Coming War With Iran - All Iran News Here

[Boubear]

U.S. to establish presence in Tehran: report
Wed Jul 16, 2008 7:05pm EDT

LONDON (Reuters) - The United States will announce in the next month that it plans to establish a diplomatic presence in Tehran for the first time in 30 years, a British newspaper said on Thursday.

In a front-page report, the Guardian said Washington would open a U.S. interests section in the Iranian capital, halfway towards opening an embassy.

The unsourced report by the newspaper's Washington correspondent said: "The Guardian has learned that an announcement will be made in the next month to establish a U.S. interests section in Tehran, a halfway house to setting up a full embassy.

"The move will see US diplomats stationed in the country."

Senior U.S. diplomat William Burns said in testimony to Congress last week the United States was looking to opening up an interest section in Tehran but had not made a decision yet.

The Guardian said the development was "a remarkable turnaround in policy by President George Bush who has pursued a hawkish approach to Iran throughout his time in office".

Washington said on Wednesday it was sending Burns to join atomic talks with Iran this weekend to signal to Tehran and others that Washington wanted a diplomatic solution to their nuclear impasse.

Iran says its nuclear work is for peaceful power generation, and not for the development of nuclear weapons as the West suspects, and has rejected conditions it give up uranium enrichment.

On Sunday, President Amhmoud Ahmadinejad suggested Iran would consider any proposal by the United States for a U.S. interests section in the Islamic Republic, should one be forthcoming.

U.S. media have reported that the State Department is considering opening an interests section that could mean U.S. diplomats returning to Tehran but operating under another country's flag.

The United States cut off diplomatic ties with Tehran during the 1979-1981 hostage crisis, in which a group of militant Iranian students held 52 U.S. diplomats hostage at the American embassy for 444 days.

Iran maintains an interests section at the embassy of Pakistan in Washington. Mottaki said it serves the large Iranian community in the United States.

(Reporting by Andrew Dobbie; additional reporting by Sue Pleming in Washington; editing by Ralph Boulton)

LInk

[Optimus]

Rice: U.S. not softening Iran stance
http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2008/07/18/rice-us-not-softening-iran-stance/
Posted: 05:00 PM ET, July 18, 2008
 

(CNN) — Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice told CNN Friday that the administration’s decision to engage in a diplomatic dialogue with Iran did not mean it was softening its tough stand on negotiations with that country over its nuclear program.

"I am prepared to go and talk to my counterpart any pace, any time, any where. But there really must be a suspension — a verifiable suspension of their enrichment and reprocessing," she said.

The No. 3 diplomat at the State Department will meet with an Iranian nuclear negotiator in Geneva, Switzerland Saturday, in what some observers had described as a major reversal of the Bush administration's tough stance against meeting with Iran on nuclear issues – a shift Rice denied.

“I acknowledge that what we've done is to make a step that we think demonstrates to everyone our seriousness about this process,” Rice told CNN’s Wolf Blitzer. “But what has not changed is that the United States is determined to have negotiations only when Iran has suspended its enrichment and reprocessing. That's when the United States can join.”

Rice has often been pegged as a likely vice presidential candidate – though the former Stanford University has insisted she’s looking forward to a return to academic life when her stint at the helm of the State Department ends.

[Defend America]

Michael Chertoff released the six celebrating Israelis that were identified as Mossad agents that were taken into custody on 911.

Over one hundred Jews were taken in and subsequently released, which shows that on day one, for a short time at least, the criminal investigators were on time, on track and in control… they had enemy agents under lock and key, and that was that.

Not for fuggin long.

Chertoff is head of Homeland Security, he can make all kinds of orders that are carried out by all kinds of people, who can easily be foreign mercenaries, he could conquer America in a couple of hours.

His men could descend upon the schools and universities and commit VA Tech, and Amish County type massacres, while the American garrisons on foreign soil, are wiped out and the Naval units in the Persian Gulf are nuked out of existence by Iranian weapons.

Quote: “…Caesar pacified Gaul by mass slaughter, he then used his successful army to crush all political opposition at home.”

In fact Caesar brought his Gallic Legions into Italy in defiance of a law that prohibited regular troops from military activity at home, this provoked one of the most brutal wars in history, as Caesar firstly smashed the great Roman hero Pompey, his former son in law’s legions, then hunted him and his sons down and killed them like rabid dogs.

Marcus Tullius Cicero had joined Pompey in Macedonia but refused to take to the field on the day of battle, and was to subsequently use that as successful defense to the capital charge of bearing arms against Caesar at his summary court martial at Brindisium, when he returned to Italy after deserting Pompey.

He had earlier been acquitted of attempting to murder Caesar in a brutal plot he devised in league with a King Deotarus, who remained King only by the good grace of Caesar, the plotters had assassins secreted in a chamber wherein gifts meant for Caesar were laid out, his instincts warned him of danger and both Cicero and the King went to trial.

Cicero’s speech before Caesar in his own defense remains among the most widely used and quoted texts in legal history, and was used almost unchanged by Clarence Darrow in the US, when he charged thirty six million dollars to get two thrill killers off of death row.

As Roman Consul in the year 62 BC Marcus Tullius Cicero claimed to have uncovered a plot, he used his extraordinary talents as a public speaker to convince the Roman Senate that he needed special emergency powers to deal with the problem, those powers were granted and so did he make war upon his political foes.

The alleged conspiracy he said he uncovered, and whose leader Catalina his minions pursued and killed, was in fact a movement that would have freed hundreds of thousands of people from slavery, and enfranchised virtually all Italians as Roman Citizens, Cicero’s mad ambitions and ill conceived theories put paid to that.

There are evident parallels between the Roman Senate in Cicero’s day and the US Senate of today.

Senate credibility is non existent, since the vote to impeach Bill Clinton passed by the House was defeated in the Senate, when the senators voted along party lines, that body has granted Chertoff the same emergency powers the Romans gave to Cicero.

Freedman tells us his research identified Zionist Jews as starting both the first and second World Wars for their own reasons, see their influence in American politics extending at least as far back as the Civil War, then take another look at the history of warfare.

The Ashkenazi were horse breeders who got rich and became powerful thence ambitious or greedy for more power, by selling remounts to various cavalry forces that were at war with their neighbors, or responding to empirical ambition sought conquest in places more readily accessed on horse back.

They started wars and stirred up populaces against minorities and finding cause where no cause existed, and stirring up dissidents, who were bums and no hopers, happy to commit any sort of outrage just as long as someone else higher up got the blame …followers of orders… no matter the orders are to kill grand mothers, and to bomb weddings.

The attack on Fort Sumter was one of the greatest strategic blunders in history, ranking right alongside both Napoleon and Hitler’s plan to attack Russia, it enabled the North to respond with overwhelming military might that was never gonna be repulsed by the South.

Similarly Napoleon lost his Grand Armee comprising the flower of French and allied manhood, when military victory became meaningless, as his men rampaged across Russia en route to Moscow, then onward to inevitable and ignominious defeat.

Hitler’s forces attained and occupied vast stretches of Soviet territory in their quest for lebensraum, or living space for the children of the Nazi inheritance, only to freeze to death on the battlefield alongside the millions of Russian defenders who were re supplied from behind their own lines, whereas the Wehrmacht had to rely on supply lines thousands of kilometers long.

The invasion of Iraq no less, the infidel invader has not got a hope, the culture of Iraq and the Iraqi inheritance is to defend your land against attack, and to go on doing so until he is no more, Iran as well, an Afghan offensive would cost the lives of thousands, then see how willing the coalition of the willing is then… They are fine and easy to get along with when it is Afghan or Iraqi civilians that are being blown to pieces every day, but when casualty lists hit the streets and people realize that they have been had.

The wars in Afghan and Iraq are based on sham testimony and false evidence.

The same forces got the South wiped out in the US Civil War… they hyped up the military hyperbole, and used emotive rhetoric more suited to football rivalries than political discourse to start a war that the South could not win, and for which military defeat would mean absolute and catastrophic ruin, which is what happened.

The best and most scholarly account of the American Civil War is by Winston Churchill, it is contained as a book within a book, the larger tome being his History of the English Speaking People, which brought him the Nobel Prize for literature in about 1933.

The Confederacy was defeated from within by hot head infiltrators whose war war war, mentality propelled the South toward catastrophic and disastrous defeat… the attack on Fort Sumter was a strategic blunder of the first magnitude. That having been said, there appears to be reason to believe that the attack on Fort Sumter was an in out job, like 911, and so the story goes, Pearl Harbor.

Suspect the J’s as usual, and for Napoleon’s sudden rise from obscurity prior to his genocidal rampages thru Europe and Africa as well, then to put him away the J’s got him to attack Russia, to kill Russians and Frenchmen in line with the Talmudist hate hate hate ideal.

Now they want America to attack Iran, to suffer the same fate as the South did during and after the Civil War, and Napoleon and Hitler, both Zionist protégés did in Russia.

[bigron]

Ignoring a war in northern Iraq?  (with IRAN)
 
 By Ahmed Janabi
 http://english.aljazeera.net/focus/theiraqinvasionfiveyearson/2008/07/2008716820436773.html
 
Villages in Iraq's northern mountain areas have been shelled by Iranian forces since 2003[GALLO/GETTY] 


Iraqi MPs and politicians have accused the Baghdad government of tolerating an Iranian military campaign on Iraq's northern territories.

They say the Iranian military has been bombing remote Iraqi Kurdish villages along the northern Iraq-Iran  borders for months under the pretext that Iranian Kurdish rebels from the party of Free Life of Kurdistan (PJAK) are taking shelter there.

Hussain al-Jaff, a member of the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP), told Al Jazeera: "The Kurdish people denounce the media blackout imposed on this topic. We really do not understand how the Iraqi government remains silent at bombing its own national soil."

Mohamad al-Talabani, Al Jazeera’s correspondent in northern Iraq says the central government's inaction has fuelled mounting feelings of bitterness and resenment among Iraqi Kurds.

"The People here are very upset ... ordinary Kurds are questioning why there was swift rebuke of Turkey's attacks on Kurdish activists in northern Iraq, but the world is now silent when Iran is doing the same thing," he said.

