’s not terribly new and it’s not terribly impressive," she said.
Panetta also reiterated the oft-repeated euphemism for potential military attack against Iran, "we do keep all options on the table." This helped lend legitimacy for political opportunists in the GOP to fear-monger about an imminent Iranian nuclear bomb, as House Speaker John Boehner did.
Thursday, January 12, 2012
Russia Warns of US Strike on Iran
Agence France-Presse reports:
Russian Security Council secretary Nikolai
Patrushev warned that military escalation is likely in Iran, with “real
danger” of a US strike, in an interview published on Thursday.
He added that Syria, which has refused to break its ties with Tehran, could also be a target for Western intervention.
“There is a likelihood of military escalation of
the conflict, and Israel is pushing the Americans towards it,” Mr
Patrushev said in an interview published on the website of the daily
Kommersant.
"There is a real danger of a US military strike on Iran,” the senior Russian security official said.
“At present, the US sees Iran as its main problem.
They are trying to turn Tehran from an enemy into a supportive partner,
and to achieve this, to change the current regime by whatever means,”
he added.
“They use both economic embargo and massive help to the opposition forces.”
Mr Patrushev said that “for years we have been
hearing that the Iranians are going to create an atomic bomb, (but)
still nobody has proved the existence of a military component of Iran’s
nuclear program.”
Iran said on Wednesday it had firm evidence that
“foreign quarters” were behind the killing of four Iranian nuclear
experts and demanded UN Security Council condemnation of the deaths.
Meanwhile, a second US aircraft carrier, the USS
Carl Vinson, has arrived in the Gulf region, the Pentagon has said,
calling the move "routine" and denying any link to mounting tensions
with Iran.
Backed by a cruiser, destroyer and with almost 80
planes and helicopters on board, the USS Carl Vinson carrier strike
group "arrived in the US 5th Fleet area of responsibility (AOR)" on
January 9," a Fifth Fleet statement said.
Monday, January 2, 2012
End of the pro-democracy pretense
Monday, Jan 2, 2012 - Salon.com
Media coverage of the Arab Spring somehow depicted the U.S. as
sympathetic to and supportive of the democratic protesters
notwithstanding the nation’s decades-long financial and military support
for most of the targeted despots. That’s because a central staple of
American domestic propaganda about its foreign policy is that the nation
is “pro-democracy” — that’s the banner under which Americans wars are
typically prettified — even though “democracy” in this regard really
means “a government which serves American interests regardless of how
their power is acquired,” while “despot” means “a government which
defies American orders even if they’re democratically elected.”
It’s always preferable when pretenses of this sort are dropped — the ugly truth is better than pretty lies — and the events in the Arab world have forced the explicit relinquishment of this pro-democracy conceit. That’s because one of the prime aims of America’s support for Arab dictators has been to ensure that the actual views and beliefs of those nations’ populations remain suppressed, because those views are often so antithetical to the perceived national interests of the U.S. government. The last thing the U.S. government has wanted (or wants now) is actual democracy in the Arab world, in large part because democracy will enable the populations’ beliefs — driven by high levels of anti-American sentiment and opposition to Israeli actions – to be empowered rather than ignored.
So acute is this contradiction — between professed support for Arab democracy and the fear of what it will produce — that America’s Foreign Policy Community is now dropping the pro-freedom charade and talking openly (albeit euphemistically) about the need to oppose Arab democracy. Here is Jon Alterman, the director of the Middle East program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies and a very typical member of the National Security priesthood, writing on Friday in The New York Times about Egyptian elections (via As’ad AbuKhali):
But Alterman here is expressly admitting the reality that most media accounts ignore: that the U.S. does not, in fact, want democracy in Egypt. It fears it. That’s because public opinion polls show overwhelming opposition among the Egyptian populace to the policies which the U.S. (for better or worse) wants to foist on that country: animus toward Iran, preservation of the peace agreement with Israel, ongoing indifference to the plight of the Palestinians, and subservience to U.S. goals. Indeed, according to the 2011 Pew finding, “nearly eight-in-ten Egyptians have an unfavorable opinion of the U.S.” That tracks opinion in the Arab world generally, where the two nations perceived as the biggest threat are — by far — the U.S. and Israel (not Iran), and the three most admired foreign leaders are Turkish Prime Minister Recep Erdogan, followed by Hugo Chavez and Mahmoud Ahmadinijad.
But even more significant is Egyptian public opinion specifically on the issue of greatest concern for American (and Israeli) foreign policy officials: a nuclear Iran. A 2010 Brookings/University of Maryland/Zogby poll found vast, overwhelming Egyptian support for the view that Iran has the right to have a nuclear weapon, and for the view that a nuclear Iran would be a net positive for the region. That, too, tracks general public opinion in the Arab world, which supports Iran’s right to have nuclear weapons. In light of these facts, does anyone believe that the U.S. government and its pool of experts that exist to justify what it does — the Foreign Policy Community — have even a slight interest in actual democracy in Egypt specifically or the Arab world generally?
Of course not. As Noam Chomsky put it recently: “The U.S. and its Western allies are sure to do whatever they can to prevent authentic democracy in the Arab world” because “if public opinion were to influence policy, the U.S. not only would not control the region, but would be expelled from it.” That’s why Alterman is urging what he delicately calls “a balance — however uneasy — between the military authorities and Egypt’s new politicians” – meaning: ensuring the ability of the Egyptian military to prevent the country’s democratically elected leaders (“Egypt’s new politicians”) from implementing the will of the citizenry. The fear of (and desire to stop) Arab democracy has been openly expressed for some time by many American neocons and even Benjamin Netanyahu; that it is now spilling over into America’s mainstream Foreign Policy experts is telling indeed.
In calling for a force to constrain democratic rule, Alterman doesn’t mean here the kind of Constitutional protections that exist in the U.S. to safeguard (in theory) minorities from the tyranny of majority rule, at least not primarily. Those are legitimate issues balancing democracy and minority rights — for the Egyptians to resolve. What Alterman advocates is a bulwark against the ability of the Egyptian people to free themselves of military rule, choose their own government, and decide their own fate. He wants democracy to exist in Egypt to extend only to the point where Egyptians “choose” to do what the U.S. wants them to do and to end at the point where they want to do something different (in that regard, his vision for “freedom” in Egypt is not unlike what many “freedoms” have come to mean in the U.S.: you can exercise them provided they do not contradict the interests of the U.S. Government). Thus, Alterman announces, in Egypt we must avoid the “clarity” of democracy in favor of something “murkier.”
Even if you’re indifferent to the moral questions involved in actively trying to impede democracy in Egypt — suppose you’re a hard-core adherent of Henry Kissinger and realpolitik and want to the U.S. to act only to advance its interests without regard to moral and ethical questions – the foolishness of this approach is manifest. It’s what the U.S. has been doing, so disastrously, in that part of the world for decades: feigning support for democracy while working against it.
The Obama administration paid pretty lip service to the Egyptian revolution but then worked to install Mubarak’s chief torturer Omar Suleiman in power, who, for obvious reasons, is viewed with great disfavor among Egyptians. That propaganda ruse fooled one of its chief targets (the American electorate) but failed miserably among Egyptians, who knew exactly what the U.S. was up to. As a result, Egyptians now view the U.S. even more unfavorably than they did during the Bush years, while “more Egyptians — 64 percent — said they had low or no confidence in President Obama in 2011 than they did last year, up five percentage points.”
Nothing will ensure ongoing anti-American sentiment in Egypt (and the Muslim world generally) than following the approach prescribed by Alterman of working actively to impede democracy. Egyptians yearn for democracy and will scorn those who impede it. That they continue so bravely to protest in the streets even with Mubarak gone is dispositive proof of that fact, but for those who want empirical data: in the 2011 Pew poll, 71% of Egyptians say “democracy is preferable to any other kind of government,” while only 17″% say that “in some circumstances, a nondemocratic government can be preferable.” In other words, the vast majority of Egyptians do not want Alterman’s “murkier” framework where military rule “balances” democracy; they want democracy. In this extremely informative analysis of the current situation in Egypt, Issandr El Amrani notes: “The military’s claim to be guardian of the revolution has been weakening since soon after Mubarak was toppled.” While the U.S. Government can trick Americans into believing that the U.S. is on the side of Freedom and Democracy even as it works against it, it cannot fool the citizens in those nations it seeks to suppress.
Alterman claims that he wants to impede Egyptian democracy in the name of “what Egyptians, and Americans, need” — right: because Jon Alterman and his fellow denizens in America’s National Security priesthood want only what’s best for The Egyptian People, and that means preventing them from living autonomously. But one need not even bother with that pretense to see the huge deficiency in this approach. Having the U.S. impede democracy in Egypt no more fulfills what “Americans need” than it does what “Egyptians need.” It’s a self-perpetuating, self-inflicted dilemma: the more the U.S. impedes democracy in other nations, the more it is disliked in those nations, which in turn means it needs even more to impede democracy in those nations, etc. ad infinitum. This is exactly the behavior (along with blind support for the actions of the Israeli government) that has led to such vast anti-American sentiment (which in turn is what fuels Terrorism and support for it).
It’s just extraordinary how our nation’s Foreign Policy Experts never learn the lesson. Either that, or they view anti-American sentiment in that part of the world as an agenda-enabling positive. It’s hard to know which is worse.
Speaking of propaganda and the meaning of “democracy”: The Washington Post today has the latest installment of increasingly pure fear-mongering media accounts about Iran (this from the NYT last week — “Clock Ticking for West to Act on Iranian Nuclear Program” — was a remarkable escalation). Today’s Post article mindlessly echoes neocon fantasies about a growing Persian menace in Latin America, frighteningly close to America’s borders! Without an ounce of skepticism or balance, it quotes a GOP Congresswoman complaining that Iran has found “willing partners in the region’s anti-American despots,” and then ominously warns:
The Post explains that Iran has now “opened six new missions there — in Colombia, Nicaragua, Chile, Ecuador, Uruguay and Bolivia — and has expanded embassies in Cuba, Argentina, Brazil, Mexico and Venezuela”; Iran’s President, the article informs us, is now embarking on a trip to Venezuela, Ecuador, Cuba and Nicaragua. Other than Cuba, all of those nations are governed by democratically elected leaders. But many of them periodically defy American dictates and act against American interests; they are thus magically transformed into “despots.” By contrast, try to find any high-level American official using such a term to describe, say, America’s close friends ruling Saudi Arabia or the United Arab Emirates. That is what is meant by “democracy” and “freedom” and “despots” when used in establishment American foreign policy discussions.
It’s always preferable when pretenses of this sort are dropped — the ugly truth is better than pretty lies — and the events in the Arab world have forced the explicit relinquishment of this pro-democracy conceit. That’s because one of the prime aims of America’s support for Arab dictators has been to ensure that the actual views and beliefs of those nations’ populations remain suppressed, because those views are often so antithetical to the perceived national interests of the U.S. government. The last thing the U.S. government has wanted (or wants now) is actual democracy in the Arab world, in large part because democracy will enable the populations’ beliefs — driven by high levels of anti-American sentiment and opposition to Israeli actions – to be empowered rather than ignored.
So acute is this contradiction — between professed support for Arab democracy and the fear of what it will produce — that America’s Foreign Policy Community is now dropping the pro-freedom charade and talking openly (albeit euphemistically) about the need to oppose Arab democracy. Here is Jon Alterman, the director of the Middle East program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies and a very typical member of the National Security priesthood, writing on Friday in The New York Times about Egyptian elections (via As’ad AbuKhali):
Many in Israel and America, and even some in Egypt, fear that the elections will produce an Islamist-led government that will tear up the Egyptian-Israeli peace treaty, turn hostile to the United States, openly support Hamas and transform Egypt into a theocracy that oppresses women, Christians and secular Muslims.
They see little prospect for more liberal voices to prevail, and view military dictatorship as a preferable outcome.
American interests, however, call for a different outcome, one that finds a balance — however uneasy — between the military authorities and Egypt’s new politicians. We do not want any one side to vanquish or silence the other. And with lopsided early election results, it is especially important that the outcome not drive away Egypt’s educated liberal elite, whose economic connections and know-how will be vital for attracting investment and creating jobs.
Our instinct is to search for the clarity we saw in last winter’s televised celebrations. However, what Egyptians, and Americans, need is something murkier — not a victory, but an accommodation.I love this passage both for its candor and for what it lamely attempts to obfuscate. Why should “American interests” determine the type of government Egypt has? That it should is simply embedded as an implicit, unstated assumption in Alterman’s advocacy. That’s because the right of the U.S. to dictate how other nations are governed is one of the central, unchallenged precepts of the American Foreign Policy Community’s dogma and it thus needs no defense or even explicit acknowledgment. It simply is. It’s an inherent imperial right.
