Israel to stay on its own if Iran is attacked, US warns

Published: 01 November, 2012 | RT


A military strike on Iran by way of Israel could still occur at a moment’s notice, but the US is now warning its allies that any action overseas would jeopardize America’s ability to assist in a Middle East war.
Although US President Barack Obama and his challenger Mitt Romney both say the next administration will be aligned with any Israeli efforts to prevent Iran from procuring a nuclear weapon, any unilateral strike on the Islamic Republic could prevent America from offering its service in the event of a war.

The United States currently has military bases across much of the world, including key stations in Bahrain, Qatar, Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates and Oman. Should Israel decide to strike Iran, instability in the region is expected to become rampant and American officials fear they won’t be able to rely on troops stationed overseas to come to their ally’s aid.

“The Gulf states’ one great fear is Iran going nuclear. The other is a regional war that would destabilize them,” a source in the region tells the UK’s Guardian. “They might support a massive war against Iran, but they know they are not going to get that, and they know a limited strike is not worth it, as it will not destroy the program and only make Iran angrier.”

A war overseas is less hypothetical than officials have let on, though, and could be a very likely reality. Earlier this week, Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak told London's Daily Telegraph that his nation all but launched an assault on Iran only eight months ago when the country was thought to be close to going nuclear. At the last moment, though, Iran apparently diverted part of its enriched uranium to civilian programs, prompting Israel to pull the plug on a planned preemptive aerial assault.

Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel’s prime minister, recently went on the record with the French magazine Paris Match to say he thinks any strike to stop a nuclear Iran would be well received, despite warnings from others that the Middle East would erupt instantly, especially given the rampant disruptions spurred in recent months through the Arab Spring.

"Five minutes after [an attack], contrary to what the skeptics say, I think a feeling of relief would spread across the region," Netanyahu said. "Iran is not popular in the Arab world, far from it, and some governments in the region, as well as their citizens, have understood that a nuclear-armed Iran would be dangerous for them, not just for Israel."

Emile Hokayem, a senior fellow of the International Institute for Strategic Studies office in Bahrain, tells the Guardian, "I don't believe the Gulf states are praying for an Israeli attack.”

"An attack would create difficult problems for them on the political level. They will be called on to denounce Israel, and they will want to stay out of it. The risk of regional war to them is huge," he said.

On their part, Iran has vowed to attack America if Israel decides to strike first — regardless of whether or not there is any military action from the US.

“We will enter a confrontation with both parties and will definitely be at war with American bases should a war break out,” Gen. Amir Ali Hajizadeh of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard said in a statement this past September.

How The Government’s Lies Become Truth

September 29, 2012 |Paul Craig Roberts

 

 

In my last column, “A Culture of Delusion,” I wrote that “Americans live in a matrix of lies. Lies dominate every policy discussion, every political decision.” This column will use two top news stories, Iranian nukes and Julian Assange, to illustrate how lies become “truth.”

The western Presstitute media uses every lie to demonize the Iranian government. On September 28 in a fit of unmitigated ignorance, the UK rag, Mail Online, called the president of Iran a “dictator.” The Iranian presidency is an office filled by popular election, and the authority of the office is subordinate to the ayatollahs. Assange is demonized alternatively as a rapist and a spy.

The western media and the US Congress comprise the two largest whore houses in human history. One of their favorite lies is that the Iranian president, Ahmadinejad, wants to kill all the Jews. Watch this 6 minute, 42 second video of Ahmadinejad’s meeting with Jewish religious leaders. Don’t be put off by the title. Washington Blog is making a joke.

http://www.globalresearch.ca/horrifying-graphic-video-of-iranian-leader-savagely-abusing-jews/
 
Last week the news was dominated by the non-existent but virtually real Iranian nuclear weapons program. The Israeli prime minister, Netanyahu, blatantly intervened in the US presidential election, demanding that Obama specify the “red line” for attacking Iran. 

Netanyahu believes his maximum leverage over Obama, the president of the “world’s only superpower,” just prior to the election. Israel cannot attack Iran on its own without the risk of Israel’s destruction. But Netanyahu reasons that if he attacks Iran the week before the US election, Obama will have to join in or lose the Jewish vote for not supporting Israel in states such as Florida, which has a large Jewish population and many electoral votes. If the election is close, Netanyahu, a person consumed by arrogance and hubris, might exercise his threat and attack Iran, despite the opposition of former chiefs of Israeli intelligence and military, the opposition party, and a majority of the Israeli people.