Since 2006, Iranian forces have shelled the village of Haj Omran, 5km inside the Iraqi-Iranian, as well as Marado, Razda and Dolakoka townships.

Sami al-Askari, a Shia Arab MP from al-Islah al-Watani (National Reform) Movement told Al Jazeera Iraqi sovereignty must be excercised throughout the country.

"I cannot understand why the government has not raised this issue with Iran," he said.

Iranian shelling

Kurdish sources have told Al Jazeera that some 200 villages located in the Qalat Dizza, Qandil and Himreen mountains, 120km south of Kirkuk and near the border with Iran, have been shelled since December 2007.

In April 2008, Iranian artillery fired at villages located in the Kinera, Sawen, and Mamenda mountains.

Iranian media reported at the time that a senior commander with an outlawed breakaway faction of the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) had been killed in the shelling.

Iranian officials have told the media that they are pursuing "terrorists" belonging to several Kurdish separatists groups, including the PKK, inside Iraq.

In late April, Iranian and Turkish officials met in Ankara to hammer out an anti-terrorism policy geared towards combatting Kurdish groups in northern Iraq.

The Turkish military has been carrying out cross-border missions and air raids targeting the PKK inside Iraq since February 2008.

Devastated villages

During the Iran-Iraq war (1980-1988) the northern strip of mountains, known as the Zagros range, nestled along the border was heavily shelled by both sides.

Following punitive sanctions slapped on Iraq for its 1990 invasion of Kuwait, the bombed villages could not be rebuilt and lacked vital infrastructure.

Al-Talabani says the continued shelling has halted any reconstruction projects that were initiated since 2003 and has forced many villagers to flee their homes to seek refuge in nearby Sulaimaniyah.

Al-Jaff says the government needs to immediately intervene and alleviate the plight of the Kurdish refugees.

"What really bothers the Kurds and various politicians is the government's negligence towards the displaced and the destroyed infrastructure. Nothing whatsoever has been done for them. They are poor villagers; they work for their bread day by day," he told Al Jazeera.

Al Jazeera contacted Ali al-Dabagh, the Iraqi government spokesman, but his office said he was unavailable for comment.

Labid Abbawi, Iraq's deputy foreign minister, told Al Jazeera he could not immediately provide comment on why the Iraqi government had not protested Iranian shelling in the north.

Silence

Dhafir al-Ani, a Sunni Arab MP from al-Tawafuq (the Accordance) bloc accused the ruling coalition of blocking efforts to raise the issue in parliament because of its close links to Iran.

"Those MPs representing Abd al-Aziz al-Hakim of the Islamic Revolution in Iraq and other parties close to Iran have used their influence to prevent this issue from being raised in the parliament," he told Al Jazeera.

Hassan al-Sinaid, an MP from the Islamic Revolution in Iraq party, told Al Jazeera he declined to comment.
 

[bigron]

Peace Advocates Act to Stop War With Iran

United for Peace and Justice Member Groups Ask Congress:

"What Are You Doing to Stop the Bush Administration From Attacking Iran?"

http://www.commondreams.org/news2008/0718-04.htm
 
WASHINGTON - July 18 - Member groups of United for Peace and Justice will hold actions across the United States July 19-21 to press Congress to take action to prevent war with Iran.

In a major policy shift, the Bush administration will send a senior official to participate in international talks with Iran this weekend. This marks a retreat from the previous White House position that it would not talk face-to-face with Iran until Tehran suspended its nuclear enrichment program. It shows that pressure to diplomatically engage Iran rather than threaten military attack is making a difference.

From July 19-21, groups around the country are participating in the Days of Action Against War on Iran. Monday, July 21, will also be a national "Call Congress Day." This will coincide with a lobby day in Washington, DC, organized by Peace Action.

"This is no time for complacency. Rather, it's time to make our call for NO WAR even louder. And it's time for members of Congress who have said they oppose a third war to tell us what they are going to do to stop it," said Leslie Cagan, National Coordinator of United for Peace and Justice.

Before the decision to participate in the international talks, we'd seen a new escalation of threats from the Bush administration and Israel to attack Iran before President Bush leaves office. The London Sunday Times reported that President Bush had told the Israeli government that he may be prepared to approve a military strike on Iranian nuclear facilities if negotiations with Iran break down. Meanwhile, more than 200 members of Congress have co-sponsored a resolution (HConRes 362) calling on the Bush administration to prohibit Iran from importing gas, an action that would require a military blockade of Iran to carry out.

In Washington, DC:

Monday, July 21: Peace Action Lobby Day -- We'll be lobbying in senatorial and congressional offices for direct diplomacy with Iran. Lobby Day Headquarters Monday at UnitedMethodistCenter, 100 Maryland Ave NE. Contact: Alfred Meyer, ameyer@peace-action.org; 301-565-4050 ext. 324.

Monday, July 21, 5pm: Protest the "Pastors' Dinner" at John Hagee's "Christians United for Israel" conference, with Peace Action, Code Pink, and the Washington Peace Center. CUFI, with its close allies Joe Lieberman and AIPAC (both speaking at the conference), is pushing for U.S. confrontation with Iran. 9th and Massachusetts NW, across from the Convention Center. Contact: Barbra Bearden, Peace Action, (301) 565-4050, ext. 330; Malachy Kilbride, Washington Peace Center, (202) 841-2230

National Days of Action Against War on Iran Calendar:
http://www.unitedforpeace.org/calendar.php?sortby=&caltype=58

United for Peace and Justice is the largest grassroots anti-war coalition in the country, consisting of more than 1,400 local and national groups throughout the United States, who have joined together to protest the immoral and disastrous Iraq War and oppose our government's policy of permanent warfare and empire-building. UFPJ has organized the largest anti-war demonstrations in both NYC and Washington, DC, over the past five years. For more details, go to www.unitedforpeace.org.
###
 

[bigron]

New York Times Op-Ed: Israel Will Attack Iran

By Steven D., Booman Tribune
Posted on July 18, 2008, Printed on July 19, 2008

http://www.alternet.org/bloggers/http://www.boomantribune.com//91978/


Yes, you read my title correctly. Today's New York Times includes an op-ed piece by Benny Morris, a Professor of Middle Eastern history at Ben Gurion University. He claims Israel will most certainly attack Iran within the next 4 to 7 months, and if conventional weapons are unsuccessful to knock out Iran's nuclear program, than Israel will escalate to the use of nuclear weapons.

By all accounts Professor Morris is no Likudist or neoconservative stalking horse, but a leading figure among Israel's "New Historians" movement which has portrayed the history of the creation of Israel and the genesis of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in terms traditional Israeli historians deem revisionist and flawed because it claims to present a more balanced view of the history of the Palestinian conflict, one at odds with the traditional Israeli narrative of the "Palestinian Exodus" from Israel on the eve of the 1948 war.

All this as context for what is a deeply disturbing essay by Professor Morris, for his concerns cannot be brushed aside lightly as the ravings of a right wing Israeli figure, or as propaganda from someone connected to the current Israeli government. If accurate, the next President of the United States will face the beginning of his first term in office with a Middle East in flames with all that portends for the world. Here's Professor Morris in his own stark words describing the current situation as he sees it:


ISRAEL will almost surely attack Iran's nuclear sites in the next four to seven months -- and the leaders in Washington and even Tehran should hope that the attack will be successful enough to cause at least a significant delay in the Iranian production schedule, if not complete destruction, of that country's nuclear program. Because if the attack fails, the Middle East will almost certainly face a nuclear war -- either through a subsequent pre-emptive Israeli nuclear strike or a nuclear exchange shortly after Iran gets the bomb. [...]


But should Israel's conventional assault fail to significantly harm or stall the Iranian program, a ratcheting up of the Iranian-Israeli conflict to a nuclear level will most likely follow. Every intelligence agency in the world believes the Iranian program is geared toward making weapons, not to the peaceful applications of nuclear power. And, despite the current talk of additional economic sanctions, everyone knows that such measures have so far led nowhere and are unlikely to be applied with sufficient scope to cause Iran real pain, given Russia's and China's continued recalcitrance and Western Europe's (and America's) ambivalence in behavior, if not in rhetoric. Western intelligence agencies agree that Iran will reach the "point of no return" in acquiring the capacity to produce nuclear weapons in one to four years. [...]


Nonetheless, Israel, believing that its very existence is at stake -- and this is a feeling shared by most Israelis across the political spectrum -- will certainly make the effort. Israel's leaders, from Prime Minister Ehud Olmert down, have all explicitly stated that an Iranian bomb means Israel's destruction; Iran will not be allowed to get the bomb.


The best outcome will be that an Israeli conventional strike, whether failed or not -- and, given the Tehran regime's totalitarian grip, it may not be immediately clear how much damage the Israeli assault has caused -- would persuade the Iranians to halt their nuclear program, or at least persuade the Western powers to significantly increase the diplomatic and economic pressure on Iran.


But the more likely result is that the international community will continue to do nothing effective and that Iran will speed up its efforts to produce the bomb that can destroy Israel. The Iranians will also likely retaliate by attacking Israel's cities with ballistic missiles (possibly topped with chemical or biological warheads); by prodding its local clients, Hezbollah and Hamas, to unleash their own armories against Israel; and by activating international Muslim terrorist networks against Israeli and Jewish -- and possibly American -- targets worldwide (though the Iranians may at the last moment be wary of provoking American military involvement).


Such a situation would confront Israeli leaders with two agonizing, dismal choices. One is to allow the Iranians to acquire the bomb and hope for the best -- meaning a nuclear standoff, with the prospect of mutual assured destruction preventing the Iranians from actually using the weapon. The other would be to use the Iranian counterstrikes as an excuse to escalate and use the only means available that will actually destroy the Iranian nuclear project: Israel's own nuclear arsenal.

If this is the mindset of even a "revisionist" Israeli historian, a man who considers himself a member of the Israel's Left, than we are in a far more serious situation than previously thought. Perhaps Morris' account is mere bluster and sabre rattling. Perhaps, he is acting on behalf of those in Israel who desire to coerce the Bush administration into an attack on Iran. Perhaps. And perhaps the Times is allowing its Op-Ed pages to be used to further that propaganda effort. But we also have to consider that what Professor Morris is describing is an accurate assessment of Israel's intentions, and the mindset of a majority of its people regarding Iran.