But Alterman here is expressly admitting the reality that most media accounts ignore: that the U.S. does not, in fact, want democracy in Egypt. It fears it. That’s because public opinion polls show overwhelming opposition among the Egyptian populace to the policies which the U.S. (for better or worse) wants to foist on that country: animus toward Iran, preservation of the peace agreement with Israel, ongoing indifference to the plight of the Palestinians, and subservience to U.S. goals. Indeed, according to the 2011 Pew finding, “nearly eight-in-ten Egyptians have an unfavorable opinion of the U.S.” That tracks opinion in the Arab world generally, where the two nations perceived as the biggest threat are — by far — the U.S. and Israel (not Iran), and the three most admired foreign leaders are Turkish Prime Minister Recep Erdogan, followed by Hugo Chavez and Mahmoud Ahmadinijad.
But even more significant is Egyptian public opinion specifically on the issue of greatest concern for American (and Israeli) foreign policy officials: a nuclear Iran. A 2010 Brookings/University of Maryland/Zogby poll found vast, overwhelming Egyptian support for the view that Iran has the right to have a nuclear weapon, and for the view that a nuclear Iran would be a net positive for the region. That, too, tracks general public opinion in the Arab world, which supports Iran’s right to have nuclear weapons. In light of these facts, does anyone believe that the U.S. government and its pool of experts that exist to justify what it does — the Foreign Policy Community — have even a slight interest in actual democracy in Egypt specifically or the Arab world generally?
Of course not. As Noam Chomsky put it recently: “The U.S. and its Western allies are sure to do whatever they can to prevent authentic democracy in the Arab world” because “if public opinion were to influence policy, the U.S. not only would not control the region, but would be expelled from it.” That’s why Alterman is urging what he delicately calls “a balance — however uneasy — between the military authorities and Egypt’s new politicians” – meaning: ensuring the ability of the Egyptian military to prevent the country’s democratically elected leaders (“Egypt’s new politicians”) from implementing the will of the citizenry. The fear of (and desire to stop) Arab democracy has been openly expressed for some time by many American neocons and even Benjamin Netanyahu; that it is now spilling over into America’s mainstream Foreign Policy experts is telling indeed.
In calling for a force to constrain democratic rule, Alterman doesn’t mean here the kind of Constitutional protections that exist in the U.S. to safeguard (in theory) minorities from the tyranny of majority rule, at least not primarily. Those are legitimate issues balancing democracy and minority rights — for the Egyptians to resolve. What Alterman advocates is a bulwark against the ability of the Egyptian people to free themselves of military rule, choose their own government, and decide their own fate. He wants democracy to exist in Egypt to extend only to the point where Egyptians “choose” to do what the U.S. wants them to do and to end at the point where they want to do something different (in that regard, his vision for “freedom” in Egypt is not unlike what many “freedoms” have come to mean in the U.S.: you can exercise them provided they do not contradict the interests of the U.S. Government). Thus, Alterman announces, in Egypt we must avoid the “clarity” of democracy in favor of something “murkier.”
Even if you’re indifferent to the moral questions involved in actively trying to impede democracy in Egypt — suppose you’re a hard-core adherent of Henry Kissinger and realpolitik and want to the U.S. to act only to advance its interests without regard to moral and ethical questions – the foolishness of this approach is manifest. It’s what the U.S. has been doing, so disastrously, in that part of the world for decades: feigning support for democracy while working against it.
The Obama administration paid pretty lip service to the Egyptian revolution but then worked to install Mubarak’s chief torturer Omar Suleiman in power, who, for obvious reasons, is viewed with great disfavor among Egyptians. That propaganda ruse fooled one of its chief targets (the American electorate) but failed miserably among Egyptians, who knew exactly what the U.S. was up to. As a result, Egyptians now view the U.S. even more unfavorably than they did during the Bush years, while “more Egyptians — 64 percent — said they had low or no confidence in President Obama in 2011 than they did last year, up five percentage points.”
Nothing will ensure ongoing anti-American sentiment in Egypt (and the Muslim world generally) than following the approach prescribed by Alterman of working actively to impede democracy. Egyptians yearn for democracy and will scorn those who impede it. That they continue so bravely to protest in the streets even with Mubarak gone is dispositive proof of that fact, but for those who want empirical data: in the 2011 Pew poll, 71% of Egyptians say “democracy is preferable to any other kind of government,” while only 17″% say that “in some circumstances, a nondemocratic government can be preferable.” In other words, the vast majority of Egyptians do not want Alterman’s “murkier” framework where military rule “balances” democracy; they want democracy. In this extremely informative analysis of the current situation in Egypt, Issandr El Amrani notes: “The military’s claim to be guardian of the revolution has been weakening since soon after Mubarak was toppled.” While the U.S. Government can trick Americans into believing that the U.S. is on the side of Freedom and Democracy even as it works against it, it cannot fool the citizens in those nations it seeks to suppress.
Alterman claims that he wants to impede Egyptian democracy in the name of “what Egyptians, and Americans, need” — right: because Jon Alterman and his fellow denizens in America’s National Security priesthood want only what’s best for The Egyptian People, and that means preventing them from living autonomously. But one need not even bother with that pretense to see the huge deficiency in this approach. Having the U.S. impede democracy in Egypt no more fulfills what “Americans need” than it does what “Egyptians need.” It’s a self-perpetuating, self-inflicted dilemma: the more the U.S. impedes democracy in other nations, the more it is disliked in those nations, which in turn means it needs even more to impede democracy in those nations, etc. ad infinitum. This is exactly the behavior (along with blind support for the actions of the Israeli government) that has led to such vast anti-American sentiment (which in turn is what fuels Terrorism and support for it).
It’s just extraordinary how our nation’s Foreign Policy Experts never learn the lesson. Either that, or they view anti-American sentiment in that part of the world as an agenda-enabling positive. It’s hard to know which is worse.
* * * * *
Speaking of propaganda and the meaning of “democracy”: The Washington Post today has the latest installment of increasingly pure fear-mongering media accounts about Iran (this from the NYT last week — “Clock Ticking for West to Act on Iranian Nuclear Program” — was a remarkable escalation). Today’s Post article mindlessly echoes neocon fantasies about a growing Persian menace in Latin America, frighteningly close to America’s borders! Without an ounce of skepticism or balance, it quotes a GOP Congresswoman complaining that Iran has found “willing partners in the region’s anti-American despots,” and then ominously warns:
Former U.S. intelligence officials say the presence of Quds Force officers and other military personnel in diplomatic missions enhances Iran’s ability to carry out covert activities, sometimes in conjunction with members of the Iran-backed Hezbollah militant group that operates extensive networks in Latin America and maintains ties with drug cartels. U.S. officials say the Quds Force was behind the alleged plot to hire Mexican drug gangs to assassinate a Saudi diplomat in Washington.
“For Iran to be so active in Venezuela and for the Quds Force to be there can only suggest Iran is serious about asymmetrical force projection into our neck of the woods. If Israel bombs Iran, we may well see retaliatory strikes aimed at U.S. interests coming from these Quds Force guys in South America,” said Art Keller, a former case officer with the CIA’s counterproliferation division.Leaving aside the fact that this Quds-Force/Mexican-drug-cartel/Saudi-Ambassador assassination plot was so facially absurd as to be laughable, and further leaving aside that these neocon fantasies of Hezbollah running wild in Latin America have been clearly debunked, and further leaving aside that the Post article does little more than identify commercial transactions between Iran and these nations, consider who are the region’s “anti-American despots” whom Iran is threateningly befriending.
The Post explains that Iran has now “opened six new missions there — in Colombia, Nicaragua, Chile, Ecuador, Uruguay and Bolivia — and has expanded embassies in Cuba, Argentina, Brazil, Mexico and Venezuela”; Iran’s President, the article informs us, is now embarking on a trip to Venezuela, Ecuador, Cuba and Nicaragua. Other than Cuba, all of those nations are governed by democratically elected leaders. But many of them periodically defy American dictates and act against American interests; they are thus magically transformed into “despots.” By contrast, try to find any high-level American official using such a term to describe, say, America’s close friends ruling Saudi Arabia or the United Arab Emirates. That is what is meant by “democracy” and “freedom” and “despots” when used in establishment American foreign policy discussions.
Tuesday, December 27, 2011
Federal judge: Iran shares responsibility for 9/11 terror attacks
(hmmmmm...no agenda here...--jef)
By Kenneth Timmerman - the Daily Caller
December 27, 2011
NEW YORK — In an historic hearing in the federal courthouse in Manhattan on Thursday, U.S. District Court Judge George Daniels said he planned to issue a ruling in the coming days declaring that Iran shares in the responsibility for the 9/11 terror attacks.
“The extensive record submitted to this court, including fact witnesses and expert testimony, is satisfactory to this court,” Judge Daniels said. The court “accepts as true” the various allegations of the plaintiffs and their experts, he declared, and “will issue an order” in the coming days that Iran bears legal responsibility for providing “material support” to the 9/11 plotters and hijackers.
Family members of 9/11 victims who attended the open-court hearing broke into tears. They had nervously sat through a four-hour presentation by attorneys Thomas E. Mellon, Jr., and Timothy B. Fleming, consisting of evidence backing up their claims that Iran had foreknowledge of the 9/11 attacks and actively assisted the hijackers in planning, preparing, and executing their plan.
“My husband’s name is on that lawsuit,” said Fiona Havlish, the lead plaintiff in the case against Iran. Her spouse, Donald G. Havlish, Jr, perished on the 101st floor of the World Trade Center’s South Tower. “This is about my husband, all our husbands, our loved ones, our sons, our daughters.”
Ellen Saracini, whose husband, Victor Saracini, took off that morning at the controls of United Airlines Flight 175, called it “a historic day” because a U.S. court found that Iran was responsible for the attacks. “When I heard the verdict, I just smiled up to Victor and said, ‘we’re still thinking about you up there.’”
In presenting evidence gathered by the attorneys and their outside investigator, Timothy Fleming revealed tantalizing details of still-sealed videotaped depositions provided by three defectors from Iranian intelligence organizations.
One of those defectors was “physically present” when al-Qaida’s second in command, Ayman al-Zawahiri, came to Iran in January 2001 for four days of intense closed-door meetings with the top leadership in Iran to discuss the impending attacks.
Another took part in writing up the debriefing reports of Iran’s al-Qaida liaison, Imad Mugniyeh, once he returned to Iran from Afghanistan after the 9/11 attacks.
The most dramatic moment of the hearing came when Fleming unveiled the identity of a third defector and described in detail the information he had provided.
The defector, Abdolghassem Mesbahi, had been a confidant of Iranian leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the Islamic Republic’s founder, and headed up European operations for the new regime’s fledging intelligence service in the early 1980s.
Then, Mesbahi actively took part in developing a set of terrorist contingency plans, called “Shaitan der atash” — meaning “Satan in the Flames,” or “Satan on Fire” — to be used against the United States.
“This contingency plan for unconventional or asymmetrical warfare against the United States was the origin of subsequent terror attacks against the United States, up to and including the terrorist attacks of 9/11.” Fleming said. “Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda joined the Iranian operational planning in the early to mid-1990s.”
Those earlier “unconventional” attacks included the 1996 Khobar Towers bombing in Saudi Arabia, the 1998 bombings of U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, and the 2000 attack on the U.S.S. Cole.
In 1996, Mesbahi learned hard-liners within the regime intended to kill him. He fled Iran for Europe, where he was granted political refugee status.
Mesbahi soon became a witness in German court proceedings stemming from the assassination of Kurdish dissidents in the Mykonos restaurant in Berlin, and went to ground in a witness protection program. Known only as “Witness C,” his testimony led the German court to name the top leadership of Iran as personally responsible for ordering the assassinations, and caused the European Union to withdraw their ambassadors from Iran for 18 months.
Ever since then, Mesbahi has been a marked man, hunted by the regime’s intelligence services.
Fleming described Mesbahi’s desperate attempts in the weeks before the 9/11 attacks to contact German and U.S. intelligence agencies, after he received a series of coded messages from one of his former intelligence colleagues in Iran.
The first message, which he received on July 23, 2001, told him that the “Shaitan der atash” contingency plan against the United States had been activated.
Mesbahi knew at that point that something awful was about to occur, but he didn’t know which of the many variants of the plan had been selected, Fleming said. In one version of the plan, Iranian-backed terrorists were supposed to attack gas stations around the United States, causing their underground fuel tanks to explode. In another, they were to attack oil refineries.
The second message, which he received on Aug. 13, 2001, told him which plan had been selected. “This was the plan to crash civilian jetliners into major U.S. cities, including New York and Washington,” Fleming said.