In other words, the outcome of the “superpower’s” presidential election might depend upon whether the sitting president of the “superpower” is sufficiently obedient to the crazed Israeli prime minister.

That the outcome of the US presidential election could depend upon the agenda of the prime minister of a tiny country that exists only because of US financial, military, and diplomatic support, especially the UN veto, should disturb those Americans who think that they are the “indispensable people.” How indispensable are you when you have to do what the Israeli prime minister wants?

The US media makes certain that this question never enters american minds. Americans have been told that if Iran doesn’t have nukes, it has a nuke weapons program. This is what the politicians of both parties, the media, and the Israel Lobby tell them. Americans are told this despite the facts that the CIA and the National Intelligence Estimate stick to the conclusion that Iran abandoned its flirtation with a nuclear weapon in 2003 and the International Atomic Energy Agency inspectors on the ground in Iran report no evidence of a nuclear weapons program and no evidence of any diversion of enriched uranium to a weapons program.

Moreover, what could Iran do with a nuclear weapon, other than use it against an aggressor?

Any offensive use would result in Iran’s destruction.

Why do Americans believe Iran has nukes or is making nukes when the CIA says they are not? The answer is that Netanyahu says so, and the elected members of the US government in the House, Senate, and White House are afraid to contradict the Israeli prime minister, as are the American print and TV media. Some “superpower” we are! The “indispensable people” have to grovel in the dirt before Netanyahu. Americans are not even aware of their shame.

Iran, unlike Israel, signed the nuclear non-proliferation treaty. Signatories to the treaty have the right to nuclear energy. Nuclear energy requires a low level of enrichment, 5% or less. The minute Iran announced a nuclear energy program, the Israeli government and its prostitutes in Washington lied that Iran was building a bomb. For exercising its legal rights under the treaty, Iran has been painted as a rogue criminal state and demonized.

A nuclear weapon requires 95% enrichment. To get to 5% from scratch and then to 95% is a long drawn out process. I think I first started hearing Israeli government claims of an Iranian nuke back in he 1990s of last century.

When Iran announced that, in view of the sanctions imposed by the US, sanctions that affect medical supplies, Iran was going to enrich uranium to 20% in order to supply itself with medical isotopes, the Israeli allegations that this would lead to a bomb resulted in Iran saying that the Iranian government was content for France or some other country to supply their medical isotopes and would not pursue enrichment beyond energy requirements. The US and Russia were also mentioned as suppliers.

According to the NY Times on September 29, 2011, “the Iranian president told the Washington Post and later, in basically the same terms, the New York Times: ‘if you [the United States and Europe] give us uranium grade 20 percent now, we will stop production.’”

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/30/opinion/30iht-edvaez30.html?_r=0

On Israel’s orders Washington vetoed the Iranian concession. Solving the problem is not what the Israeli government wants. The problem has to be kept alive so that it can be used to foment an attack on Iran.

The Iranian nuke is one of those grand hoaxes, a lie designed to hide the real agenda.

What is the real agenda?

The real agenda hiding behind the hysterical concern about an Iranian nuke, is the rightwing Israeli government’s design on the water resources of southern Lebanon.

Twice the Israeli government sent the Israeli army into southern Lebanon to occupy and eventually annex the territory. And twice Hizbollah defeated and drove out the vaunted Israeli army.

The few thousand Hizbollah fighters were able to defeat the Israeli army, which is equipped and supplied by US taxpayers’ dollars while Americans are foreclosed out of their homes and left unemployed as Washington applauds the offshoring of their jobs, because Syria and Iran provide Hizbollah with financial support and weapons that destroy Israeli tanks.

Syria, of course, is currently resisting its destruction by Israel and its american puppet state. The overthrow of Syria hasn’t gone well, because the Russians and Chinese didn’t go along with it, like they stupidly did in Libya. But the far rightwing Israeli government has concluded that with american prestige involved in the overthrow of the Assad government in Syria, the deed will be done.

That leaves Iran. The Israeli government knows that it cannot be forthright and say that it wants Americans to go to war with Iran so that Israel can steal southern Lebanon. But if fear over nonexistent nukes can muster the Western populations to support an attack on Iran, Iran can be eliminated as Hizbollah’s supplier, and Israel can steal the water from Lebanon.

There is no discussion whatsoever of the real agenda anywhere in the US print and TV media. I doubt there is any discussion anywhere in Europe, which is a collection of american puppet states.

Will we get World War III for Christmas? Possibly, if the US election is close as it approaches. If the election is too close to call, Netanyahu might throw the dice and rely on Obama following his lead. Iran will be attacked, and the consequences are unknowable.