Personally, I do not feel that Iran is as close to achieving a nuclear weapon as Professor Morris contends. Nor do I accept his statements that most "Western intelligence agencies" agree Iran will "pass the point of no return" within 1 to 4 years. Indeed, the last National Intelligence Assessment issued regarding Iran indicated that they abandoned their nuclear weapons program in 2003, and the head of the IAEA, Mohammed ElBaradei, has explicitly stated that his organization's inspectors have seen no evidence of any current nuclear weapons program, and that he sees no military solution to the concerns that the Western powers and Israel have regarding Iran's nuclear program. Any attack on Iran's nuclear facilities would be a "disaster" in his view.

Yet here we have a prominent member of the Israeli Left telling us that war between Iran and Israel is inevitable in the pages of the New York Times. One could hardly expect a more disheartening assessment of Israel's aggressive intentions toward Iran if this op-ed had been written by Prime Minister Olmert or his Defense Minister, Ehud Barak, who last week publicly stated that:


"Israel is the strongest country in the region and has proved in the past that it doesn't hesitate to act when its vital security interests are at stake."


His comment was an apparent allusion to Israel's daring 1981 airstrike that destroyed Iraq's unfinished nuclear reactor. Several top Israelis have publicly argued for a similar strike to destroy Iran's budding nuclear ambitions before the country develops a nuclear arsenal.


Israel's military sent warplanes over the eastern Mediterranean for a large military exercise in June that U.S. officials described as a possible rehearsal for a strike on Iran's nuclear facilities.

Barak, as you may recall, is the former Prime Minister of Israel during the last years of President Clinton's second term, and the head of Israel's Labor Party. In this context, one can assume that prominent members of both the Left and the Right on the Israeli political spectrum are committed to war with Iran should the U.S. fail to act. And so long as George Bush is President, we can assume that the United States government will do nothing to stop an Israeli air and missile strike against Iran, even if it now appears less likely that US military forces will be given that task by the Bush administration. Indeed, Bush has recently indicated he supports any possible military action which Israel might choose to take with respect to Iran:


President George W Bush has told the Israeli government that he may be prepared to approve a future military strike on Iranian nuclear facilities if negotiations with Tehran break down, according to a senior Pentagon official.


Despite the opposition of his own generals and widespread scepticism that America is ready to risk the military, political and economic consequences of an airborne strike on Iran, the president has given an "amber light" to an Israeli plan to attack Iran's main nuclear sites with long-range bombing sorties, the official told The Sunday Times.


"Amber means get on with your preparations, stand by for immediate attack and tell us when you're ready," the official said. But the Israelis have also been told that they can expect no help from American forces and will not be able to use US military bases in Iraq for logistical support.

If you get the sense that Israel and the Bush administration are playing with fire, you wouldn't be the only one. Doubtless, domestic political considerations may have something to do with Bush's posturing. The Republican candidate to replace him as President, and the one most likely to continue Bush's own policies in the Middle East, John McCain, is trailing Barack Obama in the national polls, and his candidacy is not enthusiastically supported by many Republicans. The threat of another military crisis in the Middle East could change that dynamic, however, as McCain's only strength from a political standpoint, his former military experience is still perceived by a plurality of the American public as making him more qualified than Obama for the role of Commander-in-Chief of America's armed forces.

As for Israel's current government, they rightly perceive that a President Obama would be much less likely to support independent military action by Israel, at least not until direct negotiations with Iran and the United States had proved futile and there was clear evidence that Iran was nearing the completion of a nuclear weapon. Even then, the appetite of many in America as to Iran's acquisition of a small nuclear arsenal can perhaps best be summed up by the views expressed by former CENTCOM commander General John Abizaid:


"I believe that we have the power to deter Iran, should it become nuclear," he said, referring to the theory that Iran would not risk a catastrophic retaliatory strike by using a nuclear weapon against the United States.


"There are ways to live with a nuclear Iran," Abizaid said in remarks at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a think tank. "Let's face it, we lived with a nuclear Soviet Union, we've lived with a nuclear China, and we're living with (other) nuclear powers as well."

The current Secretary of Defense, Robert Gates, expressed similar comments at his confirmation hearing before the Senate when he stated under questioning from Senator Graham (R-SC) that he believed Iran would not use any nuclear weapons it acquired to attack Israel:


Asked by Senator Lindsey Graham if he believed that Iran would consider using nuclear weapons against Israel, he replied:


"I don't know that they would do that, Senator. ... And I think that, while they are certainly pressing, in my opinion, for nuclear capability, I think that they would see it in the first instance as a deterrent. They are surrounded by powers with nuclear weapons: Pakistan to their east, the Russians to the north, the Israelis to the west and us in the Persian Gulf."

Unfortunately, there is no clear sign that Gates' views dominate the current debate within the White House. And if there is one thing we've learned from enduring this incompetent fool of a "Decider" these last 7and 1/2 years, it is this: he prefers military action to diplomacy. At the moment there are small signs that the Bush administration is leaning toward increasing Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice's pursuit of a diplomatic settlement with Iran over the Iranian nuclear program. However, I wouldn't trust this President to carry through with this new found affection for diplomacy. When push comes to shove, I see him as more likely to give Israel it's long awaited "green light" to attack Iran before the end of this year. To assume otherwise is a fool's hope, at best.


© 2008 Booman Tribune All rights reserved.
View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/bloggers/http://www.boomantribune.com//91978/

[bigron]

July 19, 2008

Seismic Shift or Non-Decision by Bush on Iran?
 
by Gareth Porter


The US decision to send the State Department's third-ranking official to sit in on the meeting between European Union foreign affairs chief Javier Solana and Iran's nuclear negotiator Saeed Jalili Saturday has been hailed as a major diplomatic breakthrough, but it is too soon to pop the champagne cork.

The caveats associated with decision and the circumstances surrounding it suggest that it may be yet another in a string of non-decisions on diplomatic talks and other Iran policy issues by George W. Bush over the past three years.

The New York Times led news media interpretation of the announcement by calling it a "double shift in the policy struggle". That was a reference to the administration's previous position that the United States would not talk with Iran until it had suspended uranium enrichment and to past general disparagement of talks with Iran by the six global powers – Britain, France, China, Russia, the United States and Germany.

William J. Burns, the undersecretary of State for political affairs, who will join the Geneva meeting, called it a "major change" in US policy. That is the also the line embraced by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and other advocates of diplomatic engagement in Washington, who are eager to convey to Iran a new flexibility on the part of the administration.

The Guardian went even further, saying that the presence of Burns at the meeting "suggests that a deal is in the offing".

But viewing the Burns trip to Geneva as a decisive breakthrough on Iran certainly exaggerates the victory of Rice and Gates over Vice President Dick Cheney, who wants to steer US policy away from any serious diplomatic negotiations.

White House spokesperson Dana Perino and State Department spokesperson Sean McCormack both described the Burns participation as "a one-time" offer. McCormack said no further meetings were planned unless Iran suspended its uranium enrichment program.

McCormack also said Burns's role in the meeting would be limited to one of listening rather than actually negotiating. That combination of a one-time participation and the absence of any negotiating brief sharply reduces the diplomatic significance of the decision.

The decision falls short of what had been planned by the six powers, also known as the P5+1, last spring. They had agreed informally on a "freeze or freeze" proposal that would allow preliminary talks to take place involving the United States and Iran on the nuclear program over a six week period.

Diplomatic sources have described the "freeze for freeze" as requiring that Iran would not add any more centrifuges and the six powers would not act to increase its sanctions during the six-week period.

According to an EU source with direct knowledge of Solana's meetings with Iranian foreign minister Manouchehr Mottaki and nuclear negotiator Jalili, on Jun. 14, however, what Solana presented was different from the "freeze for freeze" proposal that had been discussed among the six powers.

The source was not authorized to explain the difference between the two proposals, but it now appears that Solana could not present the original freeze for freeze proposal on behalf of all six powers because the most important actor of all – the United States – had objected.

When State Department spokesman McCormack was first asked about an EU "freeze for freeze" proposal on Jul. 3 and whether it was acceptable to the United States, he twice avoided addressing it altogether. But when a reporter asked in regard to the proposed informal talks, "You do it then via the EU-3 [Britain, France and Germany], right, not the P5+1?" McCormack answered, "Via Mr. Solana".

When a reporter asked whether he could "flatly state" that it was Bush's policy to refuse to sit down with the Iranians unless they stopped the enrichment program completely, McCormack made no effort to nuance his answer. "That is our policy," he replied.

The United States was thus insisting that it would not participate in the six weeks of informal talks based on the "freeze for freeze" proposal. That position would defeat the main point of holding preliminary informal talks, which was to get around the existing barrier to substantive negotiations on the Iranian nuclear program – the demand for a complete suspension of enrichment by Iran.

The Iranian decision to accept the Solana formula for informal talks was conveyed to Solana by a letter from Mottaki and a phone call from Jalili on Jul. 4. But when Solana announced a meeting with Jalili in Geneva to take place on Jul. 19, he was carefully ambiguous about what other states would be involved, if any.

It is now clear that this ambiguity was necessary, because he was waiting for the results of Rice's efforts to get Bush to agree to Solana formula.

When Bush finally did agree to the participation of Burns in the Jul. 19 meeting, it was on terms that were very different from what Solana had proposed to Tehran. The limitation of the US commitment to a single meeting and the tight constraints imposed on Burns suggest that the decision was heavily influenced by Cheney, who has had overall control of Iran policy since 2005.

Those constraints on the US diplomatic role in the coming talks with Iran are reminiscent of series of Bush decisions on diplomatic engagement with Tehran that were either tightly circumscribed, or reversed altogether because of Cheney's intervention with Bush.

In March 2006, Bush gave his approval to talks with Iran on the crisis in Iraq, which had been proposed by US Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad. Rice had given her blessing to the talks when they were first announced, but by the time she arrived in Sydney, Australia, she had been informed that such talks were unacceptable to someone in the administration. In May, she was told by Khalilzad that "it wasn't the right time to meet" with Iran.