The third message, which Mesbahi received on Aug. 27, told him that “Germany was involved” in some way in the plans. As Fleming pointed out, several of the 9/11 hijackers, including the lead pilot, Mohammad Atta, were working out of Hamburg, Germany.
The 9/11 Commission report referred obliquely to Mesbahi and others who had “some fragmentary knowledge” of the impending attacks in its narrative of the events of the summer of 2001. The “system was blinking red” and U.S. intelligence agencies were receiving “frequent fragmentary reports from around the world,” Mellon, one of the 9/11 families’ attorneys, told the court.
Both Mellon and Fleming saluted the bravery of the three defectors who “risked their lives” to help bring out the truth of Iran’s involvement in the 9/11 plot.
In addition to the defectors, Mellon recruited three senior staff members from the 9/11 Commission to describe the importance of Iran’s efforts to facilitate the travel of the 9/11 hijackers to and from Afghanistan.
Janice Kephart, who authored a separate monograph on the terrorists’ travel for the Commission, told the court that travel facilitation was not just a coincidence. It was “like a military operation” and was “crucial military support” for the 9/11 plot, she said.
Fleming and Mellon explained that Iran sent its top terrorist operative, Imad Fayez Mugniyeh, to Saudi Arabia and Lebanon on several trips to accompany eight to ten of the “muscle” hijackers back to Iran.
This was critical, they said, because the hijackers needed to reach al-Qaida camps in Afghanistan for briefings on the 9/11 operation. But because they were traveling on new Saudi passports and either already had or intended to get U.S. visas, the U.S. might refuse them entry if they had Iranian or Afghan entry stamps.
So without Iran’s decision to allow the future hijackers invisible passage to and from Afghanistan — without stamping their passports — the 9/11 attacks might never have occurred.
As a result, Kephart testified, the U.S. State Department approved 22 of the 23 visa applications submitted by the future hijackers and their associates.
“Today, I feel a great sense of relief,” Mellon said after the judge declared his intention to rule in favor of the 9/11 families. “The families have waited a very long time for this day, so I was greatly relieved for the families. Ten years ago, one of the family members asked me, who was responsible?” for the 9/11 attacks.
“Well, today we have found — the judge has found — that the responsible party was Iran,” he added.
Judge Daniels said he expected to issue a final opinion in the case early next week, finding Iran responsible for the worst terror attacks ever perpetrated on U.S. soil.
Daniels is a judge in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York.
Monday, October 17, 2011
The Iranian “Plot” (2 articles)
(This "terror plot" more and more smells like bullshit and goes to show when it comes to politicians, there are almost NO good guys.--jef)
First, a simple rule: utter absurdity in allegations leveled by
the US government is no bar to a deferential hearing in our nation’s
major conduits of official opinion. Suppose the CIA leaks a secret
national security review concluding that the moon is actually made of
cheese, and the Chinese are planning to send up a pair of gigantic
bio-engineered rats to breed in numbers sufficient to eat the cheese and
thus sabotage US plans for Missile Defense radar deployment on the
moon’s dark side.
The headlines will initially proclaim “Doubts on Chinese Rat Threat Widespread. Many scoff.” The lead paragraphs in news stories in the New York Times, Washington Post and Wall Street Journal will quote the scoffers, but then “balance” will mandate respectful quotation from “intelligence sources”, faculty professors, think tank “experts” and the like, all eager to dance to the government’s tune: “Many say ‘rat scenario ‘plausible’” etc etc. Lo and behold, by the end of a couple of days of such news stories, the Chinese rat plot is firmly ensconced as a credible proposition. News reports then turn to respectful discussion of the US government’s options in confronting and routing the Chinese rat threat: “Vice President says ‘all options are on the table” etc. For verification, merely study the news stories about the Iranian “plot” in the major papers across the past three days.
Even by the forgiving standards of American credulity, the supposed Iranian plot to assassinate the Saudi Ambassador to the US is spectacularly ludicrous. Why would Iran want to kill the Saudi envoy – the mild-mannered functionary, Adel al-Jubeir? I could understand an inclination to dispose of the irksome Prince Bandar who held the job for 22 years, from 1983 to 2005 – simply in the spirit of “change”. But to kill any ambassador – particularly a Saudi ambassador – is to invite lethal retaliation, even war. Iran doesn’t want war with the US.
Manssor J. Arbabsiar, an Iranian-American used car salesman from Corpus Christi, Texas, has been indicted as the chief conspirator working for Iranian intelligence. He is charged with promising to pay $1.5 million to Los Zetas – one of the Mexican drug cartels – to kill the Saudi ambassador at a restaurant in Washington.
The FBI claims that Arbabsiar told the Drug Enforcement Agency’s informant – posing as a high-ranking member of Los Zetas – that it would be “no big deal” if many others died at the restaurant, possibly including United States senators. He also proposed bombing the Israeli embassy.
If even one US senator died in a terrorist bombing in Washington, if anything larger than a firecracker detonated outside the Israeli embassy, US bombers would be raining high explosive on Iranian targets within 24 hours. Why would Iran want to invite such a response?
Gareth Porter points out on our site this weekend that the whole “plot” has the familiar aroma of an FBI sting in which the most outlandish propositions are actually voiced by the DEA informant to Arbabsiar. The supposed plot is certainly wreathed in incidental grandiose absurdities: a side deal between the Quds Force, part of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC), and Los Zetas to smuggle vast shipments of opium from the Middle East to Mexico, and plans to bomb the Saudi and Israeli Embassies in Argentina.
To repeat: Iran doesn’t want war with the US. Quite the reverse. President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad recently tried to refloat the Tehran Research Reactor nuclear fuel swap. He proposed that Iran suspend production of some uranium-enrichment activities in exchange for fuel supplies from the United States. On September 29 the International Herald Tribune ran an op-ed piece saying the proposal was well worth consideration by the US government. All such hopes of a warming in relations have now been snuffed out, most vigorously by Obama on Thursday, endorsing the Attorney General Holder’s wild allegations and threatening ferocious new sanctions against Iran.
There are two powers in the Middle East that most certainly do want war, or a deepening rift between the US and Iran – namely Saudi Arabia and Israel. And we should not forget the cultish Iranian MEK, beloved by many on Capitol Hill.
Iranian intelligence is famously efficient at hiding its tracks. Though many believe that it was the Iranians who blew up PanAm flight 103 in 1988 – in retaliation for the downing of an Iranian civilian airliner by the US Navy ship, the Vincennes – no convincing trail has ever come to light. Yet it is supposedly Iranian intelligence that wired $100,000 to the used car salesman, using a known Quds bank account.If the bid was a false flag operation mounted by the Saudis or Israelis, an open transfer of money would be one obvious tactic.
The US has made swift use of dubious “plots” in the not-so-distant past. In 1981 it flourished charges of a Libyan “hit squad” entering the US through the border tunnel between the Canadian town of Windsor to Detroit, with a plan to assassinate newly elected President Ronald Reagan. No evidence was ever offered for this accusation but it kindled animosities that culminated five years later with the US raid on Tripoli, aiming to assassinate Col Gaddafi in his compound.
In April 1993 former president G.H.W. Bush was visiting Kuwait to commemorate the victory over Saddam in the Gulf War. Detection by the Kuwaitis of a plot to kill him with a car bomb was announced. The FBI duly declared that the wiring of the bomb indicated that the bomb-makers belonged to Iraqi intelligence.
In June 1993 Madeleine Albright, US ambassador to the UN, denounced the plot in the Security Council and a day later President Clinton ordered the firing of 23 Tomahawk cruise missiles at the HQ of Iraqi intelligence in Baghdad. One of the missiles landed in a Baghdad suburb and killed Layla al-Attar, one of Iraq’s leading artists. This set the tone for relations during the Clinton years.
There have also been some spectacular cases of gullibility on the part of supposedly seasoned US intelligence operatives and high military commanders.
A year ago General Petraeus and the US high command in Afghanistan placed great confidence in Mullah Akhtar Muhammad Mansour, allegedly a senior Taliban commander empowered to make peace proposals. The US negotiators and Afghan officials were initially suspicious of Mansour’s credentials but their doubts soon melted.
According to a New York Times report, “Several steps were taken to establish the man’s real identity; after the first meeting, photos of him were shown to Taliban detainees who were believed to know Mr. Mansour. They signed off, the Afghan leader said.”
It turned out that Mansour, given quite large sums of money by the Americans, was a freelance impostor. Note that in the case of the Iranian plot, the FBI says that Manssor J. Arbabsiar correctly identified a known Quds Force officer from a photo array.
The question is why the US government should nail its colors so firmly to the mast of this purported Iranian assassination plot. On two other occasions the US made passionate commitments at the UN to concocted evidence – with both used as levers to launch wars.
The first was US Secretary of State Colin Powell’s unveiling to the UN in February of 2003 of the infamous dossier of entirely bogus evidence that Iraq had a huge arsenal of weapons of mass destruction. The second was the allegation by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, and US ambassador to the UN Susan Rice, in February of this year, that Gaddafi was committing crimes against humanity up to and including genocide against his own people – charges decisively refuted by Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch.
Absurdity, as noted above, is not a decisive factor. Once the DOJ launched its Complaint, the accusations are official and immune to reasoned demolition. Iran doesn’t want war with the US. But how far will the US go in its response, led as it is by a weak president entirely committed to using the “war on terror” to buttress his bid for reelection.
Bizarre Iranian “Plot” Doesn’t Add Up
The headlines will initially proclaim “Doubts on Chinese Rat Threat Widespread. Many scoff.” The lead paragraphs in news stories in the New York Times, Washington Post and Wall Street Journal will quote the scoffers, but then “balance” will mandate respectful quotation from “intelligence sources”, faculty professors, think tank “experts” and the like, all eager to dance to the government’s tune: “Many say ‘rat scenario ‘plausible’” etc etc. Lo and behold, by the end of a couple of days of such news stories, the Chinese rat plot is firmly ensconced as a credible proposition. News reports then turn to respectful discussion of the US government’s options in confronting and routing the Chinese rat threat: “Vice President says ‘all options are on the table” etc. For verification, merely study the news stories about the Iranian “plot” in the major papers across the past three days.
Even by the forgiving standards of American credulity, the supposed Iranian plot to assassinate the Saudi Ambassador to the US is spectacularly ludicrous. Why would Iran want to kill the Saudi envoy – the mild-mannered functionary, Adel al-Jubeir? I could understand an inclination to dispose of the irksome Prince Bandar who held the job for 22 years, from 1983 to 2005 – simply in the spirit of “change”. But to kill any ambassador – particularly a Saudi ambassador – is to invite lethal retaliation, even war. Iran doesn’t want war with the US.
Manssor J. Arbabsiar, an Iranian-American used car salesman from Corpus Christi, Texas, has been indicted as the chief conspirator working for Iranian intelligence. He is charged with promising to pay $1.5 million to Los Zetas – one of the Mexican drug cartels – to kill the Saudi ambassador at a restaurant in Washington.
The FBI claims that Arbabsiar told the Drug Enforcement Agency’s informant – posing as a high-ranking member of Los Zetas – that it would be “no big deal” if many others died at the restaurant, possibly including United States senators. He also proposed bombing the Israeli embassy.
If even one US senator died in a terrorist bombing in Washington, if anything larger than a firecracker detonated outside the Israeli embassy, US bombers would be raining high explosive on Iranian targets within 24 hours. Why would Iran want to invite such a response?
Gareth Porter points out on our site this weekend that the whole “plot” has the familiar aroma of an FBI sting in which the most outlandish propositions are actually voiced by the DEA informant to Arbabsiar. The supposed plot is certainly wreathed in incidental grandiose absurdities: a side deal between the Quds Force, part of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC), and Los Zetas to smuggle vast shipments of opium from the Middle East to Mexico, and plans to bomb the Saudi and Israeli Embassies in Argentina.
To repeat: Iran doesn’t want war with the US. Quite the reverse. President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad recently tried to refloat the Tehran Research Reactor nuclear fuel swap. He proposed that Iran suspend production of some uranium-enrichment activities in exchange for fuel supplies from the United States. On September 29 the International Herald Tribune ran an op-ed piece saying the proposal was well worth consideration by the US government. All such hopes of a warming in relations have now been snuffed out, most vigorously by Obama on Thursday, endorsing the Attorney General Holder’s wild allegations and threatening ferocious new sanctions against Iran.
There are two powers in the Middle East that most certainly do want war, or a deepening rift between the US and Iran – namely Saudi Arabia and Israel. And we should not forget the cultish Iranian MEK, beloved by many on Capitol Hill.