Let’s turn to Julian Assange and Wikileaks. Like Iran, Assange has been demonized, not on the basis of facts but on the basis of lies.

Washington, which poses as a purveyor of human rights, has been mistreating if not torturing Bradley Manning since May 2010 without bringing him to trial in an effort to make Manning say that he and Assange constitute a spy team working against the US.

Assange is a celebrity, because Wikileaks publishes the news leaked to the organization that the Presstitute media suppresses. While in Sweden, Assange was picked up by two celebrity-hungry women who took him home to their beds. The women later bragged of their conquests on social media, but apparently when they found out that they were rivals, they turned on the “two-timer” Assange and made charges. One claimed that he had not used a condom as per her request, and the other claimed that she had offered one helping but he had taken two.

Whatever the accusations, the Swedish prosecutorial office investigated and dismissed the case.

Despite this known fact, the Western Presstitute media reports that Assange is a fugitive evading rape charges by hiding in the Ecuadoran Embassy in London. Even RT, an alternative media voice, has fallen for this disinformation.

After Assange was cleared in Sweden, a female prosecutor has tried to reopen the case. There is no evidence for her to bring charges, so she demanded that England arrest Assange and extradite him to Sweden to be questioned.

Normally, people are not subject to extradition for questioning. Only people who have been formally charged are extradited. But this detail wasn’t of interest to the Presstitute media or to the British courts which ruled as Washington desired.

Opinions vary as to whether the female prosecutor who wants Assange for questioning is an ideological feminist who believes no heterosexual sex is legitimate or whether she is in the pay of Washington. But experts agree that once Assange is in Sweden he is certain to be turned over to Washington, which will demand his extradition on trumped up charges. Extradition on trumped up charges is difficult in England but easy in Sweden.

Assange offered to be questioned in London, but the female prosecutor refused. Now the Ecuadoran Embassy is offering to send Assange to the Ecuadoran Embassy in Sweden to be questioned, but Washington, London, and the Swedish prosecutor have refused. They want Assange without the protection of the asylum that Ecuador has granted him.

Washington has how made this obvious. John Glaser writing in Antiwar.com, September 26, 2012, reports: “Newly declassified documents have revealed that the US military designated WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange an enemy of the state, who can be killed or detained without trial.”

 http://news.antiwar.com/2012/09/26/declassified-documents-reveal-us-military-designated-assange-enemy-of-state/
See also http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/sep/27/wikileaks-investigation-enemy 

Assange is Washington’s enemy, because he let the truth get out. WikiLeaks is a journalistic enterprise, not a spy enterprise. It publishes information, some of which is leaked to it by whistleblowers, just as the Pentagon Papers were leaked to the New York Times. The information leaked to WikiLeaks has embarrassed Washington, because it shows Washington to be two-faced, a manipulator of other countries’ governments and medias, and overflowing with mendacity.

In other words, Washington is not the light upon the hill, but the gates of Hell or Mordor.

Assange had best be careful. If he again speaks to supportive crowds from a balcony of the Ecuadoran Embassy in London, he is likely to be shot down by a CIA sniper.

Approved by Obama, of course. Or his successor.

US Poised to Violate Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty

Monday, September 17, 2012 by Common Dreams

by Pat LaMarche

 

To the best of my knowledge from information gleaned from internet data sources, there are three countries that have not signed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). They are India, Pakistan and Israel.

One additional country -- North Korea -- withdrew in 2003 after being a signatory for 18 years.

Iran signed in 1968 and ratified the treaty in 1970. In light of their alleged insistence on starting a nuclear weapons program, some might say that the treaty is a joke. I'd agree to the farcical nature of the document, but not because of Iran's actions -- although hat's off to the North Koreans for withdrawing publicly in the face of being labeled by George W. Bush as members of the Axis of Evil.

No, this week's big Washington Post story about the U.S. revamping their nuclear weapons is reason enough to scoff at the legitimacy of the NPT. And it's not just the nuclear weapons program that the U.S. is improving; it's the bombs. The Washington Post confirms, "At the heart of the overhaul are the weapons themselves." And this revamp won't be cheap. "Upgrading just one of the seven types of weapons in the stockpile, the B61 bomb, is likely to cost $10 billion over five years, according to the Pentagon."

But wasting money on weapons when the U.S. is reeling from overwhelming debt and consequently slashing assistance to the needy isn't the only reason to question this enormous expenditure. The big looming unknown is the value of U.S. ink on paper.