In May 2006, Rice was working with the other five members of the coalition to craft a proposal aimed at signaling that they were willing to deal with Iran's security and regional political and security interests. But language to that end proposed by the Europeans was taken out at the insistence of the United States, reflecting Cheney's determination to ensure that the process failed to reach agreement.

Bush also wavered and reversed a decision he had originally made in late 2005 to negotiate with Sunni insurgent groups. Khalilzad actually met with the Sunni insurgent leaders seven times over a period of six weeks beginning in January 2006. But Bush ordered a halt to the negotiations after senior officials objected, even though the Sunnis had offered a draft peace proposal.

Any sign of US interest in negotiations has encouraged Iranian leaders to be more forthcoming on talks. Even Rice's willingness to sign the six-power incentives document was reported by the Times to have "visibly stunned" Iranian Foreign Minister Mottaki. So Iran may well seek to exploit Burns's presence in the meeting to offer a new proposal for a deal in order to extend the talks.

But against Bush's history of pulling back from negotiating decisions under Cheney's influence, the approval of the Burns trip to Geneva for a single meeting with Iran's negotiator seems more like a Bush non-decision on Iran policy than it does a fundamental policy shift.

(Inter Press Service)
 

Find this article at:
http://www.antiwar.com/porter/?articleid=13163 
 

[bigron]

July 19, 2008


I say Bomb Eye-ran!
 
by Aurangzeb Qureshi


Attempting to disarm Iran's nuclear enrichment program diplomatically has proven futile. Even with the noose tightening around its neck through sanctions, and joint American-Israeli military exercises combined with covert CIA operations being conducted close to its border, Iran still has the sheer audacity to tell America that it will defend itself in the case of an invasion. How dare this 3000-year-old civilization threaten the world's declining 60-year hegemonic superpower? How dare this country stand up for itself after watching America slaughter thousands in neighboring Iraq? It is time to bomb these people into oblivion so the West can once again overthrow its regime and replace it with one that will conform, abide by, and slave to its master. It's time these people got with the times. It is upon America and the rest of the "civilized world" to prevent another 9/11.
I say Bomb Eye-ran!

The inherently evil Ahmadinejad brought it upon himself by demanding oil compensation in euros. Oil has always been bought and sold in American currency. So what if the dollar is at rock-bottom due to America's colonial misadventures? So what if the Iranians want full compensation for a resource that they own? So what if the Iranians want to circumvent American restrictions on banks that engage in business with Iran? These greedy Iranians have to understand that only America can act in its best interest and everybody else has to act in the best interests of America. As long as Iran exists, so does the potential for another 9/11.

I say Bomb Eye-ran!

What are these Iranians thinking by enriching uranium? Everyone knows that only the U.S. and Israel can have weapons of mass destruction, because they have the God-given right to do so. Any other state that even attempts to acquire such technology, even for peaceful purposes, is doing so because it wants to destroy western civilization. Sure, Iran is constantly threatened by Israel, shares a border with nuclear Pakistan and is surrounded by two American client regimes in Afghanistan and Iraq, but that does not matter. If Iran cooperated, did not nationalize its oil industry in 1953, and did not overthrow a brutal US-installed dictator in 1979, then it would not be where it is today. Iran does not have a right to meddle in its own affairs, only Britain, America, and Israel do. If this magnanimous, righteous, and noble trio does not take matters into their own hands, these evil-doers will unleash another attack like 9/11.

I say Bomb Eye-ran!

Ahmadinejad stated that he wanted to wipe Israel off the map so the only logical course of action is that the U.S. and Israel destroy Iran first. In reality he may have said he wanted to "wipe Zionism from the page of history," but those devious Iranians just like to mask their threats in colorful language. Iran's constant meddling in Iraq, support of terrorist organizations like Hezbollah, and combative rhetoric of self-defense is highly disconcerting. If Iran acquired nuclear weapons, they will invade neighboring states and try to spread their Shiite revolution across the Muslim world and into Europe. Maybe present-day Iran has not invaded a foreign state since the Greco-Persian wars before the birth of Christ, and perhaps the US and Israel have a more profound history of invasion and occupation. However, that is all irrelevant because the U.S. and Israel are believers in democracy and freedom. Those who committed the heinous acts of 9/11 despised democracy and freedom.

I say Bomb Eye-ran!

America and Israel can easily target Iran's nuclear reactors that are spread throughout the country. Iran will not see this as an act of aggression because the strikes will be "strategic" and this will minimize any "collateral damage" just like in Iraq and Afghanistan. Their threat to target American interests and to further destabilize the Middle East is hogwash. Their threat to close the Strait of Hormuz, through which 30 per cent of the world's oil passes, is baseless and tantamount to political suicide. If Iran does become that desperate, oil may rise to $500 dollars a barrel and the people may suffer, but it will definitely make the American oligarchy much happier. In the end that is all that matters.

And most important of all, nobody will have the gall to execute another 9/11, because the concept of "blowback" does not really exist.

I say Bomb Eye-ran and let freedom ring.
 

 
Find this article at:
http://www.antiwar.com/orig/qureshi.php?articleid=13159 

[Optimus]

US sets nuclear deadline for Iran
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/in_depth/7515589.stm 

Video: Javier Solana on his hopes for an answer from Iran
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/7515625.stm

Iran must decide between confrontation and co-operation in the dispute over its nuclear plans, the US has warned.

At talks in Geneva, envoys from the US, EU and UN asked Iran to suspend its uranium enrichment in return for a pledge not to introduce new sanctions.

]Iran gave no guarantees it would halt its activities, so the diplomats gave Tehran two weeks to provide an answer.

The meeting was the first time US and Iranian officials have held face-to-face talks on the nuclear issue.

Senior US official William Burns was present at the Geneva talks - although he made no public comment.

Instead, state department spokesman Sean McCormack issued a strongly-worded statement in Washington.

"We hope the Iranian people understand that their leaders need to make a choice between co-operation, which would bring benefits to all, and confrontation, which can only lead to further isolation," he said.

'New opportunity'

Mr McCormack added that Mr Burns had delivered a "clear simple message" that Washington was "serious" about the incentives package but that it would only negotiate with Iran if it upheld its side of the deal.

Diplomats had hoped that Iran would respond to a so-called "freeze-for-freeze" offer, under which a freeze of Iran's uranium enrichment programme at its current levels would be matched by a Western pledge not to strengthen sanctions on Tehran.

"It was a constructive meeting, but still we didn't get the answer to our questions," EU envoy Javier Solana told reporters.
 
"We hope very much we get the answer and we hope it will be done in a couple of weeks," he said.

Mr Solana said he had agreed with Iran's chief negotiator, Saeed Jalili, to speak again either by telephone or personally in two weeks.

The BBC's Jon Leyne in Tehran says Iran is interested in the offer but it is unclear whether there are divisions in the leadership or the Iranians are playing for time.

Mr Jalili said he had put forward many positive ideas and he urged Western powers not turn away from negotiations.

"This package we have proposed contains a number of possibilities. In a nutshell, it is a new opportunity which should not be lost."

But doubt was cast over the value of the talks, after a member of the Iranian delegation said there was "no chance" of a freeze on the uranium-enrichment programme.

Iran says its nuclear facilities are designed to meet its energy needs, denying that it has a weapons programme.

But Tehran's continued activity is defying UN Security Council demands to halt enrichment.

Rising tensions

In addition to the EU, Iranian and US envoys, the talks in Geneva's city hall were attended by representatives from Britain, China, France, Germany and Russia.

The US and Iran have had no diplomatic relations since the 1979 Iranian Revolution and the taking of hostages at the US embassy in Tehran.

Formal contact between the two countries has been extremely limited, though last year they met at ambassadorial level to discuss security in Iraq.

The meeting came after weeks of rising tensions in the Middle East.

The Iranians test-fired missiles last week, and a series of threats and counter-threats between Iran and Israel has been watched nervously in the West.

[Eidolon]

Exactly what has Iran done to threaten me or the security of my nation?  It seems rather clear to me that the driving force behind this is the Israel Lobby.

[Boubear]

It's interesting, there had been speculations that a war would begin around August 1st, because it's a new moon, and the skies will be dark. 

[Optimus]

Washington Sets Iran Nuke Deadline
http://www.allheadlinenews.com/articles/7011667322
July 20, 2008 9:32 a.m. EST

Komfie Manalo - AHN News Writer

Washington (AHN) - The Bush administration on Sunday warned the Islamic Republic of Iran to decide between cooperation and confrontation over its nuclear program within two weeks.

The warning came after the high-level six-nation talks in Geneva, Switzerland represented by envoys from the European Union, United Nations, United States and Iran failed to reach substantial progress with EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana saying Tehran failed to answer the Western nations doubts.

Envoys from China, Russia, Britain, France and Germany also attended the negotiations.

Solana told reporters after emerging from the talks that the meeting was constructive, but didn't supply answers to their questions, which they hope they will get soon.

Solana and Iran's' main negotiator Saeed Jalili both agreed to communicate again either by telephone or meet personally in two weeks for more dialogs.

In Tehran, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said on Sunday that any discussion concerning Iran's nuclear programs was "a step forward."

Senior U.S. official William Burns represented Washington in the meeting, but he refused to issue any statement. However, U.S. state department spokesman Sean McCormack threatened Iran on the apparent "lack of progress" of the talks.

McCormack said in a statement, "We hope the Iranian people understand that their leaders need to make a choice between co-operation, which would bring benefits to all, and confrontation, which can only lead to further isolation."

During the talks, the diplomats presented a "freeze-for-freeze" formula wherein Iran is expected to freeze its uranium enrichment program at its current level and Western nations will end all sanctions on Tehran.

McCormack said the U.S. is serious in offering the incentive package to the Islamic nation but it needed to respond to the offer soon.

Analysts say Tehran seems to show acceptance of the package, although there are speculations some divisions in the Iranian leadership are still undecided and wants to play time.