Iranian intelligence is famously efficient at hiding its tracks. Though many believe that it was the Iranians who blew up PanAm flight 103 in 1988 – in retaliation for the downing of an Iranian civilian airliner by the US Navy ship, the Vincennes – no convincing trail has ever come to light. Yet it is supposedly Iranian intelligence that wired $100,000 to the used car salesman, using a known Quds bank account.If the bid was a false flag operation mounted by the Saudis or Israelis, an open transfer of money would be one obvious tactic.
The US has made swift use of dubious “plots” in the not-so-distant past. In 1981 it flourished charges of a Libyan “hit squad” entering the US through the border tunnel between the Canadian town of Windsor to Detroit, with a plan to assassinate newly elected President Ronald Reagan. No evidence was ever offered for this accusation but it kindled animosities that culminated five years later with the US raid on Tripoli, aiming to assassinate Col Gaddafi in his compound.
In April 1993 former president G.H.W. Bush was visiting Kuwait to commemorate the victory over Saddam in the Gulf War. Detection by the Kuwaitis of a plot to kill him with a car bomb was announced. The FBI duly declared that the wiring of the bomb indicated that the bomb-makers belonged to Iraqi intelligence.
In June 1993 Madeleine Albright, US ambassador to the UN, denounced the plot in the Security Council and a day later President Clinton ordered the firing of 23 Tomahawk cruise missiles at the HQ of Iraqi intelligence in Baghdad. One of the missiles landed in a Baghdad suburb and killed Layla al-Attar, one of Iraq’s leading artists. This set the tone for relations during the Clinton years.
There have also been some spectacular cases of gullibility on the part of supposedly seasoned US intelligence operatives and high military commanders.
A year ago General Petraeus and the US high command in Afghanistan placed great confidence in Mullah Akhtar Muhammad Mansour, allegedly a senior Taliban commander empowered to make peace proposals. The US negotiators and Afghan officials were initially suspicious of Mansour’s credentials but their doubts soon melted.
According to a New York Times report, “Several steps were taken to establish the man’s real identity; after the first meeting, photos of him were shown to Taliban detainees who were believed to know Mr. Mansour. They signed off, the Afghan leader said.”
It turned out that Mansour, given quite large sums of money by the Americans, was a freelance impostor. Note that in the case of the Iranian plot, the FBI says that Manssor J. Arbabsiar correctly identified a known Quds Force officer from a photo array.
The question is why the US government should nail its colors so firmly to the mast of this purported Iranian assassination plot. On two other occasions the US made passionate commitments at the UN to concocted evidence – with both used as levers to launch wars.
The first was US Secretary of State Colin Powell’s unveiling to the UN in February of 2003 of the infamous dossier of entirely bogus evidence that Iraq had a huge arsenal of weapons of mass destruction. The second was the allegation by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, and US ambassador to the UN Susan Rice, in February of this year, that Gaddafi was committing crimes against humanity up to and including genocide against his own people – charges decisively refuted by Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch.
Absurdity, as noted above, is not a decisive factor. Once the DOJ launched its Complaint, the accusations are official and immune to reasoned demolition. Iran doesn’t want war with the US. But how far will the US go in its response, led as it is by a weak president entirely committed to using the “war on terror” to buttress his bid for reelection.
++++++
The claim that Iran employed a used-car salesman with a conviction
for cheque fraud to hire Mexican gangsters to assassinate the Saudi
ambassador in Washington goes against all that is known of Iran’s highly
sophisticated intelligence service.
The confident announcement of this bizarre plot by the US Attorney General Eric Holder sounds alarmingly similar to Secretary of State Colin Powell’s notorious claim before the UN in 2003 that the US possessed irrefutable evidence Saddam Hussein was developing weapons of mass destruction.
The problem is that the US government has very publicly committed itself to a version of events, however unlikely, that, if true, would be a case for war against Iran. It will be difficult for the US to back away from such allegations now.
Could the accusations be true? The plot as described in court was puerile, easy to discover and unlikely to succeed. A Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) informant in Corpus Christi, Texas, with supposed links to Los Zetas gangsters in Mexico, said he had been approached by an Iranian friend of his aunt called Mansour Arbabsiar to hire the Zetas to make attacks. A link is established with the Quds force of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC).
None of this makes sense. The IRGC is famous for making sure that responsibility for its actions can never be traced to Iran. It usually operates through proxies. Yet suddenly here it is sending $100,000 (£63,000) from a known IRGC bank account to hire assassins in Mexico. The beneficiaries from such a plot are evident. There will be those on the neo-con right and extreme supporters of Israel who have long been pressing for a war with Iran. In the Middle East, Saudi Arabia and Bahrain have been vociferously asserting that Iran is orchestrating Shia pro-democracy protests, but without finding many believers in the rest of the world. Their claims are now likely to be taken more seriously in Washington. There will be less pressure on countries like Bahrain to accommodate their Shia populations.
In Iraq, the US and Britain were always seeing Iran’s hidden hand supporting their opponents, but they could never quite prove it. It was also true, to a degree never appreciated in the US, that Washington and Tehran were at one in getting rid of Saddam Hussein and installing a Shia government. There were points in common and a struggle for influence. The same has been true in Afghanistan, where Iran was delighted to see the anti-Shia Taliban overthrown in 2001.
Some Iran specialists suggest there might be a “rogue faction” within the Revolutionary Guard, but there is no evidence such a body exists or of a convincing motive for it to be associating with Mexican gangsters.
The confident announcement of this bizarre plot by the US Attorney General Eric Holder sounds alarmingly similar to Secretary of State Colin Powell’s notorious claim before the UN in 2003 that the US possessed irrefutable evidence Saddam Hussein was developing weapons of mass destruction.
The problem is that the US government has very publicly committed itself to a version of events, however unlikely, that, if true, would be a case for war against Iran. It will be difficult for the US to back away from such allegations now.
Could the accusations be true? The plot as described in court was puerile, easy to discover and unlikely to succeed. A Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) informant in Corpus Christi, Texas, with supposed links to Los Zetas gangsters in Mexico, said he had been approached by an Iranian friend of his aunt called Mansour Arbabsiar to hire the Zetas to make attacks. A link is established with the Quds force of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC).
None of this makes sense. The IRGC is famous for making sure that responsibility for its actions can never be traced to Iran. It usually operates through proxies. Yet suddenly here it is sending $100,000 (£63,000) from a known IRGC bank account to hire assassins in Mexico. The beneficiaries from such a plot are evident. There will be those on the neo-con right and extreme supporters of Israel who have long been pressing for a war with Iran. In the Middle East, Saudi Arabia and Bahrain have been vociferously asserting that Iran is orchestrating Shia pro-democracy protests, but without finding many believers in the rest of the world. Their claims are now likely to be taken more seriously in Washington. There will be less pressure on countries like Bahrain to accommodate their Shia populations.
In Iraq, the US and Britain were always seeing Iran’s hidden hand supporting their opponents, but they could never quite prove it. It was also true, to a degree never appreciated in the US, that Washington and Tehran were at one in getting rid of Saddam Hussein and installing a Shia government. There were points in common and a struggle for influence. The same has been true in Afghanistan, where Iran was delighted to see the anti-Shia Taliban overthrown in 2001.
Some Iran specialists suggest there might be a “rogue faction” within the Revolutionary Guard, but there is no evidence such a body exists or of a convincing motive for it to be associating with Mexican gangsters.
Wednesday, August 18, 2010
Iran To Unveil An Array Of Weapons Next Week
Published on 08-17-2010 by AFP
Defence Minister Ahmad Vahidi said on Tuesday that Iran will unveil next week an array of weapons, including missiles, speedboats and a long range drone, the ISNA news agency reported.
Two missiles, Qiam (Rising) and the third generation Fateh 110 (Conqueror) would be tested next week when Iran marks the annual government week, Vahidi said in reference to the Iranian week which starts on Saturday.
Iran will also unveil the long-range drone, Karar, he said using the nickname of revered Shiite Imam Ali.
On Sunday Iran launches its annual government week which runs until August 30 and is an occasion to showcase Tehran's achievements.
Iran has previously paraded a version of Fateh 110 which has a travel range of 150 to 200 kilometres (90 to 125 miles), but the range of the surface-to-surface Qiam missile was not reported by ISNA on Tuesday.
Vahidi said production lines of two missile-carrying speedboats, Seraj (Lamp) and Zolfaqar (named after Imam Ali's sword) would also be opened next week.
Vahidi said the unveiling of these weapons indicate that "sanctions have had no impact on us, but made us more experienced and self-sufficient."
Iranian officials regularly boast about the Islamic republic's military capabilities and Vahidi's announcements come at a time when local officials have been warning against any attack on the Islamic republic.
Tehran's archfoes, the United States and Israel have not ruled out a military strike against Iran to stop its controversial nuclear programme.
Last week a top commander from the Revolutionary Guards said Iran will mass produce replicas of the Bladerunner 51, often described as the world's fastest boat, and equip them with weapons to be deployed in the Gulf.
Also on August 8, Iran took delivery of four new mini-submarines of the home-produced Ghadir class. Weighing 120 tonnes, the "stealth" submarines are aimed at operations in shallow waters, notably in the Gulf.
Defence Minister Ahmad Vahidi said on Tuesday that Iran will unveil next week an array of weapons, including missiles, speedboats and a long range drone, the ISNA news agency reported.
Two missiles, Qiam (Rising) and the third generation Fateh 110 (Conqueror) would be tested next week when Iran marks the annual government week, Vahidi said in reference to the Iranian week which starts on Saturday.
Iran will also unveil the long-range drone, Karar, he said using the nickname of revered Shiite Imam Ali.
On Sunday Iran launches its annual government week which runs until August 30 and is an occasion to showcase Tehran's achievements.
Iran has previously paraded a version of Fateh 110 which has a travel range of 150 to 200 kilometres (90 to 125 miles), but the range of the surface-to-surface Qiam missile was not reported by ISNA on Tuesday.
Vahidi said production lines of two missile-carrying speedboats, Seraj (Lamp) and Zolfaqar (named after Imam Ali's sword) would also be opened next week.
Vahidi said the unveiling of these weapons indicate that "sanctions have had no impact on us, but made us more experienced and self-sufficient."
Iranian officials regularly boast about the Islamic republic's military capabilities and Vahidi's announcements come at a time when local officials have been warning against any attack on the Islamic republic.
Tehran's archfoes, the United States and Israel have not ruled out a military strike against Iran to stop its controversial nuclear programme.
Last week a top commander from the Revolutionary Guards said Iran will mass produce replicas of the Bladerunner 51, often described as the world's fastest boat, and equip them with weapons to be deployed in the Gulf.
Also on August 8, Iran took delivery of four new mini-submarines of the home-produced Ghadir class. Weighing 120 tonnes, the "stealth" submarines are aimed at operations in shallow waters, notably in the Gulf.
Monday, August 16, 2010
Iran will build uranium enrichment centers, nuclear chief says
(I have to question the timing of this.--jef)
Tehran, Iran (CNN) -- Iran plans to begin construction of 10 uranium enrichment centers across the country by next year, state-run media is quoting Iran's nuclear chief as saying.
After a cabinet meeting Sunday, Ali Akbar Salehi told IRIB, a state network, that work on one of the centers will be started by March 2011.
Over the weekend, a top Iranian lawmaker defended his nation's right to enrich uranium in the future after Iran and Russia confirmed that Russians will start loading a nuclear reactor in the Islamic republic with fuel next week.
The August 21 arrival of fuel at the Bushehr facility, which Iran says will create atomic energy but other nations fear could be used for nuclear weapons, marks a key step toward its completion, Russia said Saturday, according to Iranian media.
The progress prompted the White House to question Iran continuing to enrich uranium within its borders, even as the project with Russia moves closer to completion.
"Russia is providing the fuel, and taking the fuel back out," White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said Friday.
"It, quite clearly, I think, underscores that Iran does not need its own enrichment capability if its intentions, as it states, are for a peaceful nuclear program," he said.
Alaeddin Boroujerdi, head of the Iranian parliament's National Security and Foreign Policy Commission, responded Saturday by saying that Moscow will supply enriched uranium for the Bushehr plant as Iran plans to build a dozen more nuclear plants in the future, the semi-official Fars news agency reported.
"We in the parliament have tasked the government with producing 20,000 megawatts of nuclear electricity. That means setting up 20 power plants like Bushehr," said Boroujerdi. "To supply the fuel needed for these power plants ... we should carry out (uranium) enrichment and we are doing it," he said.
The head of Russia's Federal Atomic Energy Agency will visit Iran next week, Fars reported Friday. A Russian group is already in Iran to make the necessary arrangements for his arrival.