Here's what we pledged in 1968 and our Senate ratified in 1970, according the U.S. State Department, "countries with nuclear weapons will move towards disarmament; countries without nuclear weapons will not acquire them; and all countries can access peaceful nuclear energy."

How can the upgrade of the entire U.S. nuclear arsenal -- to make it more effective and assure its deadliness -- possibly be a move "towards disarmament?"

According to the Washington Post, part of the pending stockpile problem is that each of the last three presidential administrations had cut the U.S. inventory by 40 to 50 percent during their time in office. Additionally the aging infrastructure has contributed to a decline in the U.S. ability to launch from sea, land and air. That sounds like the U.S. has reduced its ability to wage nuclear war, which was exactly what the country promised to do when signing the NPT in the first place.

Full scale nuclear war -- which the U.S. and the Russians are still more than capable of launching -- would leave the planet uninhabitable by human beings. Clearly, the intent of the NPT is to avoid such worldwide destruction as well as to avoid the sort of "small scale" destruction which occured in Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

But because I spend most of my time writing about poverty this plan by the U.S. to invest an estimated $352 billion dollars making nuclear war more likely -- in direct violation of a treaty we have signed to the contrary -- I insist we recall the words of President Dwight D. Eisenhower, "Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. This is not a way of life at all in any true sense. Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron."

And on that "cross of iron" tens of thousands of children die each day.

According to the World Hunger Education Service 925 million people in the world went hungry in 2010. I use worldwide statistics because nuclear war has a worldwide impact. Doing a little quick math, each hungry person in the world could have more than $380 for food -- all 925 million of them -- for what the U.S. alone will spend on upgrading its nuclear arsenal.

But those are only hungry people. What sort of investment could be made on behalf of those children dying of starvation? The United Nations puts that number at 18,000 per day. 18,000 kids dying of hunger each day! That means about six and a half million children die of starvation each year. If the U.S. spent the $352 billion on them, we could spend about $53,576 per kid and obey the terms of a treaty we signed more than 40 years ago.

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

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.

Source

SecDef Panetta: Iran NOT Building a Nuclear Weapon

Sunday, January 8, 2012 by CommonDreams.org

Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta appeared on CBS' Face the Nation this morning and declared--despite enormous public rhetoric among pundits and many US government officials, not to mention GOP presidential candidates--that Iran is not currently trying to build a nuclear weapon.

The Associated Press reports today:

[Panetta] says Iran is laying the groundwork for making nuclear weapons someday, but is not yet building a bomb and called for continued diplomatic and economic pressure to persuade Tehran not to take that step.

As he has previously, Panetta cautioned against a unilateral strike by Israel against Iran's nuclear facilities, saying the action could trigger Iranian retaliation against US forces in the region.

The comments suggest the White House's assessment of Iran's nuclear strategy has not changed in recent months, despite warnings from advocates of military action that time is running out to prevent Tehran from becoming a nuclear-armed state.

Iran says its nuclear program is only for energy and medical research, and refuses to halt uranium enrichment

And although such comments pair with Iran's insistence that its nuclear program is strictly for domestic non-military purposes, and despite renewed warnings to US-allied Israel not to strike Iran prematurely, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Martin Dempsey, who joined Panetta on Face the Nation rattled the US saber without mistake, saying:

he wanted the Iranians to believe that a U.S. military strike could wipe out their nuclear program.

"I absolutely want them to believe that's the case," he said.

Panetta did not rule out launching a pre-emptive strike.

As such threats from both Israel and the United States continue it's little wonder the Iranians would seek to put their nuclear facilities beyond the reach of incoming airstrikes. As Reuters reports:

Iran will in the "near future" start enriching uranium deep inside a mountain, a senior [Iranian] official said.

[...]

A decision by the Islamic Republic to conduct sensitive atomic activities at an underground site - offering better protection against any enemy attacks - could complicate diplomatic efforts to resolve the long-running row peacefully.

Iran has said for months that it is preparing to move its highest-grade uranium refinement work to Fordow, a facility near the Shi'ite Muslim holy city of Qom in central Iran, from its main enrichment plant at Natanz.

Responding to threats by Iran to close the Strait of Hormuz to oil shipments, Panetta did not hesitate to raise the possibility of military intervention yet again. According the Agence France-Presse:

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

Panetta was seconded by General Martin Dempsey, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who said Iran has the means to close the waterway, through which 20 percent of the world's oil passes.

"But we would take action and reopen the Straits," the general said.