[Optimus]

Iran faced with nuclear deadline
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/a759609e-5657-11dd-8686-000077b07658.html
By Stephen Fidler in London

Published: July 20 2008 13:40 | Last updated: July 20 2008 13:40

Iran has been given just two weeks to respond to a big-power initiative aimed at resolving a growing crisis over its disputed nuclear programme after a high level meeting in Geneva made little progress towards resolving the issue.

The meeting on Saturday between high level officials from the US, Britain, China, France, Germany and Russia with Saeed Jalili, Iran’s chief nuclear negotiator, provided few clues about whether Iran was seeking a diplomatic solution to the crisis, western officials said.

The meeting provided the venue for the highest level meeting between US and Iranian officials during the Bush administration. It was attended by William Burns, the third ranking State department official, who addressed Mr Jalili directly during the meeting but did not meet or talk to him separately.

Javier Solana, the European Union’s high representative who chaired the talks, said Mr Jalili had given no clear answer to the initiative aimed at breaking the deadlock. “We did not get a ‘yes’ or a ‘no’,” he said. He said Iran would be allowed a further two weeks to respond and then officials said action would restart on fashioning further United Nations and EU sanctions.

In order to find a way in to negotiations, the big powers offered to suspend moves to obtain further sanctions at the United Nations in return for a commitment by the Iranians not to expand any further their uranium enrichment programme. This phase, known as freeze-for-freeze, would last for six weeks – after which proper negotiations would start, but only after Iran had suspended all enrichment activity.

The Iranians responded on Saturday by presenting a two-page document that diplomats said did not directly address the proposals. Instead, the document requested three further meetings with Mr Solana before going to the next stage of talks and proposed general cooperation on a variety of fronts including energy, drugs and stability in the Middle East.

It did not address either the “freeze-for-freeze” suggestion or the question of whether Iran would suspend uranium enrichment, diplomats said.

Sean McCormack, State department spokesman, said Iranian leaders “need to make a choice between cooperation, which would bring benefits to all, and confrontation, which can only lead to further isolation”.

A British official said: “The talks were a missed opportunity. The six had come to Geneva and wanted the Iranians to engage with a very positive proposal and we were disappointed and frustrated that we didn’t get that engagement.”

However, diplomats said the language used by Mr Jalili was positive, he did not reject the proposals and accepted that Tehran had to respond explicitly to them. This was, said one, “a small positive, not a negative”.

Western officials said Iranian diplomats had in discussions with several governments encouraged the idea that there was an intense debate within the regime in Tehran about how to respond to the initiative. There was disappointment was heightened by the fact that the Geneva meeting came at Tehran’s request.

Mr Jalili’s language during the meeting was “flowery and repetitive in the extreme”, said one diplomat, who said it took almost two hours before he brought out the Iranian document.

The front presented by the six was united, several officials said, with one adding that Sergey Kislyak, the Russian representative, “became at one point the spokesman for the six”.

A senior European diplomat said “there was no basic correspondence with the ideas” put forward by the big powers. “I don’t think the Iranians calibrated rightly the meaning of having direct American involvement, the work behind the proposal or the expectations that the Iranians themselves had created,” the diplomat said.

[Truth Warrior]

How do I get Friday's podcast to the Alex Jones show?

Where is the New topic/thread button?

[Optimus]

Sunday, July 20, 2008  
Iran nuclear talks fall flat
Bush sent top U.S. official
http://www.telegram.com/article/20080720/NEWS/807200407/1116
By Elaine Sciolino THE NEW YORK TIMES

GENEVA— International talks on Iran’s nuclear ambitions ended in deadlock yesterday, despite the Bush administration’s decision to reverse policy and send a senior U.S. official to the table for the first time.

The presence of William J. Burns, the undersecretary of state for political affairs, represented one of the most important encounters between Iran and the United States since relations were severed after Iran’s seizure of the American Embassy in 1979. It came as part of a moment of rare unity among the negotiating partners — the United States, France, Britain, Germany, Russia and China — who pressed Iran to accept a compromise.

Iran responded with a written document that failed to address the key issue: international demands that it stop enriching uranium. And Iranian diplomats reiterated before the talks that they considered that issue non-negotiable.  


Specifically, the world powers wanted Iran to accept a formula known as “freeze-for-freeze” to break the deadlock, under which Iran would not add to its nuclear program, and the United States and other nations would not seek new sanctions for six weeks to pave the way for formal negotiations.

The formula was originally offered to Iran last year and presented again last month as part of a new proposal ultimately to give Iran economic and political incentives if it stops producing enriched uranium.

Officials involved in yesterday’s negotiations said that when they repeatedly pressed the Iranians to say whether they could accept the idea, the question was evaded every time.

“We still didn’t get the answer we were looking for,” the European Union foreign policy chief, Javier Solana, said in a news conference after several hours of talks, held in Geneva’s City Hall.

Solana reiterated an earlier deadline, given before the talks, that the Iranians had two weeks to formally respond to the proposal.

At the news conference, Saeed Jalili, Iran’s chief negotiator, refused to answer whether Iran would accept a freeze, however temporary, of its uranium enrichment program, but called the negotiating process a “very beautiful endeavor” with a result that he hoped would eventually be “beautiful to behold.”

Burns did not speak privately with Jalili.

In a brief intervention in the morning meeting, he said that the United States was serious in its support for the six-power process and serious that Iran must suspend its production of enriched uranium, the State Department said.

He told his negotiating partners after the talks that the United States would push for new punitive sanctions at the U.N. Security Council in September, one participant in the meeting said.

Yesterday’s meeting in Geneva was arguably the most important public encounter between an Iranian and an American official in about 30 years.

The meeting was the highest-level meeting between the two countries during the Bush administration, which once branded Iran part of an “axis of evil” and has not ruled out military action against Iran because of its nuclear ambitions.

It comes as the Bush administration, in its final months, has told some of its closest allies that the United States was moving forward with a plan to establish an American diplomatic presence in Tehran for the first time since the rupture in bilateral relations.

For some, the Americans have made a diplomatic gesture with Burns’ participation at a moment that is hard to understand. America’s negotiating partners, particularly Britain, had wanted an American presence when they traveled to Tehran last month to present an enhanced package of incentives. That moment, officials said, would have been both meaningful and more logical.

Instead, Burns came to the table at a time when the Iranians were giving their reply, and there had never been a strong signal that it was going to be different from the past.

Despite the shift in America’s willingness to talk, one point of policy clearly has not changed: the Bush administration wants to avoid the impression that it is negotiating with Iran before it suspends its production of enriched uranium, which can be used to make electricity or fuel bombs.

Even the subject of a joint photograph was one of dispute. The only photo accepted by the American side was one with all parties at the table. The Americans objected to the idea of a photo of Solana and Jalili at a joint news conference with Burns and the other participants standing behind them.

Complicating the diplomacy was the fact that before yesterday’s talks began, the six powers were not united on a joint strategy on how to proceed. The American delegation had told its partners that Burns’ appearance was a one-time event and that Iran had two weeks to decide whether to accept the “freeze-for-freeze” idea.

Germany, Russia and China, by contrast, argued that there should be time to explore the negotiating track with Iran.
 

[Optimus]

Iran has two-week deadline for nuclear answer
http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5gsh8ayhpc3RDFGJMHSRd2MobGrgg
6 hours ago

TEHRAN (AFP) — Iran was on Sunday facing a two-week deadline to give a final answer to world powers seeking a breakthrough in the nuclear crisis, after talks with the EU foreign policy chief ended in stalemate.

Iran's top nuclear negotiator Saeed Jalili and EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana hailed their latest talks in Geneva on Saturday as "constructive" but Solana lamented that Tehran had still not given a final response.

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad described the talks as a "step forward" in the nuclear standoff, which has raised fears of regional conflict and sent oil prices spiralling.

Solana, who presented Iran with a major package aimed at ending the standoff on behalf of world powers last month, said he was waiting for a decision from Tehran on an initial deal to start pre-negotiations.

This would see world powers promising not to impose further UN Security Council resolutions against Tehran, in exchange for Iran not installing any more uranium-enriching centrifuges, he said.

"We have not got an answer to the most important issue... we are looking forward to an answer to these questions in a couple of weeks," said Solana.

Russia's deputy foreign minister Sergei Kisliak, who attended the talks, was quoted by the Ria-Novosti news agency as saying that he too expected a response from Iran in two weeks.

"During his visit to Tehran, Mr Solana presented a text on the framework of negotiations. We have examined this proposal," said Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki in apparent reference to the so-called "freeze-for-freeze" offer.

In a major development, the talks were also attended by the third most senior diplomat from the United States, the first time Washington has had direct contact over the nuclear standoff with Tehran.

However the United States warned Iran would face "confrontation" -- an implicit warning of further sanctions -- if it failed to suspend uranium enrichment, which the West fears could be used to make a nuclear weapon.

"We hope the Iranian people understand that their leaders need to make a choice between cooperation, which would bring benefits to all, and confrontation, which can only lead to further isolation," said State Department spokesman Sean McCormack.

He said the US envoy at the talks, Undersecretary of State William Burns, delivered a "clear, simple message" that Iran must suspend enrichment to have negotiations with the United States.

Iran's press had been cheered by the US involvement in the talks, saying it showed Washington could no longer ignore the Islamic republic.

"The US participation in Geneva talks is both a challenge and an opportunity because if the other side has good will there is an increased possibility of reaching an agreement," said the moderate Kargozaran newspaper.

Iran has already been hit by three sets of UN sanctions over its refusal to suspend uranium enrichment, while the United States and European Union have imposed unilateral measures against its banks.

The main package presented by Solana in Tehran offers Iran full negotiations on technological, economic and political incentives if it suspends uranium enrichment.

Iranian officials have repeatedly said they have no intention of freezing enrichment -- the key demand of world powers for ending the crisis.

In a sign that Tehran believes the diplomatic efforts may take some time, Jalili compared the diplomatic process to weaving traditional Persian carpets where progress in some cases "moves forward in millimetres".

Ahmadinejad said that "all negotiations are a step forward and the negotiations yesterday were negotiations that were a step forward," the official IRNA news agency reported.