"This event will symbolize that the period of testing is over and the stage of physical start-up has begun," said Sergei Novikov, spokesman for Russia's Federal Atomic Energy Agency.
The reactor in the western Iranian port city of Bushehr will be operational by the third week of September, Fars said, though Novikov said the plant will not be ready to produce energy for another six months.
The United States has urged Russia to wait, saying more evidence is needed that Iran doesn't plan to use the site to make weapons.
Novikov said the fuel's arrival and loading into the plant will be monitored by the International Atomic Energy Agency.
"The IAEA inspectors will remove seals from containers with nuclear fuel, examine it," he said. "The fuel will be then transferred into a special storage facility. And when the Iranian nuclear watchdog agency gives its permission, the fuel will be loaded into the reactor."
Western corporations began the Bushehr facility in the 1970s but after the Iranian revolutions, the Islamic regime looked to Russia to complete the $800 million nuclear facility.
Iran has maintained all along that the site will produce energy, but the United States and other international observers remain unconvinced.
Earlier this month, the United States extended sanctions against Iran, saying it was targeting a number of Iranian businesses and groups accused of helping organizations such as Hezbollah, Hamas and the Taliban.
In June, the U.S. Treasury Department announced sanctions targeting the country's nuclear and missile programs -- identifying more than 20 companies and several individuals allegedly involved with those programs.
***
Tehran, Iran (CNN) -- Iran plans to begin construction of 10 uranium enrichment centers across the country by next year, state-run media is quoting Iran's nuclear chief as saying.
After a cabinet meeting Sunday, Ali Akbar Salehi told IRIB, a state network, that work on one of the centers will be started by March 2011.
Over the weekend, a top Iranian lawmaker defended his nation's right to enrich uranium in the future after Iran and Russia confirmed that Russians will start loading a nuclear reactor in the Islamic republic with fuel next week.
The August 21 arrival of fuel at the Bushehr facility, which Iran says will create atomic energy but other nations fear could be used for nuclear weapons, marks a key step toward its completion, Russia said Saturday, according to Iranian media.
The progress prompted the White House to question Iran continuing to enrich uranium within its borders, even as the project with Russia moves closer to completion.
"Russia is providing the fuel, and taking the fuel back out," White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said Friday.
"It, quite clearly, I think, underscores that Iran does not need its own enrichment capability if its intentions, as it states, are for a peaceful nuclear program," he said.
Alaeddin Boroujerdi, head of the Iranian parliament's National Security and Foreign Policy Commission, responded Saturday by saying that Moscow will supply enriched uranium for the Bushehr plant as Iran plans to build a dozen more nuclear plants in the future, the semi-official Fars news agency reported.
"We in the parliament have tasked the government with producing 20,000 megawatts of nuclear electricity. That means setting up 20 power plants like Bushehr," said Boroujerdi. "To supply the fuel needed for these power plants ... we should carry out (uranium) enrichment and we are doing it," he said.
The head of Russia's Federal Atomic Energy Agency will visit Iran next week, Fars reported Friday. A Russian group is already in Iran to make the necessary arrangements for his arrival.
"This event will symbolize that the period of testing is over and the stage of physical start-up has begun," said Sergei Novikov, spokesman for Russia's Federal Atomic Energy Agency.
The reactor in the western Iranian port city of Bushehr will be operational by the third week of September, Fars said, though Novikov said the plant will not be ready to produce energy for another six months.
The United States has urged Russia to wait, saying more evidence is needed that Iran doesn't plan to use the site to make weapons.
Novikov said the fuel's arrival and loading into the plant will be monitored by the International Atomic Energy Agency.
"The IAEA inspectors will remove seals from containers with nuclear fuel, examine it," he said. "The fuel will be then transferred into a special storage facility. And when the Iranian nuclear watchdog agency gives its permission, the fuel will be loaded into the reactor."
Western corporations began the Bushehr facility in the 1970s but after the Iranian revolutions, the Islamic regime looked to Russia to complete the $800 million nuclear facility.
Iran has maintained all along that the site will produce energy, but the United States and other international observers remain unconvinced.
Earlier this month, the United States extended sanctions against Iran, saying it was targeting a number of Iranian businesses and groups accused of helping organizations such as Hezbollah, Hamas and the Taliban.
In June, the U.S. Treasury Department announced sanctions targeting the country's nuclear and missile programs -- identifying more than 20 companies and several individuals allegedly involved with those programs.
Tuesday, July 27, 2010
U.S. strike on Iran likelier than ever, former CIA chief says
Michael Hayden says Iran intends to reach the point where it's just below having a nuclear weapon, adding that such a step would be as destabilizing to the region as the 'real thing.'
By The Associated Press and Haaretz Service | 25.07.10
A former CIA director says military action against Iran now seems more likely because no matter what the U.S. does diplomatically, Tehran keeps pushing ahead with its suspected nuclear program.
Michael Hayden, a CIA chief under President George W. Bush, said that during his tenure "a strike was way down the list of options." But he tells CNN's State of the Union that such action now "seems inexorable."
"In my personal thinking," Hayden said, "I have begun to consider that that may not be the worst of all possible outcomes."
Hayden said that the likelihood of a U.S. strike on Iran has rises in face of Tehran's defiance to halt its contentions nuclear program, saying "We engage. They continue to move forward."
"We vote for sanctions. They continue to move forward. We try to deter, to dissuade. They continue to move forward," he added.
The former CIA chief predicted Iran, in defiance of the international community, planned to "get itself to that step right below a nuclear weapon, that permanent breakout stage, so the needle isn’t quite in the red for the international community."
Hayden said that reaching even that level would be "as destabilizing to the region as actually having a weapon."
The United States, the United Nations and the European Union have imposed new restrictions on Iran over its nuclear enrichment activities, which the West fears could lead it to make a bomb.
The fourth round of U.N. sanctions calls for measures against new Iranian banks abroad if a link to the nuclear or missile programs is suspected and for vigilance on transactions with any Iranian bank, including the central bank.
On Saturday, several key Iranian officials estimated that the United States and Israel would not dare attempt a military strike of Iran's nuclear sites, adding that they were confident that Iranian forces would easily repel such an attempt.
The United States, which has ships in the Persian Gulf, has not ruled out a military strike to thwart what it suspects is an Iranian nuclear weapons program. Iran denies its atomic program is aimed at making weapons.
Iran's ISNA news agency quoted an aide to the country' Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei on Saturday as saying that Israel and the United States would never strike Iran, saying that "both the U.S. and Zionist regime face internal problems and they know that we make many troubles for them if they attack Iranian territory."
Yahya Rahim Safav told ISNA that Iran's armed forces were "fully prepared and enemies are aware of that, they do not have the power to take a political decision on the issue, because they know they can start the war but are not able to finish it."
"Wwe need to be fully vigilant of these attacks, the enemy knows that it will regret if launches a land strike against Iran." Safavi said.
Iran's official IRNA news agency quoted the commander of the Islamic Republic's Revolutionary Guards, Mohammad-Ali Ja'fari as saying that the United States would not dare to attack Iran as it is fully aware of Iran’s defense power and its nation’s determination.
Ja'fari also said, according to the IRNA report, that he considered his forces' preparedness as being at their "highest level," adding that recent sanctions imposed on Iran in view of its contentious nuclear program would have no impact on Iran's potency.
Also Saturday, a former naval chief in Iran's Revolutionary Guard said his country has set aside 100 military vessels to confront each U.S. warship that poses a threat.
General Morteza Saffari is quoted by the conservative weekly Panjereh Saturday as saying that troops aboard U.S. warships "are morsels for Iran to target in the event of any American threat against Iran."
In 2008, Iran put its most powerful military force, the Revolutionary Guard, in charge of defending the country's territorial waters in the Persian Gulf, a vital oil route.
Speaking with the semi-official Fars news agency, Iran's Defense Minister Ahmad Vahidi said that the increased U.S. pressure on Iran were prompted by Washington's desire to advance its "propaganda campaign "and gain control of the region.
Fars quotes Vahidi as saying that a military strike on Iran was unlikely, adding that Israel too was "uttering such remarks in a bid to reduce the growing international pressures through psychological warfare," Vahidi told Fars.
"We, too, advise them not to seek trouble and tension in the region through spoiling the atmosphere," Vahidi said.
By The Associated Press and Haaretz Service | 25.07.10
A former CIA director says military action against Iran now seems more likely because no matter what the U.S. does diplomatically, Tehran keeps pushing ahead with its suspected nuclear program.
Michael Hayden, a CIA chief under President George W. Bush, said that during his tenure "a strike was way down the list of options." But he tells CNN's State of the Union that such action now "seems inexorable."
"In my personal thinking," Hayden said, "I have begun to consider that that may not be the worst of all possible outcomes."
Hayden said that the likelihood of a U.S. strike on Iran has rises in face of Tehran's defiance to halt its contentions nuclear program, saying "We engage. They continue to move forward."
"We vote for sanctions. They continue to move forward. We try to deter, to dissuade. They continue to move forward," he added.
The former CIA chief predicted Iran, in defiance of the international community, planned to "get itself to that step right below a nuclear weapon, that permanent breakout stage, so the needle isn’t quite in the red for the international community."
Hayden said that reaching even that level would be "as destabilizing to the region as actually having a weapon."
The United States, the United Nations and the European Union have imposed new restrictions on Iran over its nuclear enrichment activities, which the West fears could lead it to make a bomb.
The fourth round of U.N. sanctions calls for measures against new Iranian banks abroad if a link to the nuclear or missile programs is suspected and for vigilance on transactions with any Iranian bank, including the central bank.
On Saturday, several key Iranian officials estimated that the United States and Israel would not dare attempt a military strike of Iran's nuclear sites, adding that they were confident that Iranian forces would easily repel such an attempt.
The United States, which has ships in the Persian Gulf, has not ruled out a military strike to thwart what it suspects is an Iranian nuclear weapons program. Iran denies its atomic program is aimed at making weapons.
Iran's ISNA news agency quoted an aide to the country' Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei on Saturday as saying that Israel and the United States would never strike Iran, saying that "both the U.S. and Zionist regime face internal problems and they know that we make many troubles for them if they attack Iranian territory."
Yahya Rahim Safav told ISNA that Iran's armed forces were "fully prepared and enemies are aware of that, they do not have the power to take a political decision on the issue, because they know they can start the war but are not able to finish it."
"Wwe need to be fully vigilant of these attacks, the enemy knows that it will regret if launches a land strike against Iran." Safavi said.
Iran's official IRNA news agency quoted the commander of the Islamic Republic's Revolutionary Guards, Mohammad-Ali Ja'fari as saying that the United States would not dare to attack Iran as it is fully aware of Iran’s defense power and its nation’s determination.
Ja'fari also said, according to the IRNA report, that he considered his forces' preparedness as being at their "highest level," adding that recent sanctions imposed on Iran in view of its contentious nuclear program would have no impact on Iran's potency.
Also Saturday, a former naval chief in Iran's Revolutionary Guard said his country has set aside 100 military vessels to confront each U.S. warship that poses a threat.
General Morteza Saffari is quoted by the conservative weekly Panjereh Saturday as saying that troops aboard U.S. warships "are morsels for Iran to target in the event of any American threat against Iran."
In 2008, Iran put its most powerful military force, the Revolutionary Guard, in charge of defending the country's territorial waters in the Persian Gulf, a vital oil route.
Speaking with the semi-official Fars news agency, Iran's Defense Minister Ahmad Vahidi said that the increased U.S. pressure on Iran were prompted by Washington's desire to advance its "propaganda campaign "and gain control of the region.
Fars quotes Vahidi as saying that a military strike on Iran was unlikely, adding that Israel too was "uttering such remarks in a bid to reduce the growing international pressures through psychological warfare," Vahidi told Fars.
"We, too, advise them not to seek trouble and tension in the region through spoiling the atmosphere," Vahidi said.
Friday, July 16, 2010
UAE Ambassador Says Country May Back A US-Israeli Attack On Iran
Gregory White | Jul. 15, 2010
The U.A.E. may be about to support the U.S. and Israel in their rumored plans to attack Iran, according to reports from Der Spiegel.
The U.A.E.'s ambassador to the U.S., Yousef Al Otaiba, recently expressed his concerns that the costs of having Iran be a nuclear power were too high for his country, and worth the costs of going to war with the country:
This will only lead to growing worries over the plans of both the U.S. and Israel regarding war with Iran.
The U.A.E. may be about to support the U.S. and Israel in their rumored plans to attack Iran, according to reports from Der Spiegel.