Obama Administration: Israel Has ‘Right’ to Nukes

By Jason Ditz |July 7, 2010

A statement released yesterday by the Obama Administration has made public America’s long-standing support for the Israeli government’s large, undeclared nuclear arsenal, and insists that Israel has an inherent “right” to possess such an arsenal for “deterrence purposes.”

Officials have also reportedly acknowledged that the Obama Administration has labeled its previous support for a “nuclear-free Middle East,” including a vote in favor of this at a Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) conference, had been “a mistake.”


The Obama Administration complained at the time of the vote that it unfairly “singled out” Israel, apparently oblivious to the fact that Israel is the only nation in the Middle East with nuclear weapons, as well as the only nation which is not a signatory of the NPT.


Israel has ruled out ever signing the NPT, though it has called for the treaty to be strengthened to punish signatories like Syria and Iran for what it perceives as “violations.” Israel has likewise never publicly acknowledged the size of its nuclear arsenal, though the fact that it exists is not generally considered a secret.

Reuters probes idea of nuking BP oil well

Crazy!!!
By Reuters
Friday, July 2nd, 2010

MOSCOW/WASHINGTON (Reuters) - His face wracked by age and his voice rasping after decades of chain-smoking coarse tobacco, the former long-time Russian Minister of nuclear energy and veteran Soviet physicist Viktor Mikhailov knows just how to fix BP's oil leak in the Gulf of Mexico.

"A nuclear explosion over the leak," he says nonchalantly puffing a cigarette as he sits in a conference room at the Institute of Strategic Stability, where he is a director. "I don't know what BP is waiting for, they are wasting their time. Only about 10 kilotons of nuclear explosion capacity and the problem is solved."

A nuclear fix to the leaking well has been touted online and in the occasional newspaper op-ed for weeks now. Washington has repeatedly dismissed the idea and BP execs say they are not considering an explosion -- nuclear or otherwise. But as a series of efforts to plug the 60,000 barrels of oil a day gushing from the sea floor have failed, talk of an extreme solution refuses to die.

For some, blasting the problem seems the most logical answer in the world. Mikhailov has had a distinguished career in the nuclear field, helping to close a Soviet Union program that used nuclear explosions to seal gas leaks. Ordinarily he's an opponent of nuclear blasts, but he says an underwater explosion in the Gulf of Mexico would not be harmful and could cost no more than $10 million. That compares with the $2.35 billion BP has paid out in cleanup and compensation costs so far. "This option is worth the money," he says.

And it's not just Soviet boffins. Milo Nordyke, one of the masterminds behind U.S. research into peaceful nuclear energy in the 1960s and '70s says a nuclear explosion is a logical last-resort solution for BP and the government. Matthew Simmons, a former energy adviser to U.S. President George W. Bush and the founder of energy investment-banking firm Simmons & Company International, is another calling for the nuclear option.

Even former U.S. President Bill Clinton has voiced support for the idea of an explosion to stem the flow of oil, albeit one using conventional materials rather than nukes. "Unless we send the Navy down deep to blow up the well and cover the leak with piles and piles and piles of rock and debris, which may become necessary ... unless we are going to do that, we are dependent on the technical expertise of these people from BP," Clinton told the Fortune/Time/CNN Global Forum in South Africa on June 29.

Clinton was picking up on an idea mooted by Christopher Brownfield in June. Brownfield is a one-time nuclear submarine officer, a veteran of the Iraq war (he volunteered in 2006) and now a nuclear policy researcher at Columbia University. He is also one of a number of scientists whose theories rely not on nuclear bombs -- he did toy with that thought for a while -- but on conventional explosives that would implode the well and, if not completely plug it with crushed rock, at least bring the flow of oil under control. "It's kind of like stepping on a garden hose to kink it," Brownfield says. "You may not cut off the flow entirely but it would greatly reduce the flow."

BLASTS FROM THE PAST

Using nuclear blasts for peaceful ends was a key plank of Cold War policy in both the United States and the Soviet Union. In the middle of last century, both countries were motivated by a desire to soften the image of the era's weapon of choice.

Washington had big plans to use peaceful nuclear explosions to build an additional Panama Canal, carve a path for an inter-state highway through mountains in the Mojave Desert and connect underwater aquifers in Arizona. But the experimental plans were dropped as authorities learned more about the ecological dangers of surface explosions.

The Soviet program, known as Nuclear Explosions for the National Economy, was launched in 1958. The project saw 124 nuclear explosions for such tasks as digging canals and reservoirs, creating underground storage caverns for natural gas and toxic waste, exploiting oil and gas deposits and sealing gas leaks. It was finally mothballed by Mikhail Gorbachev in 1989.