Iran denies seeking nuclear weapons, insisting that its programme is designed to provide energy for its growing population for the time when the OPEC member's reserves of fossil fuels run out.

[thadividedsky]

so essentialy we could be at war with Iran in about 2 weeks if Iran decides the co-operation package presented is inadequate? If we attack Iran before the Olympics, China could get very very angry and decide to go to the middle east and give us a good whooping in retaliation for raining on their parade. I don't believe Russia or China will stand by while we attack Iran and/or Pakistan. Are we really on the cusp of outright war? This is getting more serious by the day.

[Optimus]

Iran's Air Force to test new armaments in large-scale war games
http://en.rian.ru/world/20080720/114469021.html 
17:41 | 20/ 07/ 2008
   
 

TEHRAN, July 20 (RIA Novosti) - Iran will test new armaments in a major air exercise to be held soon, Iranian Defense Minister Mostafa Mohammad Najar said on Sunday.

"The Air Force exercises, Protectors of Velayat Air, which will be held soon, will test the newest armaments developed by specialists of the country's defense ministry," Najar said.

The Iranian defense minister said that Iranian specialists were developing combat hardware taking into account modern threats.

Iran successfully launched last week an upgraded Shahab-3 ballistic missile as part of the Great Prophet III military exercise in the Persian Gulf and the Strait of Hormuz, drawing a new wave of international criticism.

The Iranian missile tests came after the Israeli Air Force conducted military exercises involving over 100 fighters in early June. The exercises were widely seen as a 'dress rehearsal' for an attack on Iranian nuclear facilities.

Iran has reacted to rumors of an imminent attack by promising to deliver a "powerful blow" to any aggressor.

[Biggs]

so essentialy we could be at war with Iran in about 2 weeks if Iran decides the co-operation package presented is inadequate? If we attack Iran before the Olympics, China could get very very angry and decide to go to the middle east and give us a good whooping in retaliation for raining on their parade. I don't believe Russia or China will stand by while we attack Iran and/or Pakistan. Are we really on the cusp of outright war? This is getting more serious by the day.

it is more likely to be a case of two weeks and then further sanctions are put in place, and perhaps some sort of naval monitoring of iranian ships will be implemented, thus icnreasing the chances of clashes in the coming months.

the primary risk of an all out strike is currently from Israel, who could 'decide' to take unilateral action and then the US would be drawn into the crossfire.

[mike E. dangerously]

it is more likely to be a case of two weeks and then further sanctions are put in place, and perhaps some sort of naval monitoring of iranian ships will be implemented, thus icnreasing the chances of clashes in the coming months.

the primary risk of an all out strike is currently from Israel, who could 'decide' to take unilateral action and then the US would be drawn into the crossfire.

I agree,Biggs I think if a war between us and Iran breaks out it wolud be because Israel decided to launch a "premtive strike" Also,when you look at where Iran is on a map,it wolud mean the US wolud have total control on the remaining oil in the region and a way to cut off both Russia and China at the legs.

[Eidolon]

it is more likely to be a case of two weeks and then further sanctions are put in place, and perhaps some sort of naval monitoring of iranian ships will be implemented, thus icnreasing the chances of clashes in the coming months.

the primary risk of an all out strike is currently from Israel, who could 'decide' to take unilateral action and then the US would be drawn into the crossfire.

I have a good idea of how to solve the Middle East conflict.  Dump Israel.

[Brocke]

Oh man, you gotta love the Russians. I would give anything to see this read on Fox or CNN.


Condoleezza Rice's anti-Russian stance based on sexual problems

11.01.2006    Source:    URL: http://english.pravda.ru/russia/politics/9488-condoleezza-0

The US Secretary of State released a coarse anti-Russian statement. This is because she is a single woman who has no children

Condoleezza Rice, the US Secretary of State, openly criticized the Russian government in connection with the gas conflict with Ukraine. Ms. Rice used quite a trivial technique of psychological pressure, which is mostly practiced in the field of education. Condoleezza Rice

According to Condoleezza Rice, Russia's actions towards Ukraine did not characterize it as a respectable member of the Group of Eight. The statement from the high-ranking US official sounded like a reprimand from a strict babysitter that was teaching its baby to behave.

It goes without saying that the largest Eurasian power is not a baby. In addition, the geopolitical system in the world has undergone dramatic changes since the 1990s. The US Secretary of State, however, has seemingly lost the sense of time and reality. Ms. Rice's wish to exercise her political power became a surprise for both the Russian Ministry for Foreign Affairs and proponents of traditional liberal values.

Ms. Rice's criticism can be explained with the politician's personal peculiarities. Why is Condoleezza Rice so fond of her “strict teacher” role? Is it her technique that she follows to stay in the center of political attention? The leader of the Liberal and Democratic Party of Russia (LDPR), Vladimir Zhirinovsky, expressed his opinion on the matter in an exclusive interview with Pravda.Ru.

”Condoleezza Rice released a coarse anti-Russian statement. This is because she is a single woman who has no children. She loses her reason because of her late single status. Nature takes it all.

”Such women are very rough. They are all workaholics, public workaholics. They can be happy only when they are talked and written about everywhere: “Oh, Condoleezza, what a remarkable woman, what a charming Afro-American lady! How well she can play the piano and speak Russian! What a courageous, tough and strong female she is!

”This is the only way to satisfy her needs of a female. She derives pleasure from it. If she has no man by her side at her age, he will never appear. Even if she had a whole selection of men to choose from she would stay single because her soul and heart have hardened. Like Napoleon, Genghis Khan, Tamerlane, or Alexander the Great of Macedon Ms. Rice needs to fight and release tough public statements in global scale. She needs to be on top of the world.

”Ms. Rice was always interested in Russia. Now she needs to prove that she does have a certain amount of knowledge about Russia. Her goal number one is to observe USA's interest. If Russia rises, it means that the USA falls down. Europe has united, China is growing speedily and Russia possesses immense power in terms of fuel resources. The US administration cannot do anything about it.

”The USA experiences the crisis of ideological and moral values. Americans try to talk about positive family values, although the actual state of things is disastrous. That is why they need to protect themselves with such public personas as Condoleezza Rice who gains pleasure from political commotions.

”The civilized world needs to think about a decision when single politicians are not allowed to stay in power. This was a common practice in the Soviet political system. The matter of international relations is very subtle and exquisite. One single word or phrase may play an extremely important role in politics. This is not the place, where one can sublimate their personal sexual problems.

”Complex-prone women are especially dangerous. They are like malicious mothers-in-law, women that evoke hatred and irritation with everyone. Everybody tries to Vladimir Zhirinovskypart with such women as soon as possible. A mother-in-law is better than a single and childless political persona, though.

”This is really scary. Ms. Rice's personal complexes affect the entire field of international politics. This is an irritating factor for everyone, especially for the East and the Islamic world. When they look at her, they go mad.

”Condoleezza Rice needs a company of soldiers. She needs to be taken to barracks where she would be satisfied. On the other hand, she can hardly be satisfied because of her age. This is a complex. She needs to return to her university and teach students there. She could also deal with psychological analysis.

”The true reason of Ms. Rice's attack against Russia is very simple. Condoleezza Rice is a very cruel, offended woman who lacks men's attention. Releasing such stupid remarks gives her the feeling of being fulfilled. This is the only way for her to attract men's attention,” Vladimir Zhirinovsky said.

Yaroslava Krestovskaya

[Biggs]

I agree,Biggs I think if a war between us and Iran breaks out it wolud be because Israel decided to launch a "premtive strike" Also,when you look at where Iran is on a map,it wolud mean the US wolud have total control on the remaining oil in the region and a way to cut off both Russia and China at the legs.

yep the Great Game against Russia and China is becoming a larger factor than ever, indeed Webster tarpley reckons the neocons have lost the debate and the Trilateralist's under Bzrezinski are going to try and make peace with iran and then take on China and Russia in a series of global proxy/covert wars in Africa and Asia.

[bigron]

Fourth inning of the Iran-U.S. game 


20/07/2008 10:02:00 PM GMT
http://aljazeera.com/news/newsfull.php?newid=140339
 
 In the past weeks I was in Washington, I heard people speak more of Iran than of the Nationals baseball team.


By Rami G. Khouri

WASHINGTON - If the tensions in the Middle East between the American-Israeli-led side and the Iranian-Syrian-led side were a baseball game, this would be the fourth inning of a regulation nine-inning game. The players are warmed up, and have had a good look at each other’s strengths and weaknesses, and are now prepared to get to the nitty-gritty core of the contest.

The contest underway comprises arenas and means that transcend the simplistic but prevalent portrayal in Washington of Iran as a “problem” that must be resolved. Things are much more complex, and some of the subtle nuances are emerging for the first time.

In the past four weeks I have been in Washington, I have heard people speak more of Iran than of the local Nationals baseball team, because the Nationals are not playing well and the Iranians are. News coverage and discussions of the Iran-U.S. and Israel-Iran dynamics both shot up this week, due primarily to Iran’s testing of medium- and long-range missiles.

(Watch video: Iran tests more missiles)

Behind bellicose speculation of “Will the U.S./Israel attack Iran’s nuclear facilities?” and “How will Iran retaliate if it is attacked?” a much more interesting game of feints, hints and winks is taking place.

Earlier this week, the Iranian president said there would be no war with the U.S./Israel. The Iranian foreign minister said that Iran could consider the opening of a U.S. interests section in another embassy in Tehran. And, senior advisers to Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei -- the real power center in Iran -- made it clear that the latest offer from the major Western powers could be seen as basis for discussions and pre-negotiations of the nuclear issue and other matters.

U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said the United States would protect its allies and interests -- the foreign policy equivalent of being out in left field. Meanwhile, Iranian military officials said that they had their finger on the trigger at all times to protect their country.

What does all this add up to? I’d say it is a display of classic statecraft -- fighting and threatening while simultaneously sending signals of a desire to negotiate and make a deal. We are witnessing three simultaneous, important developments: The two loose camps linked to the United States and Iran have recognized that their respective power is limited, the other side will fight back fiercely, and they are roughly matched and tied on the ground throughout the Middle East. So, they both behave like normal countries for a change: fighting and talking at the same time.