The U.A.E.'s ambassador to the U.S., Yousef Al Otaiba, recently expressed his concerns that the costs of having Iran be a nuclear power were too high for his country, and worth the costs of going to war with the country:
But, he added, "if you are asking me, 'Am I willing to live with that versus living with a nuclear Iran,' my answer is still the same. We cannot live with a nuclear Iran. I am willing to absorb what takes place at the expense of the security of the U.A.E."Russian President Dmitry Medvedev recently expressed his concerns that Iran was close to building a weapon, after Iran announced it had 20 kilograms of 20 percent enriched uranium.
This will only lead to growing worries over the plans of both the U.S. and Israel regarding war with Iran.
Wednesday, July 14, 2010
I Just Got Back From Iran
Stephen Kinzer | July 12, 2010
"I just got back from Iran."
In today's America, that's a conversation-stopper. Those of us able to say it become temporary objects of fascination, like our grandparents would have been if they had visited China or the Soviet Union in the 1950s. Traveling to Iran makes one seem like a bold adventurer on a dangerous foray into enemy territory.
The reality is more prosaic. Although few Americans visit Iran, there is in fact no legal obstacle to doing so. I accompanied a group of American tourists on a thousand-mile, two-week trip through the country. We met no government or opposition leaders, but we were free to talk with ordinary Iranians, and did so at every stop. Because the government has made it difficult for Western journalists to work in Iran, traveling the country this way may now be the best way to gauge its people's mood.
The first thing that strikes Americans who visit Iran is how amazingly pro-American its people are. Nowhere else in the Middle East, nowhere else in the Muslim world, and almost nowhere else on earth do people so unreservedly admire the United States. Opinion surveys confirm this phenomenon, and I remembered it from previous visits. Nonetheless it was disorienting, in the heart of the purported axis of evil, to to be surrounded, as I was at Imam Square in Isfahan, by giddy female college students shrieking "We love America so much!" At a Persian garden in Kashan, I met a solemn elder whose only English phrase is "America very good," and who pronounced it with grave reverence.
Pro-American feeling in Iran is due mainly to Iranians' admiration for what the United States has achieved. Americans have what many Iranians want: democracy, personal freedom, and rule of law. Their desire for these blessings is not abstract or transitory. It is the product of their century of striving toward liberal democracy. Since the Constitutional Revolution of 1906, generations of Iranians have assimilated democratic ideals. Today their society is the opposite of their regime: open, tolerant, and eager to engage with the world. There is more long-term potential for democracy in Iran than almost anywhere else in the Muslim Middle East.
Pro-American sentiment in Iran is a priceless strategic asset for the US. A military attack would liquidate or at least severely weaken this asset. It would probably turn the most pro-American population in the Middle East into anti-Americans, further undermining the US position in the world's most volatile region.
The second thing I learned in Iran is that last year's explosion of anti-government protest is finished, at least for the moment. Governments use repression against protesters for the simple reason that it usually works. It has worked in Iran. Many people are unhappy -- it is impossible to estimate how many -- but no one I met predicted more upheaval soon. Life is reasonably good for most Iranians, and a possibly stolen election is not enough to force them from their homes to face beatings and arrest.
This suggests that if there are to be any negotiations with Iran over the next few years -- the amount of time it may take for the Iranian nuclear program to mature -- they will have to be with the current regime. Postponing a broad negotiating offer in the hope that the regime may fall is unrealistic.
Finally, I was struck -- though not surprised -- by the unanimity with which Iranians, even those who joined last year's protests and fervently support the reform agenda, reject help from the US or any other outside power.
"Many people don't like the regime, but they don't want the Americans to come and rule us," a shopkeeper in the Shiraz bazaar told me. "They would rather live under a regime they don't like than a regime placed in power by foreigners."
This sentiment is widespread and powerful in Iran. The reason is to be found in modern history. For most of the 19th and 20th centuries, Iran was ravaged by foreigners who subjugated its people and looted its resources. Whenever Iran has sought to modernize -- whether by building a steel mill in the 1930s or by nationalizing its oil industry in the 1950s -- outsiders have intervened to block it. This has made Iranians as sensitive to foreign intervention as any people in the world. It leads them to reject political forces that they see as sponsored, supported, or encouraged from abroad.
Some Americans would like to see Congress and President Obama embrace Iran's democratic movement vigorously and publicly. But not even the movement's own leaders want this support. Far from helping them, an endorsement from Washington would stigmatize them and de-legitimize their cause. Americans often assume that their support for like-minded friends in the world is helpful. In Iran, it would not be.
"Bush was very bad," mused a math teacher I found sitting beneath a fig tree in the town of Rayen. "Obama is a little better. But Iranian people believe that when America and England look at Iran and Arab countries, it is only because they want to steal what we have."
Sobering realities shape Iranian politics: There will be no regime change soon, and there is little the West can do to hasten it. Nonetheless, Iran may have more democratic potential than almost any other society in the Muslim world. Seventy percent of Iranians are under the age of 30. Change will come, but at Iran's pace, not America's.
In the meantime, centrifuges will keep spinning at Iran's nuclear plants. This looming crisis cries out for creative diplomacy, but Washington remains frozen in the paradigm of confrontation.
"I just got back from Iran."
In today's America, that's a conversation-stopper. Those of us able to say it become temporary objects of fascination, like our grandparents would have been if they had visited China or the Soviet Union in the 1950s. Traveling to Iran makes one seem like a bold adventurer on a dangerous foray into enemy territory.
The reality is more prosaic. Although few Americans visit Iran, there is in fact no legal obstacle to doing so. I accompanied a group of American tourists on a thousand-mile, two-week trip through the country. We met no government or opposition leaders, but we were free to talk with ordinary Iranians, and did so at every stop. Because the government has made it difficult for Western journalists to work in Iran, traveling the country this way may now be the best way to gauge its people's mood.
The first thing that strikes Americans who visit Iran is how amazingly pro-American its people are. Nowhere else in the Middle East, nowhere else in the Muslim world, and almost nowhere else on earth do people so unreservedly admire the United States. Opinion surveys confirm this phenomenon, and I remembered it from previous visits. Nonetheless it was disorienting, in the heart of the purported axis of evil, to to be surrounded, as I was at Imam Square in Isfahan, by giddy female college students shrieking "We love America so much!" At a Persian garden in Kashan, I met a solemn elder whose only English phrase is "America very good," and who pronounced it with grave reverence.
Pro-American feeling in Iran is due mainly to Iranians' admiration for what the United States has achieved. Americans have what many Iranians want: democracy, personal freedom, and rule of law. Their desire for these blessings is not abstract or transitory. It is the product of their century of striving toward liberal democracy. Since the Constitutional Revolution of 1906, generations of Iranians have assimilated democratic ideals. Today their society is the opposite of their regime: open, tolerant, and eager to engage with the world. There is more long-term potential for democracy in Iran than almost anywhere else in the Muslim Middle East.
Pro-American sentiment in Iran is a priceless strategic asset for the US. A military attack would liquidate or at least severely weaken this asset. It would probably turn the most pro-American population in the Middle East into anti-Americans, further undermining the US position in the world's most volatile region.
The second thing I learned in Iran is that last year's explosion of anti-government protest is finished, at least for the moment. Governments use repression against protesters for the simple reason that it usually works. It has worked in Iran. Many people are unhappy -- it is impossible to estimate how many -- but no one I met predicted more upheaval soon. Life is reasonably good for most Iranians, and a possibly stolen election is not enough to force them from their homes to face beatings and arrest.
This suggests that if there are to be any negotiations with Iran over the next few years -- the amount of time it may take for the Iranian nuclear program to mature -- they will have to be with the current regime. Postponing a broad negotiating offer in the hope that the regime may fall is unrealistic.
Finally, I was struck -- though not surprised -- by the unanimity with which Iranians, even those who joined last year's protests and fervently support the reform agenda, reject help from the US or any other outside power.
"Many people don't like the regime, but they don't want the Americans to come and rule us," a shopkeeper in the Shiraz bazaar told me. "They would rather live under a regime they don't like than a regime placed in power by foreigners."
This sentiment is widespread and powerful in Iran. The reason is to be found in modern history. For most of the 19th and 20th centuries, Iran was ravaged by foreigners who subjugated its people and looted its resources. Whenever Iran has sought to modernize -- whether by building a steel mill in the 1930s or by nationalizing its oil industry in the 1950s -- outsiders have intervened to block it. This has made Iranians as sensitive to foreign intervention as any people in the world. It leads them to reject political forces that they see as sponsored, supported, or encouraged from abroad.
Some Americans would like to see Congress and President Obama embrace Iran's democratic movement vigorously and publicly. But not even the movement's own leaders want this support. Far from helping them, an endorsement from Washington would stigmatize them and de-legitimize their cause. Americans often assume that their support for like-minded friends in the world is helpful. In Iran, it would not be.
"Bush was very bad," mused a math teacher I found sitting beneath a fig tree in the town of Rayen. "Obama is a little better. But Iranian people believe that when America and England look at Iran and Arab countries, it is only because they want to steal what we have."
Sobering realities shape Iranian politics: There will be no regime change soon, and there is little the West can do to hasten it. Nonetheless, Iran may have more democratic potential than almost any other society in the Muslim world. Seventy percent of Iranians are under the age of 30. Change will come, but at Iran's pace, not America's.
In the meantime, centrifuges will keep spinning at Iran's nuclear plants. This looming crisis cries out for creative diplomacy, but Washington remains frozen in the paradigm of confrontation.
Tuesday, July 13, 2010
Scary Anti-Iran Talk Is Escalating -- And Weapons May Be Moving Into Position for Attack
Though Iran does not have nuclear capability, the U.S. and Israel are espousing a doctrine of "pre-emption."
By Conn Hallinan, Foreign Policy in Focus
July 13, 2010 | Dispatches From The Edge
Crazy talk about the Middle East seems to be escalating, backed up by some pretty ominous military deployments. We'll start with the department of scary statements:
First up, Shabtai Shavit, former chief of the Israeli spy agency Mossad, speaking June 21 at Bar Ilan University, Tel Aviv on why Israel should launch a pre-emptive strike at Iran: “I am of the opinion that, since there is an ongoing war, since the threat is permanent, since the intention of the enemy in this case is to annihilate you, the right doctrine is one of presumption and not retaliation.”
Second up, Uzi Arad, Israeli prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s national security advisor, speaking before the Jewish Agency in Jerusalem June 22 on his belief that the “international community” would support an Israeli strike at Iran: “I don’t see anyone who questions the legality of this or the legitimacy.”
Third up, Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi speaking to reporters at the G-8 meeting in Toronto June 26: “Iran is not guaranteeing a peaceful production of nuclear power [so] the members of the G-8 are worried and believe absolutely that Israel will probably react preemptively.”
Fourth up, Central Intelligence Director Leon Panetta predicting on ABC’s “This Week” program June 27 that Iran could have two nuclear weapons by 2012: “We think they [Iran] have enough low-enriched uranium for two weapons…and while there is continuing debate [within Iran] right now about whether or not they ought to proceed with a bomb…they clearly are developing their nuclear capacity.” He went on to say that the U.S. is sharing intelligence with Israelis and that Tel Aviv is “willing to give us the room to be able to try to change Iran diplomatically and culturally and politically.”
A few points:
1) Iran and Israel are not at war, a fact Shavit seems confused about.
2) Since the recent rounds of sanctions aimed at Iran would have lost in the United Nations General Assembly, it unclear who Arad thinks is the “international community.”
3) Berlusconi is a bit of a loose cannon, but he is tight with the Israelis.
4) An Iran that is different “diplomatically and culturally and politically” sounds an awful lot like “regime change.” Is that the “room” Panetta is talking about?
And it isn’t all talk.
Following up the London Times report that Saudi Arabia had given Israel permission to fly through Saudi airspace to attack Iran, the Jerusalem Post, the Islam Times and the Iranian news agency Fars report that the Israeli air force has stockpiled equipment in the Saudi desert near Jordan.
According to the Post, supplies were unloaded June 18 and 19 outside the Saudi city of Tabuk, and all civilian flights into the area were canceled during the two day period. The Post said that an “anonymous American defense official” claimed that Mossad chief Meir Dagan was the contact man with Saudi Arabia and had briefed Netanyahu on the plans.
The Gulf Daily News reported June 26 that Israel has moved warplanes to Georgia and Azerbaijan, which would greatly shorten the distance Israeli planes would have to fly to attack targets in northern Iran.
The U.S currently has two aircraft carriers—the Truman and the Eisenhower—plus more than a dozen support vessels in the Gulf of Hormuz, the strategic choke point leading into the Gulf of Iran.
The Saudis have vigorously denied the reports they are aiding the Israelis, and Shafeeq Ghabra, president of the American University of Kuwait, says, “It would be impossible for the Saudis to allow an Israeli attack on Iran.”