The Soviets first used a nuclear blast to seal a gas leak in 1966. Urtabulak, one of its prized gas-fields in Uzbekistan, had caught fire and raged for three years. Desperate to save the cherished reserves, Yefim Slavsky, then Minister of Light Industry, ordered nuclear engineers to use the most powerful weapon in their arsenal.

"The Minister said, 'Do it. Put it out. Explode it,'" recalls Albert Vasilyev, a young engineer and a rising star in the project who now teaches at the Lenin Technical Institute in Moscow.

Vasilyev remembers the technology behind the program with obvious pride. "The explosion takes place deep underground," he says. "We pinch the pipe, break it and the pipe collapses." According to Vasilyev, the blast at Urtabulak sealed the well shut leaving only an empty crater.

JUST DOING A JOB

In all, the Soviets detonated five nuclear devices to seal off runaway gas wells -- succeeding three or four times, depending on who you talk to. "It worked quite well for them," says Nordyke, who authored a detailed account of Soviet explosions in a 2000 paper. "There is no reason to think it wouldn't be fine (for the United States)."

But not everything went smoothly. Vasilyev admits the program "had two misfires". The final blast in 1979 was conducted near the Ukrainian city of Kharkov. "The closest houses were just about 400 meters away," Vasilyev recalls. "So this was ordered to be the weakest of the explosions. Even the buildings and the street lamps survived." Unfortunately, the low capacity of the device failed to seal the well and the gas resurfaced.

Alexander Koldobsky, a fellow nuclear physicist from the Moscow Engineering and Physics Institute, insists the peaceful nuclear explosions were safe. The people who worked on the program "were brilliant professionals", he says. "They had a culture of safety, which did not accept the word 'maybe', but only accepted the words 'obligation' and 'instruction.' Any derivation from these in nuclear technologies is a crime."

Still, he concedes, "there were different scenarios of what happened after an explosion." At his first blast in a Turkmen gas field in 1972, "the stench was unbearable," he says. "And the wind was blowing toward a nearby town." He closes his narrow lips into a smile as if refusing to say more.

Koldobsky shrugs off any suggestion of fear or emotion when the bomb exploded. "I felt nothing. I was just doing my job."

UNANSWERED QUESTIONS

Not everybody is so sanguine about the Soviet experience. Speaking on condition of anonymity, an expert from Russia's largest oil exporter Rosneft, urges the United States to ignore calls for the atomic option. "That would bring Chernobyl to America," he says.

Vladimir Chuprov from Greenpeace's Moscow office is even more insistent that BP not heed the advice of the veteran Soviet physicists. Chuprov disputes the veterans' accounts of the peaceful explosions and says several of the gas leaks reappeared later. "What was praised as a success and a breakthrough by the Soviet Union is in essence a lie," he says. "I would recommend that the international community not listen to the Russians. Especially those of them that offer crazy ideas. Russians are keen on offering things, especially insane things."

Former Minister Mikhailov agrees that the USSR had to give up its program because of problems it presented. "I ended the program because I knew how worthless this all was," he says with a sigh. "Radioactive material was still seeping through cracks in the ground and spreading into the air. It wasn't worth it."

"Still," he says, momentarily hard to see through a cloud of smoke from his cigarettes, "I see no other solution for sealing leaks like the one in the Gulf of Mexico."

The problem, he goes on, is that "Americans just don't know enough about nuclear explosions to solve this problem ... But they should ask us -- we have institutes, we have professionals who can help them solve this. Otherwise BP are just torturing the people and themselves."

RADIATION RISKS

Nordyke too believes the nuclear option should be on the table. After seeing nine U.S. nuclear explosions and standing behind the control board of one, he estimates that a nuclear bomb would have roughly an 80 to 90 percent chance of successfully blocking the oil. According to his estimates, it would have to be an explosion of around 30 kilotons, equivalent to roughly two Hiroshima bombs or three times as big as Mikhailov's estimate. The explosion would also need to remain at least 3 to 4 miles away from other offshore wells in the area.

The bomb, says Nordyke, would be dropped in a secondary well approximately 60-70 feet away from the leaking shaft. There it would create a large cavity filled with gas. The gas would melt the surrounding rock, crush it and press it into the leaking well to close it shut.

Although the BP well is thousands of feet deeper than those closed in the Soviet Union, Nordyke says the extra depth shouldn't make a difference. He also says that so far below the ground, not much difference exists in onshore or underwater explosions -- even though the latter have never been tried.