An important step in this process was the testimony at a congressional hearing Wednesday by William Burns, the new Under Secretary for Political Affairs at the Department of State. Speaking on “The Strategic Challenge Posed by Iran” (“challenge” rather than “threat” -- nice touch, Bill), he made some important points that should be appreciated in the Middle East.

Noting that Iran was rather isolated and without many friends (among governments, at least) that could offer “strategic reassurance, vital investment, or a secure future in a globalized world,” he said that, “Our goal is to convince Iran to abandon any nuclear weapons ambitions, cease its support for terrorist groups, and become a constructive partner in the region….

“We have made clear that we do not object to Iran playing an important role in the region, commensurate with its legitimate interests and capabilities, but also that Iran is far more likely to achieve its desired level of influence if it works with the international community and its neighbors, rather than if it works against them…. The dual-track strategy to which we often refer in connection with the nuclear file, in fact, applies more broadly...

"Engaging in a diplomatic process on the broad range of issues at stake between our two states and working toward the restoration of Iran’s relationship with the international community would offer clear benefits for Iran and the Iranian people…

“We should not let the Iranian leadership entrench itself on the false pretext that it is under threat from the outside. We have committed repeatedly and at the highest levels to deal diplomatically with the Iranian regime….

"As the recent presentation of yet another P5+1 offer makes clear, we do not exclude engagement. We remain ready to talk to Tehran about its nuclear program and the array of other American concerns about Iranian policies, as well as to address any issues Iran chooses to raise in a diplomatic context. The Iranians are not completely closed off, and neither should the United States be. Careful consideration suggests that in certain contexts, we should have overlapping interests with Iran…”

There is not much new substance here, but a slightly revised style and tone. The traditionally arrogant and insulting American rhetoric has been toned down a touch. Washington seems more cognizant of Iran’s reasonable desire to protect its legitimate national interests in the Middle East, and is willing to discuss issues that Iran brings to the table. Sounds to me like the players are warmed up and this game is just starting to get serious.


-- Rami G. Khouri is Editor-at-large of The Daily Star, and Director of the Issam Fares Institute for Public Policy and International Affairs at the American University of Beirut, in Beirut, Lebanon.





-- Middle East Online

 

[bigron]

A Brazen Evil :

Benny Morris argues for nuclear genocide against Iran


by Justin Raimondo
July 21, 2008
http://www.antiwar.com/justin/?articleid=13168


Evil usually hides its face, because the sight of it repulses all but the depraved. However, in the case of Benny Morris, writing in Friday's New York Times, we see something new: a proud evil, glorying in pure malevolence. His piece is a cold, calculated attempt to simultaneously shock and intimidate, one that succeeds at the former but fails miserably at the latter.

Here's the shocker, really a double jolt: "Israel," he avers, "will almost surely attack Iran's nuclear sites in the next four to seven months." Either that, he writes, or else Israel will eventually have to launch "a preemptive nuclear strike." His message to the West: take out Iran, or we'll nuke 'em!

The Israelis have been threatening to strike for the past six months, so nothing new there, except for the tone of certainty. Morris is no fringe nut-job flailing away on his obscure blog; he's a prominent Israeli historian writing on the most noted opinion page of them all, a veritable bulletin board for governing elites worldwide. As such, he is almost certainly speaking with some insight into Israeli government plans. It is, in any case, almost inconceivable that he wrote his piece without the foreknowledge and consent of Israeli government officials.

As to whether he – and they – are bluffing, well, I wouldn't count on it. With all this talk of Iran's alleged attempt to build nuclear weapons – which our own intelligence services say was abandoned years ago – Israel is the one country in the region we know is armed to the gills with nukes. Given their history, the increasing extremism of their leadership and polity, and their fanatical devotion to the doctrine of preemption – indeed, they invented it, while George W. Bush merely adopted it – the Israelis are far more likely than any other member of the nuclear club to actually use nukes, as Morris makes all too clear.

In what has to be the most widely circulated blackmail note ever written, Morris announces, "It is in the interest of neither Iran nor the United States (nor, for that matter, the rest of the world) that Iran be savaged by a nuclear strike" – so take out the Iranians, or we will. To be fair, he also says it won't be a good thing if "both Israel and Iran suffer such a fate," but since Iran has no nuclear weapons and has given up all attempts to make them, this is just window-dressing for a genocidal agenda.

Morris's rationale for mass murder is oddly hollow and formulaic: Well, you see, "Every intelligence agency in the world believes the Iranian program is geared toward making weapons, not to the peaceful applications of nuclear power." To begin with, this has got to be a misprint. Surely what Morris meant to say was that every Israeli intelligence agency thinks Iran is on the verge of acquiring nukes. Why else are the Israelis slated to make a series of trips to the U.S. to convince their American counterparts that they are right, and the Americans' National Intelligence Estimate on Iran is wrong?

Aside from that, there is a dispute as to where to draw the "red line," the point-of-no-return, the passage of which acts as a tripwire provoking military intervention. The Israelis have a far tighter timeline, as you might imagine, and their forecast – "one to four years" – is wildly improbable. It is based on the development of the ability to weaponize nuclear processes in a purely theoretical sense, quite aside from the problems posed by construction, possible detection, and delivery.

Reading the Morris screed, one wonders how he came to write such an unimaginative apologia for what would rank among the worst crimes in human history: "everybody knows" the Iranians are trying to build nukes (where have we heard that before?), the sanctions aren't working, the Russians and the Chinese won't cooperate, oh, and "the American public has little enthusiasm for wars in the Islamic lands."

As anyone with the least amount of historical or common sense could easily figure out, even if Iran did develop a nuclear weapons arsenal, it would create a nuclear stalemate analogous to the Cold War standoff between the U.S. and the Soviet Union. Morris claims this example doesn't apply, due to "the fundamentalist, self-sacrificial mindset of the mullahs who run Iran." Aside from the ruling by Iranian Shi'ite religious authority Ayatollah Ali Khamenei – the real leader of Iran – that forbids the development, stockpiling, and use of nuclear weapons, what about his own genocidal mindset, which glories in the prospect of ethnic cleansing? No Iranian personage of any prominence has called for the nuclear extermination of Israel in quite the same terms as Morris, not even Iranian President Ahmadinejad, whose vague remark about Israel "disappearing from the page of history" has been interpreted as a threat to use nukes.

Morris neither knows nor cares about Iran's alleged nukes. Lurking behind his mundane laundry list of complaints is, I fear, a darker motive: sheer bloodlust. Morris simply wants to kill as many Muslims as possible, so why doesn't he just come out and say it? After all, it isn't like he hasn't said it before:

"There are circumstances in history that justify ethnic cleansing. I know that this term is completely negative in the discourse of the 21st century, but when the choice is between ethnic cleansing and genocide – the annihilation of your people – I prefer ethnic cleansing."

It isn't very often that we get to see pure, unmitigated evil, in all its Satanic darkness, expressed openly on the printed page. Morris and the Times have given us one of the rare modern examples of the genre. One might compare it to Hitler's maleficent vision in Mein Kampf, but that would be giving Morris too much credit. Unlike the Nazis, who blamed their victims for the horrors visited upon them, Morris also blames Israel's friends and allies – the West, and specifically the antiwar American public, which "curtails the White House's ability to begin yet another major military campaign in pursuit of a goal that is not seen as a vital national interest by many Americans."

We must forget our national interests and go to war for Israel's sake, or else the Israelis will unleash their illegal and unaccounted-for nukes, killing tens of thousands, poisoning the atmosphere, and forever scarring human history with the mark of their heinous crime. This is like one of those hostage dramas in which a mad gunman grabs someone and uses them as a human shield, braying his demands to horrified onlookers.

Americans must reject this attempt at moral blackmail with the contempt it deserves – and perhaps begin to reexamine the "special relationship" that enables Israel to even contemplate such crimes against humanity. As for Morris, he should be shunned by every decent human being, although perhaps that description doesn't apply to the editors of the New York Times.

~ Justin Raimondo
Copyright Antiwar.com

[bigron]

July 21, 2008

An Opening to Iran?
 
by Alan Bock


There seem to be two possibilities, according to several experts and sources I talked to last week, to explain the fact that the United States decided to have Undersecretary of State William Burns, the third-ranking person in the State Department, sit in the same room with Iranian nuclear envoy Saeed Jalili and high-ranking diplomats from five other countries in Geneva on Saturday. Well, maybe there's a third possibility.

The first, of course, is that the Bush administration is in the beginning stages of a relatively dramatic turnaround in its approach to Iran. As Ted Carpenter, vice president for foreign policy and defense studies at the libertarian Cato Institute, told me, "Perhaps they understand that a military option is simply not realistic, or too unpredictable, and as with North Korea, have been dragged into diplomacy."

"The administration may realize that in the wake of the Iraq war the U.S. position vis-à-vis Iran is relatively weak in the region," according to Ivan Eland of the Center for Peace and Liberty, a division of the libertarian-oriented Independent Institute. "It is just possible that the president would rather go out of office on a peacemaking note. It is also likely that he has been informed that one of the ways Iran might retaliate to a military strike could be by directly or indirectly killing a lot more Americans in Iraq, which would put a tarnish on an enterprise he can plausibly call a partial success now."

Marina Ottaway, who heads Middle East studies at the generally realist/liberal Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, told me the Bush administration has to be aware that it is increasingly isolated in foreign policy, especially in the Gulf region. At the UN, Russia and China effectively prevent the most severe of sanctions being imposed multilaterally. And the Gulf countries, which fear they would be among the first victims of Iranian retaliation in the event of military action, are not following where the U.S. in its more hard-line mood wants to lead, so the U.S. is not leading anything or anyone. She also noted, as I and several others have previously, the multiplicity of diplomatic initiatives underway in the Middle East independently of the U.S. – Israel-Hamas, Israel-Syria, Israel-Lebanon, and Qatar brokering a Lebanese truce. Bluster isn't working, so it might be time for a different approach.