But Ephraim Inbar, director of the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies in Ramat Gan, Israel, argues that Saudi Arabia and Israel both fear a nuclear-armed Iran. “This brings us together on a strategic level in that we have common interests. Since the Arab world and Saudi Arabia understand that President Obama is a weak person, maybe they decided to facilitate this happening.” He also said the story might not be true because “I don’t think the Saudis want to burden themselves with this kind of cooperation with Israel.”
According to military historian Martin van Creveld, a professor at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, “The real fear is that someone will get carried away by his own rhetoric and fear mongering” and start a war. He also thinks, however, that Israel should not take a preemptive strike “off the table.”
Trita Parsi of the Woodrow Wilson Center in Washington argues that the escalation of rhetoric is dangerous. “When you have that kind of political environment, you are leaving yourself no space to find another solution,” he told the Christian Science Monitor. “You may very well end up in a situation where you are propelled to act, even though you understand it is an unwise action, but [do so] for political reasons.”
The rhetoric is getting steamy, the weapons are moving into position, and it is beginning to feel like “The Guns of August”* in the Middle East.
*For those too young to remember, The Guns of August, published in 1962, is a history of the first month of World War I. It earned its author, Barbara Tuchman, a Pulitzer Prize.
By Conn Hallinan, Foreign Policy in Focus
July 13, 2010 | Dispatches From The Edge
Crazy talk about the Middle East seems to be escalating, backed up by some pretty ominous military deployments. We'll start with the department of scary statements:
First up, Shabtai Shavit, former chief of the Israeli spy agency Mossad, speaking June 21 at Bar Ilan University, Tel Aviv on why Israel should launch a pre-emptive strike at Iran: “I am of the opinion that, since there is an ongoing war, since the threat is permanent, since the intention of the enemy in this case is to annihilate you, the right doctrine is one of presumption and not retaliation.”
Second up, Uzi Arad, Israeli prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s national security advisor, speaking before the Jewish Agency in Jerusalem June 22 on his belief that the “international community” would support an Israeli strike at Iran: “I don’t see anyone who questions the legality of this or the legitimacy.”
Third up, Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi speaking to reporters at the G-8 meeting in Toronto June 26: “Iran is not guaranteeing a peaceful production of nuclear power [so] the members of the G-8 are worried and believe absolutely that Israel will probably react preemptively.”
Fourth up, Central Intelligence Director Leon Panetta predicting on ABC’s “This Week” program June 27 that Iran could have two nuclear weapons by 2012: “We think they [Iran] have enough low-enriched uranium for two weapons…and while there is continuing debate [within Iran] right now about whether or not they ought to proceed with a bomb…they clearly are developing their nuclear capacity.” He went on to say that the U.S. is sharing intelligence with Israelis and that Tel Aviv is “willing to give us the room to be able to try to change Iran diplomatically and culturally and politically.”
A few points:
1) Iran and Israel are not at war, a fact Shavit seems confused about.
2) Since the recent rounds of sanctions aimed at Iran would have lost in the United Nations General Assembly, it unclear who Arad thinks is the “international community.”
3) Berlusconi is a bit of a loose cannon, but he is tight with the Israelis.
4) An Iran that is different “diplomatically and culturally and politically” sounds an awful lot like “regime change.” Is that the “room” Panetta is talking about?
And it isn’t all talk.
Following up the London Times report that Saudi Arabia had given Israel permission to fly through Saudi airspace to attack Iran, the Jerusalem Post, the Islam Times and the Iranian news agency Fars report that the Israeli air force has stockpiled equipment in the Saudi desert near Jordan.
According to the Post, supplies were unloaded June 18 and 19 outside the Saudi city of Tabuk, and all civilian flights into the area were canceled during the two day period. The Post said that an “anonymous American defense official” claimed that Mossad chief Meir Dagan was the contact man with Saudi Arabia and had briefed Netanyahu on the plans.
The Gulf Daily News reported June 26 that Israel has moved warplanes to Georgia and Azerbaijan, which would greatly shorten the distance Israeli planes would have to fly to attack targets in northern Iran.
The U.S currently has two aircraft carriers—the Truman and the Eisenhower—plus more than a dozen support vessels in the Gulf of Hormuz, the strategic choke point leading into the Gulf of Iran.
The Saudis have vigorously denied the reports they are aiding the Israelis, and Shafeeq Ghabra, president of the American University of Kuwait, says, “It would be impossible for the Saudis to allow an Israeli attack on Iran.”
But Ephraim Inbar, director of the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies in Ramat Gan, Israel, argues that Saudi Arabia and Israel both fear a nuclear-armed Iran. “This brings us together on a strategic level in that we have common interests. Since the Arab world and Saudi Arabia understand that President Obama is a weak person, maybe they decided to facilitate this happening.” He also said the story might not be true because “I don’t think the Saudis want to burden themselves with this kind of cooperation with Israel.”
According to military historian Martin van Creveld, a professor at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, “The real fear is that someone will get carried away by his own rhetoric and fear mongering” and start a war. He also thinks, however, that Israel should not take a preemptive strike “off the table.”
Trita Parsi of the Woodrow Wilson Center in Washington argues that the escalation of rhetoric is dangerous. “When you have that kind of political environment, you are leaving yourself no space to find another solution,” he told the Christian Science Monitor. “You may very well end up in a situation where you are propelled to act, even though you understand it is an unwise action, but [do so] for political reasons.”
The rhetoric is getting steamy, the weapons are moving into position, and it is beginning to feel like “The Guns of August”* in the Middle East.
*For those too young to remember, The Guns of August, published in 1962, is a history of the first month of World War I. It earned its author, Barbara Tuchman, a Pulitzer Prize.
Tuesday, June 29, 2010
Iran Sanctions = Preemptive War on Iran
Congress Just Declared Preemptive WAR on Iran
Published on 06-28-2010
vidlink
Published on 06-28-2010
vidlink
Eric Blair - Activist Post
War with Iran has already been decided by the powers that be and the modern-day quasi-declaration happened last Thursday. Using the same legislative and propaganda playbook that led to the Iraq War, the U.S. Government has just officially declared War on Iran. Reuters reported “Congress on Thursday approved tough new unilateral sanctions aimed at squeezing Iran’s energy and banking sectors, which could also hurt companies from other countries doing business with Tehran. The House of Representatives passed the bill 408-8 and sent it to President Barack Obama for signing into law. The Senate had approved it 99-0 earlier in the day.”
Congress hasn’t officially voted for a Declaration of War since World War II. In modern times they use creative wording in bills that authorize the broad use of force across borders in the sweeping “War on Terror." The Bush Doctrine of preemptively attacking countries because they may pose a threat to America in the future was universally trashed by progressives, but is alive and well under Obama, the Prince of Peace, without one dissenting vote in the Senate. This authority is what the Obama Administration claims also gives them the legal argument to bomb sovereign countries like Pakistan.
This unilateral decision by the United States Congress comes on the heels of a 12-2 U.N. Security Council vote on June 8th to impose a “modest tightening of sanctions” against Iran. Of course, Russia and China have been assured that sanctions won't apply to their energy needs in order to secure their votes. After the vote President Obama asserted that, "these sanctions do not close the door on diplomacy."
However, the United States preempted this embargo vote in Congress by taking up an aggressive posture in tandem with Israel by deploying an Armada of Battleships to the Red Sea. There are now reports from the Israeli National News that, “The Israeli Air Force recently unloaded military equipment at a Saudi Arabia base, a semi-official Iranian news agency claimed Wednesday, while a large American force has massed in Azerbaijan, which is on the northwest border of Iran.”
Now, it seems that the United States is working overtime to sell their war plans to potential allies. CIA chief, Leon Panetta appeared on ABC’s This Week and announced that the Iranians, “have enough low-enriched uranium right now for two weapons. They do have to enrich it, fully, in order to get there. And we would estimate that if they made that decision, it would probably take a year to get there, probably another year to develop the kind of weapon delivery system in order to make that viable.”
While world leaders negotiate their piece of the Iranian pie in G8 negotiations, the multinational fear campaign has begun. Russian President Dmitry Medvedev said Sunday that a CIA warning that Iran has enough uranium to build two atomic bombs was "worrying," and criticized Tehran's secrecy over its nuclear program. Gathered at the G8 Summit in Ottawa, world leaders now “fully believe” and are “worried” that a preemptive attack by Israel on Iran is inevitable. Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconitold reporters that “Iran is not guaranteeing a peaceful production of nuclear power [so] the members of the G8 are worried and believe absolutely that Israel will probably react preemptively.”
This unilateral decision by the United States Congress comes on the heels of a 12-2 U.N. Security Council vote on June 8th to impose a “modest tightening of sanctions” against Iran. Of course, Russia and China have been assured that sanctions won't apply to their energy needs in order to secure their votes. After the vote President Obama asserted that, "these sanctions do not close the door on diplomacy."
However, the United States preempted this embargo vote in Congress by taking up an aggressive posture in tandem with Israel by deploying an Armada of Battleships to the Red Sea. There are now reports from the Israeli National News that, “The Israeli Air Force recently unloaded military equipment at a Saudi Arabia base, a semi-official Iranian news agency claimed Wednesday, while a large American force has massed in Azerbaijan, which is on the northwest border of Iran.”
Now, it seems that the United States is working overtime to sell their war plans to potential allies. CIA chief, Leon Panetta appeared on ABC’s This Week and announced that the Iranians, “have enough low-enriched uranium right now for two weapons. They do have to enrich it, fully, in order to get there. And we would estimate that if they made that decision, it would probably take a year to get there, probably another year to develop the kind of weapon delivery system in order to make that viable.”
While world leaders negotiate their piece of the Iranian pie in G8 negotiations, the multinational fear campaign has begun. Russian President Dmitry Medvedev said Sunday that a CIA warning that Iran has enough uranium to build two atomic bombs was "worrying," and criticized Tehran's secrecy over its nuclear program. Gathered at the G8 Summit in Ottawa, world leaders now “fully believe” and are “worried” that a preemptive attack by Israel on Iran is inevitable. Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconitold reporters that “Iran is not guaranteeing a peaceful production of nuclear power [so] the members of the G8 are worried and believe absolutely that Israel will probably react preemptively.”
Enforcing an unprovoked embargo on a sovereign nation has been historically defined as an act of war. Unfortunately, very few of our elected officials know or understand history and therefore overwhelmingly voted for the new sanctions. Congressman Ron Paul (R-TX), an outspoken critic of Iran sanctions, was one of the eight house members to vote against the measure. Here is Ron Paul from a few months ago comparing sanctions to an Act of War while discussing this bill; H.R. 2194 Comprehensive Iran Sanctions, Accountability, and Divestment Act of 2010.
Monday, June 21, 2010
Are U.S. Warships Gearing Up for a Confrontation With an Iranian Aid Flotilla to Gaza?
Are U.S. Warships Gearing Up for a Confrontation With an Iranian Aid Flotilla to Gaza?
By Ira Chernus, AlterNet
June 21, 2010
Anchors aweigh. The United States Navy is sending an aircraft carrier and nearly a dozen other warships through the Suez Canal and into the Red Sea, according to the British Arabic Language newspaper Al-Quds Al-Arabi, which reported that the ships carry infantry troops, armored vehicles, and ammunition.
The report was taken very seriously in Israel, where two major newspapers gave it headline coverage -- perhaps because the U.S. fleet is joined by at least one Israeli ship, according to eyewitnesses who saw it pass through the Canal.
Iran’s Press TV claims that the Defense Department has confirmed the movement of American ships. However, neither the U.S. nor the Israeli governments have made any statement about the fleet’s destination or purpose. So we’re left to speculate.
Can it be just coincidence that this is happening precisely when “two Iranian vessels are due to set sail for Gaza in the coming week,” according to Al Jazeera, sponsored by the Iranian Red Crescent, carrying food, medicine, and clothing? And when Iran is promising more aid flotillas after this first one?
When the Iranian flotilla was first announced, State Department spokesman Philip Crowley said: "I don't think that Iran's intentions vis-a-vis Gaza are benign." Since then, the U.S. has remained silent.
Newsweeks.com’s Mark Hosenball says he has talked with U.S. and European officials and found them “surprisingly relaxed” about the Iranian challenge to Israel’s blockade of Gaza. They told him that “Tehran actually seems to have dialed back some of its rhetoric and threats for the moment,” and pointed out that the Navy is the weakest arm of Iran’s military.
But if U.S. officials are so relaxed, why spend a fortune (and it does cost a fortune) to move a whole war fleet including an aircraft carrier into the Red Sea and perhaps further, to the Persian Gulf -- where Israeli nuclear submarines are also headed?