Nordyke says fears that radiation could escape after the explosion are unfounded. The hole would be about 8 inches in diameter and, despite the shockwave, the radiation should remain captured. Even in the case of radiation escape, he says, its dispersed effect would be less than that of floating oil patches.

A LAST RESORT

But don't expect an explosion under the Gulf of Mexico any time soon. Even a conventional blast could backfire and cause more problems. There is a chance any blast could fracture the seabed and cause an underground blowout, according to Andy Radford, petroleum engineer and American Petroleum Institute senior policy adviser on offshore issues. The U.S. Department of Energy has no plans to use explosives "due to the obvious risks involved," according to a DOE spokeswoman.

There's also the question of time. Preparations for a nuclear explosion could take up to half-a-year; BP has said it will have a relief well in place to stop the leak by August. "I think it has to be considered as only the last resort," Nordyke says. But "they ought to be thinking about it."

Would he be willing to work on such an operation? "I'd be happy to help," he says.

Republican Alma Mater Halliburton Sold Nuclear Tech To Iran...

...but Want to Invade Iran to Keep them from Using that Tech that Halliburton sold them?
Daily Kos

(I don't really believe Iran is that close to creating a nuclear weapon that could reach the US any time soon, nor do i believe it's a threat if they do. That seems to be more of Israel's problem, maybe some of the European countries should be worried. But we're not the boss of them. Pakistan and India can have nuclear weapons, but not Iran? India's govt seems stable enough, but Pakistan has nuclear weapons, and that doesn't bother anybody at all? Really? But the people who ARE worried about Iran getting nuclear weapons are the same people who own and/or run the companies that sell the equipment and information about how to build and process those very weapons that they oppose as politicians?!?! They are FOR selling them the tech, but against them using it? How the hell does that work?!?!--jef )

Mon Jun 14, 2010


video link


So, Halliburton creates offshore entities to circumvent the U.S. ban on doing business in Iran, and part of what passes through this truly ridiculous loophole is nuclear enabling technology. All of the profit ends up in a Cayman Islands shell company so there's no U.S. tax burden, and when we have to go interdict a nuclear armed Iran Halliburton gets paid again supporting our military in the conflict.

The taxpayer gets fucked up, down, and sideways and nobody seems able to put a stop to it. The troops are lucky if they get crappy food and if they're having a bad day they end up a non-combat death in an curiously electrified shower.

This is a three month old video, but it certainly seems worth a review given the unstoppable flood of oil pouring out of the sea floor and poisoning the Gulf of Mexico. Halliburton's cement job was a key component of the blowout and they're just as much at fault as Beach Polluters Bird Poisoners British Petroleum.

If corporations are persons, as the Citizens United decision indicates, they should be subject to execution, just as real humans are. Halliburton's behavior indicates to me they'd like to be first in like for this ultimate corrective action.

The big picture in Iran at the moment is that two thirds of the population were born after the 1979 revolution. Those young people are engaged in the same cycle of resistance, martyrdom, and mourning that lead to the first revolution. That process took a year, this one is taking a bit longer.

When I wrote this I made an error in the date - this was a 2009 hearing, so it's fifteen months old, not three months. I found it relevant because this is the same company that just participated in the destruction of the Gulf Coast tourism and seafood economy.

U.S. Media Continue Beating War Drums

It's very troubling to me how much the corporate media is used to push the war agenda.

Demonizing Iran
By DAVE LINDORFF

Just yesterday, the Wall Street Journal had a lead story about Israeli planning to possibly “go it alone” in an attack on Iran if the US were not to “succeed” in its diplomatic efforts to get Iran to “stop” it’s alleged attempts to develop a nuclear weapon capability.

Aside from the fact that there is no hard evidence that Iran is trying to make a nuclear bomb or even to refine uranium to obtain nuclear-grade material, the paper ignored one crucial point: Israel cannot “go it alone” in any strike on Iran, since its key weapons--American fighter-bombers--are supplied to it, and kept flying, thanks to the equipment and spare parts provided by the United States. Indeed the entire Israeli military machine is largely financed and armed by the US.

No Israeli military effort can go forward without the full backing of the US, and to say otherwise is to simply perpetrate a fraud on the American public, implying that Israel is an independent actor on the world stage. It is not.

Another example of media warmongering came in an interview by Terri Gross on her program “Fresh Air,” which I believe is the most widely syndicated and popular program on National Public Radio, produced here in Philadelphia at the studios of NPR affiliate WHYY. Listening to “Fresh Air” this week, which featured an interview with New York Times war correspondent Dexter Filkins, a generally excellent reporter who distinguished himself for his reporting on the Iraq War, and particularly on the brutal US assault on the city of Fallujah, I heard Filkins refer casually to Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, as “America’s arch-enemy.”

Now it’s possible, and I certainly do hope it’s the case, that Filkens was being ironic here. But Terri Gross allowed this characterization of Iran’s president pass without comment.

America’s arch-enemy? Really? On what basis?

What, exactly, has Iran or Ahmadinejad done to make itself America’s arch- enemy? It has backed the same Shi’ite led government in Iraq that the US has been backing, and indeed, to the extent that Iraq has stabilized, it is largely Iran’s doing. It provided key help to the US in the early invasion of Afghanistan and the routing of the Taliban government, which was never favored by the Iranians.

We know also that two years before the election of Ahmadinejad to the presidency, Iran made an offer to the US to recognize Israel, help broker a two-state peace solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and end Iran’s support of armed groups in the Middle East region, all in return for the US accepting Iran as what the 70-million population nation unarguably is: a legitimate power in the region. That offer was slapped down by the Bush/Cheney administration, which had as its goal not peace in Palestine or with Iran, but the occupation and control of Iraq, and perhaps ultimately a war against Iran. In fact, since the Iraq invasion, the US is known to have been financing and helping to organize a terror campaign inside Iran that has led to many deaths by bombings. If any country is acting towards the other in an aggressive and warlike fashion, it is the US, towards Iran, and not the reverse.

It needs to be said, but somehow never is in the establishment US media, whether corporate or not-for-profit, that Iran historically is not an aggressive, expansive nation (can that be said with a straight face about our own country?). Though it is, by dint of its oil reserves and its population, one of the biggest and most powerful countries in the Middle East, Iran has not invaded another country since the 18th century, and there is no indication that it plans to invade any other country now.

Even nuclear experts scoff at the notion that a nuclear Iran would initiate an attack on Israel, the only nuclear power in the Middle East, with an estimated 200 high-grade nuclear weapons, and a first-rate delivery system of missiles and supersonic bombers. For Iran to launch a crude nuke at Israel would be an act of national suicide, and while individual terrorists may kill themselves, nations don’t commit suicide. They may miscalculate, with devastating consequences, but they don’t deliberately self-immolate.

None of this makes its way into the US media, which continues the drumbeat for war, whether by Israel, with US backing, or by the US, with reports that Secretary of Defense (sic) Robert Gates is presenting the president with Iran attack options, and that the White House, while “preferring a diplomatic solution” to Iran’s supposed nuclear ambitions, is “keeping all options on the table.”

Most media reports refer to Iran’s “ability to produce bomb-grade uranium” within a year, without mentioning that there is no evidence that the country intends to do this (Iran insists it has no such plans). The New York Times, for instance, was reporting, incorrectly, back in 2008 that Iran had enough enriched uranium to make “one nuclear bomb.” Those reports, quoting Pentagon and CIA sources, now quote “experts” as saying that Iran could develop a bomb within three to four years, again generally failing to add that there is no evidence that Iran is trying to do that, or is even considering doing it.

And yet Iran is consistently portrayed as America’s “enemy” or even as its “arch-enemy”--a term that harks back to the Bush/Cheney claim that Iran was, along with Iraq and North Korea, part of a three-nation “Axis of Evil.”

On its face the idea that Iran is America’s arch-enemy is ludicrous. We are talking here about a third-rate country with an economy the size of Finland’s, with a third-rate military, the total budget of which, at $4.8 billion, is less than the annual replacement cost for the US military’s Chinook and Seahawk helicopter fleet, and which would be totally decimated in any all-out attack by the US.

Iran has no ability to attack the US, and even its ability to threaten US forces in Iraq or Afghanistan is severely limited, not to mention the fact that should it be foolhardy enough to initiate any such action, it would bring down the full force of the US military on its head in an instant.

Reading and watching American reporting on Iran reminds me of nothing so much as reading the Chinese state media about Taiwan when I was living in China back in the 1990s. It’s all pathetic nonsense, manufactured paranoia, and bluster. But at least the average Chinese citizen has enough sense to recognize that she or he is being fed a lot of propaganda. Americans, all to often, seem to ready to buy the garbage they hear and read about Iran. They may not be able to show you where on the globe Iran is, or tell you anything about the country other than perhaps that it is Muslim, but they will accept, uncritically, that it is our “arch-enemy.”

Note to Filkins: If, as I hope, you were being ironic on “Fresh Air,” please understand that irony requires a modicum of sophistication on the part of the listener--something I’m not sure you can count on with Times readers or NPR listeners.