Egypt, which controls the Canal, has a central role to play in this drama. Egyptian troops guarded the Canal, which was closed to other traffic, while the U.S. fleet passed through, despite criticism from leaders of Egyptian opposition parties.
It remains unclear how the Egyptians would deal with the Iranian aid ships. Those ships plan to pass through the Canal and then stay close enough to shore to be in Egyptian waters until reaching the area off the Gaza coast, which Israel claims as its territorial waters.
Israel radio has reported that Cairo rejected an Israeli request by for Egypt to block the Iranian ships, claiming that under international law the canal must be free to all ships. However, the Egyptians could delay the Iranians on technicalities for a long time.
Iranian officials have denied a report that their naval forces would escort the ships. “But if and when the Iranian ship reaches the Mediterranean,” as Hosenball says, “no one can be sure what will happen.” However we can be sure that an Iranian ship approaching Gaza would be a major crisis for both the Netanyahu government in Israel and the Obama administration. Very likely, the U.S. administration hopes that its war fleet, accompanied by a token Israeli ship for symbolic value, will head off the need to face that crisis.
In fact, though the threat of violent confrontation is very real, the whole unfolding drama is driven largely by concerns about symbolism. One European official told Hosenball that the Egyptians might well choose to stall the Iranians’ passage in order to reassert Cairo’s influence in the wake of efforts by Turkey and Brazil to broker a nuclear deal with Iran. Then there’s a point of view in Iran that its own government is sending the ships mainly as a way to reassert its influence in the region over a rising Turkey.
The U.S. show of naval force also seems to be freighted with symbolic value. Ever since Teddy Roosevelt sent the Great White Fleet around the world, the U.S. has been using such shows of force to intimidate would-be competitors. The signal to Iran’s leaders will be unmistakable. If the inclusion of an Israeli warship is confirmed, it will deepen the symbolic message.
It will also tell the Netanyahu government that, whatever concessions the U.S. may demand toward Palestine, the U.S. - Israel military alliance is firm when it comes to Iran. For Washington, the underlying message may be: Therefore, Netanyahu, there’s no need to even think about unilateral Israeli action against Iran.
These issues of symbolism, which take politics into the realm of culture and psychology, are generally more important to policymakers than they are to journalists and pundits, who usually stick to “hard-headed” analyses of fact and “realpolitik.” If the mass media in the U.S. pick up the story of the fleet moving into the Red Sea at all, it will no doubt be reported as an understandable strategic move against a power that threatens U.S. interests. And in Israel it will be seen as welcome resistance to the one nation that threatens Israel’s very existence.
Yet why should Americans and Israelis believe such frightening narratives, when Iran has made no tangible aggressive moves against anyone? That key question is rarely explored, or even asked.
So it was a welcome surprise to see the Christian Science Monitor publish an article by its reporter in Tel Aviv, Scott Peterson, titled “Does Israel Suffer From Iranophobia?” It was probably just a coincidence that this piece appeared on the very same day that news of the U.S. war fleet broke -- but a most telling coincidence.
Peterson wrote only about the Israeli fear, which is “utterly irrational and exceedingly disproportionate,” according to Israeli scholar Haggai Ram, author of “Iranophobia: The Logic of an Israeli Obsession.” “There is really no critical debate about this” in Israel, Ram added. Anyone who questions the need to fear Iran is “immediately rendered into these bizarre self-defeating, self-hating Jews, and seen as a fifth column.”
This despite the fact that Israel’s hawkish Defense Minister Ehud Barak himself said just two months ago that Iran “does not pose an existential threat to Israel.” Barak did add that a nuclear-armed Iran in the future would pose such a threat.
But according to Peterson’s article, Israeli analysts see the Iranophobia rooted in memories of the past, not forecasts of the future. The prevailing Israeli mindset is that “we have no other choice, they want to destroy us,” according to scholar Reuven Pedatzur. “It’s a cultural issue, based on the Holocaust, that everybody wants to destroy the Jewish people.” This is the narrative that Netanyahu has used so incessantly, and apparently effectively, to hold on to political power.
It’s no secret in Israel. “Israeli analysts often describe how the Jewish state ‘needs’ an outside enemy,” Peterson rightly explained, “to justify continued oppression against the Palestinians and one of the largest per capita defense budgets in the Middle East.”
The idea that Israel is driven by a cultural-political narrative, not by realistic security needs, rarely gets even whispered in the U.S. mass media. Occasional articles like Peterson’s, or Henry Siegman’s New York Times op-ed, suggesting that Israeli fear is pathological, are all too rare. But at least they have appeared.
Where, in the U.S. mass media, will we find equivalent analyses suggesting that U.S. fear of a nuclear-armed Iran is “Iranophobic” and pathological, spawned by symbolic cultural narratives and the “need” for an enemy rather than realistic appraisals of reality? We’ve got too few voices even in the alternative media analyzing America’s pathology about Iran. I’ve seen none at all in the mainstream press.
When the world’s greatest military power (by far) sends an aircraft carrier and nearly a dozen other warships to head off two freighters bringing food, medicine, and clothing to desperate besieged civilians, something is seriously out of whack.
The anti-Iranian policies will continue until enough Americans recognize that it’s pathological. If our mass media help us see that pathology in Israel, perhaps we can begin to see it in ourselves too. Then we can also see how the “special relationship” between the U.S. and Israel is fed significantly by a shared narrative of danger, fear, and victimization.
And we can see how the U.S. Navy flotilla moving to the Red Sea is fundamentally a symbolic drama acting out that shared narrative. The danger is that symbolic dramas all too often end in the shedding of very real blood.
By Ira Chernus, AlterNet
June 21, 2010
Anchors aweigh. The United States Navy is sending an aircraft carrier and nearly a dozen other warships through the Suez Canal and into the Red Sea, according to the British Arabic Language newspaper Al-Quds Al-Arabi, which reported that the ships carry infantry troops, armored vehicles, and ammunition.
The report was taken very seriously in Israel, where two major newspapers gave it headline coverage -- perhaps because the U.S. fleet is joined by at least one Israeli ship, according to eyewitnesses who saw it pass through the Canal.
Iran’s Press TV claims that the Defense Department has confirmed the movement of American ships. However, neither the U.S. nor the Israeli governments have made any statement about the fleet’s destination or purpose. So we’re left to speculate.
Can it be just coincidence that this is happening precisely when “two Iranian vessels are due to set sail for Gaza in the coming week,” according to Al Jazeera, sponsored by the Iranian Red Crescent, carrying food, medicine, and clothing? And when Iran is promising more aid flotillas after this first one?
When the Iranian flotilla was first announced, State Department spokesman Philip Crowley said: "I don't think that Iran's intentions vis-a-vis Gaza are benign." Since then, the U.S. has remained silent.
Newsweeks.com’s Mark Hosenball says he has talked with U.S. and European officials and found them “surprisingly relaxed” about the Iranian challenge to Israel’s blockade of Gaza. They told him that “Tehran actually seems to have dialed back some of its rhetoric and threats for the moment,” and pointed out that the Navy is the weakest arm of Iran’s military.
But if U.S. officials are so relaxed, why spend a fortune (and it does cost a fortune) to move a whole war fleet including an aircraft carrier into the Red Sea and perhaps further, to the Persian Gulf -- where Israeli nuclear submarines are also headed?
Egypt, which controls the Canal, has a central role to play in this drama. Egyptian troops guarded the Canal, which was closed to other traffic, while the U.S. fleet passed through, despite criticism from leaders of Egyptian opposition parties.
It remains unclear how the Egyptians would deal with the Iranian aid ships. Those ships plan to pass through the Canal and then stay close enough to shore to be in Egyptian waters until reaching the area off the Gaza coast, which Israel claims as its territorial waters.
Israel radio has reported that Cairo rejected an Israeli request by for Egypt to block the Iranian ships, claiming that under international law the canal must be free to all ships. However, the Egyptians could delay the Iranians on technicalities for a long time.
Iranian officials have denied a report that their naval forces would escort the ships. “But if and when the Iranian ship reaches the Mediterranean,” as Hosenball says, “no one can be sure what will happen.” However we can be sure that an Iranian ship approaching Gaza would be a major crisis for both the Netanyahu government in Israel and the Obama administration. Very likely, the U.S. administration hopes that its war fleet, accompanied by a token Israeli ship for symbolic value, will head off the need to face that crisis.
In fact, though the threat of violent confrontation is very real, the whole unfolding drama is driven largely by concerns about symbolism. One European official told Hosenball that the Egyptians might well choose to stall the Iranians’ passage in order to reassert Cairo’s influence in the wake of efforts by Turkey and Brazil to broker a nuclear deal with Iran. Then there’s a point of view in Iran that its own government is sending the ships mainly as a way to reassert its influence in the region over a rising Turkey.
The U.S. show of naval force also seems to be freighted with symbolic value. Ever since Teddy Roosevelt sent the Great White Fleet around the world, the U.S. has been using such shows of force to intimidate would-be competitors. The signal to Iran’s leaders will be unmistakable. If the inclusion of an Israeli warship is confirmed, it will deepen the symbolic message.
It will also tell the Netanyahu government that, whatever concessions the U.S. may demand toward Palestine, the U.S. - Israel military alliance is firm when it comes to Iran. For Washington, the underlying message may be: Therefore, Netanyahu, there’s no need to even think about unilateral Israeli action against Iran.
These issues of symbolism, which take politics into the realm of culture and psychology, are generally more important to policymakers than they are to journalists and pundits, who usually stick to “hard-headed” analyses of fact and “realpolitik.” If the mass media in the U.S. pick up the story of the fleet moving into the Red Sea at all, it will no doubt be reported as an understandable strategic move against a power that threatens U.S. interests. And in Israel it will be seen as welcome resistance to the one nation that threatens Israel’s very existence.
Yet why should Americans and Israelis believe such frightening narratives, when Iran has made no tangible aggressive moves against anyone? That key question is rarely explored, or even asked.
So it was a welcome surprise to see the Christian Science Monitor publish an article by its reporter in Tel Aviv, Scott Peterson, titled “Does Israel Suffer From Iranophobia?” It was probably just a coincidence that this piece appeared on the very same day that news of the U.S. war fleet broke -- but a most telling coincidence.
Peterson wrote only about the Israeli fear, which is “utterly irrational and exceedingly disproportionate,” according to Israeli scholar Haggai Ram, author of “Iranophobia: The Logic of an Israeli Obsession.” “There is really no critical debate about this” in Israel, Ram added. Anyone who questions the need to fear Iran is “immediately rendered into these bizarre self-defeating, self-hating Jews, and seen as a fifth column.”
This despite the fact that Israel’s hawkish Defense Minister Ehud Barak himself said just two months ago that Iran “does not pose an existential threat to Israel.” Barak did add that a nuclear-armed Iran in the future would pose such a threat.
But according to Peterson’s article, Israeli analysts see the Iranophobia rooted in memories of the past, not forecasts of the future. The prevailing Israeli mindset is that “we have no other choice, they want to destroy us,” according to scholar Reuven Pedatzur. “It’s a cultural issue, based on the Holocaust, that everybody wants to destroy the Jewish people.” This is the narrative that Netanyahu has used so incessantly, and apparently effectively, to hold on to political power.
It’s no secret in Israel. “Israeli analysts often describe how the Jewish state ‘needs’ an outside enemy,” Peterson rightly explained, “to justify continued oppression against the Palestinians and one of the largest per capita defense budgets in the Middle East.”
The idea that Israel is driven by a cultural-political narrative, not by realistic security needs, rarely gets even whispered in the U.S. mass media. Occasional articles like Peterson’s, or Henry Siegman’s New York Times op-ed, suggesting that Israeli fear is pathological, are all too rare. But at least they have appeared.
Where, in the U.S. mass media, will we find equivalent analyses suggesting that U.S. fear of a nuclear-armed Iran is “Iranophobic” and pathological, spawned by symbolic cultural narratives and the “need” for an enemy rather than realistic appraisals of reality? We’ve got too few voices even in the alternative media analyzing America’s pathology about Iran. I’ve seen none at all in the mainstream press.
When the world’s greatest military power (by far) sends an aircraft carrier and nearly a dozen other warships to head off two freighters bringing food, medicine, and clothing to desperate besieged civilians, something is seriously out of whack.
The anti-Iranian policies will continue until enough Americans recognize that it’s pathological. If our mass media help us see that pathology in Israel, perhaps we can begin to see it in ourselves too. Then we can also see how the “special relationship” between the U.S. and Israel is fed significantly by a shared narrative of danger, fear, and victimization.
And we can see how the U.S. Navy flotilla moving to the Red Sea is fundamentally a symbolic drama acting out that shared narrative. The danger is that symbolic dramas all too often end in the shedding of very real blood.
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