Whatever the reasons, in this reading, sending the third-ranking U.S. diplomat to meet face-to-face with an Iranian is a fairly significant shift in the U.S. government's approach to Iran. One shouldn't overestimate the magnitude of the shift, of course. Viewed from a larger perspective it's a tactical move. The U.S. will sit in the same room, and it seems likely to agree, if Iran does, to the "mutual freeze" proposal in which Iran doesn't increase nuclear enrichment and the U.S. and Europeans don't seek additional sanctions for six weeks, during which the sides chat a little about whether further negotiations are worth pursuing. The State Department statement was a bit less conciliatory than the White House response, but the bottom line was similar. The U.S. won't do "real" negotiations until Iran suspends nuclear enrichment. That could change over time, as U.S. preconditions were sometimes elided during talks with the North Koreans that eventually led (we think) to the hermit kingdom stopping its nuclear weapons programs.

Combined with the news that the U.S. plans to establish a diplomatic presence (though not an actual embassy) in Iran for the first time since the 1979-1981 U.S. embassy hostage crisis, these could be the first tentative moves toward establishing a more-or-less normal relationship with Iran, one that relies more on diplomatic and economic tools to deter Iran from developing nuclear weapons (or to cope if they do so anyway) than on the kind of "preventive" war that didn't pan out so well – or took longer than expected to pan out if you take an administration-sympathetic point of view – in less formidable Iraq. A sense of the variety of ways Iran could retaliate – through Hezbollah and other proxies, through blockading the Hormuz Straits, through killing U.S. soldiers in Iraq – might have taken the military option effectively off the table, though it might be rhetorically preserved in occasional statements about all options being available.

Some outlets are reading this as a triumph for Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, who has reportedly been working hard behind the scenes to make this meeting happen. It could be that Rice, who, notwithstanding her sometimes faulty judgment and her somewhat puzzling devotion to George W. Bush, is no fool, saw a touch of peacemaking as a good way to take some of the tarnish off her legacy (and Dubya's too). The Iranians were reportedly impressed to see her signature on the most recent missive from the six nations that proposed the mutual freeze and talks. She's only 52, and she might see the rest of her life being potentially more productive if she isn't seen as widely as she might now be as a pariah. (That's my own speculation backed up by no firsthand evidence, so take it for what it's worth.)

There's another way to interpret the administration's move, however. It could be that a decision has been made to take some kind of military action against Iran – or to facilitate an Israeli action to ensure that it does enough damage to matter – before the administration leaves office. Under this possibility, even the Cheney-neocon cabal understands that it would be better, before a military strike is undertaken, to be able to say that we tried the diplomatic option, we talked, we met, we discussed, but the other side was just too intransigent, too unyielding, too unreasonable, and ultimately too potentially dangerous to leave us any choice but to strike them militarily.

As Ted Carpenter put it to me, "the hawks might want to be able to say they gave Iran one last chance, and made it clear to Iran during the talks that it was their last chance to stop doing provocative nuclear stuff," (however much the Iranians claim it's for electricity, not bombs). He suggested to me that one signal that option two was the real plan might be if Defense Secretary Robert Gates or Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Michael Mullen resigns, as their public statements have suggested that they are both quite opposed to military action against Iran, at least in the near future.

The wild card in all this, of course, is Israel. As I and others have noted, it would be difficult for Israel to carry out a minimally effective strike (one that does enough damage to Iran's bomb-making capacity to at least delay its ability to build deliverable nuclear weapons) without close cooperation from the United State – refueling over Iraqi airspace, needing rescue helicopters based in Iraq, etc. There's a possibility that this slight diplomatic opening to Iran has been accompanied by a stern word to the Israelis to keep their warplanes sheathed. But there's also the possibility that Israel could find ways to deliver damaging-to-devastating strikes without open U.S. cooperation.

The third possibility is that the administration hasn't decided yet what to do, but has decided that this gambit gives it the most options. If negotiations suggest that the Iranians are not eager to see military action and are willing to make some concessions on nuclear enrichment (maybe getting some supplies suitable for civilian use from a third party under strictly monitored conditions?), then the diplomatic option would go forward. If the Iranians in private negotiations – the kind that don't have to be followed up by a press conference where both sides mouth milky platitudes – sound more like the provocative Ahmadinejad than the more practical mullahs, the military option could still be exercised, perhaps after the November U.S. elections. Early reports from the Saturday meetings suggest that the Iranians were not inclined to yield much at this stage. An apparent two-week deadline for the Iranians to show some flexibility leaves this option quite open; things could go either way.

That third option might well turn out to be the most likely, which would be reason to keep the champagne on ice for a while and not pop the corks just yet.
 

Find this article at:
http://www.antiwar.com/bock/?articleid=13167 

[bigron]

Iraqi Media: U.S. Building Airbase on Iran Border

If true, a provocative move.

By Editors, Gorilla's Guides
Posted on July 19, 2008, Printed on July 21, 2008
http://www.alternet.org/bloggers/http://gorillasguides.com//92090/


The United States plans to build a military airport near the northern Iraqi town of Halabja, which borders Iran, Iraqi media reports.

Khadr Karim Mohammad, the mayor of Halajaba, speaking to Aswat al-Iraq news agency on Wednesday, explained how the construction would proceed.

He said the municipality has allocated an estimated 1500 acres of land east of the town for this purpose and provided the necessary maps for the major project.

Meanwhile, an anonymous Iraqi official said the project is likely to be a “cover” for an air base, which could serve the Americans in their military operations in the region.

When asked about the motives of the US in establishing such a large airport so close to the Iranian border, the mayor said that he was not privy to any further details of the project.

However, he did add, "All owners of the lands will be compensated according to the law."

Another source in the Governorate of Sulaimaniyah noted that the size of the airport indicates it is a large military base "funded by Americans." The Americans have inspected the allocated land several times, he added.

The official also revealed that a number of US delegations have visited the region frequently since 2003,"They were studying the roads leading to Iran, under the pretext of providing services to the town," he elaborated.

In an interview with the French newspaper Le Monde in early 2007, Massoud Barzani, the President of the Autonomous Kurdish Government, welcomed the plans on the proviso that there is consensus from the governments in Baghdad and Erbil.

Halabja lies about 11 kilometers from the Iranian borders and it is located in the northern province of Sulaimaniyah which is ruled by Iraq’s Kurdistan regional government.



Press TV - US military base near Iran border? :
http://www.presstv.ir/detail.aspx?id=63993&sectionid=351020101


© 2008 Gorilla's Guides All rights reserved.
View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/bloggers/http://gorillasguides.com//92090/

[Optimus]

Iran, Pakistan Stress Strategic Ties
http://english.farsnews.com/newstext.php?nn=8704311237

TEHRAN (FNA)- A senior Iranian lawmaker called for forging strategic cooperation with Pakistan, noting that Iran attaches great significance to peace and security in the eastern neighboring country.
 
In a meeting with Chairman of the Joint Chief of Staff of Pakistan's Military on Saturday, General Ehsan-ul-Haq, in Tehran, head of the parliament's National Security and Foreign Policy Commission Alaeddin Boroujerdi said Iran and Pakistan enjoy historical relations.

Noting that Iran and Pakistan have common interests in the region, the MP called for expansion of ties in political and economic fields.

The MP noted that the officials of the two Muslim states should boost parliamentary relations.

For his part, the Pakistani General referred to friendly ties between Iran and Pakistan, and said that his people would not forget Iran's recognition of Pakistan as a sovereign state and its independence from Britain.

"The two neighboring countries have huge potentials for expansions of ties," he said.
 

[Dan]

Lets not forget how this will play out world wide.

Syria and Israel will butt heads.
  Bullets will fly.

Iran will defend Syria as stated.
  Iran and Syria are military allies.  (Especially against Israel)

United States will defend Israel as stated.
  Long time allies.

Russia and China will defend Iran as stated.
  In the last two years, Russia and Iran have signed pacts to defend each other in case of an attack.  China has also stated that it will not stand by and let the US attack Iran.

England, France, Germany, Australia, and more will defend the US as stated.
  They have been allies for years and will more than likely fight along side each other.

And there you have it, WWIII.

The difference is that this one will not end nicely.  This is not about world domination, per say, as much as it has turned into a covert religious war. 

And we know how they end.

Dan

[Godfather77]

Gordon Brown calls on Israel to 'grasp the chance' of peace with Palestinians
Last Updated: 5:46PM BST 21/07/2008
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/israel/2311006/Gordon-Brown-calls-on-Israel-to-%27grasp-the-chance%27-of-peace-with-Palestinians.html

In the FIRST speech by a British prime minister to the Knesset, the Israeli parliament, Mr Brown proclaimed himself a lifelong friend of Israel but said that he would also give his "honest analysis". His call for Israel to do more to help the Palestinians in the occupied territories and to withdraw from settlements was clearly an attempt to balance his strong condemnation of Iran.

At the end of a three-day visit to the Middle East, Mr Brown stressed his personal attachment to Israel, recalling how his father, a Church of Scotland minister, paid frequent visits to the country. "For the whole of my life, I have counted myself a friend of Israel". 

He said: "Britain is your true friend. A friend in difficult times as well as in good times, a friend who will stand beside you whenever your peace, your stability and your existence are under threat; a friend who shares an unbreakable partnership based on shared values of liberty, democracy and justice."

However, he risked angering some Israelis by warning that the continued expansion of settlements into Palestinian areas was undermining the negotiations and by urging Israel to create the conditions for a final agreement by "freezing, and withdrawing from settlements."

As Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert sat nearby, Mr Brown said Israel itself needed to make concessions to its neighbours to secure "a historic hard won and lasting peace".

He paid tribute to Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian president, who he said was Israel's "best partner of a generation" and said: "Like many of your friends, I urge you to make these decisions.

"Because I believe this historic, hard-won and lasting peace is within your reach, I urge you to take it by the hand."

One member of the Israeli parliament heckled as Mr Brown made the remarks.

Urging help for the Palestinians, the Prime Minister said: "Without compromising your needs for security we need your help in easing the obstacles to Palestinian economic growth. You, Israel, drawing upon your deep wells of hope and aspiration to give hope and aspiration to others."

Mr Brown won a warmer reception for his attack on President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and for promising that Britain will take the lead in introducing tougher sanctions to prevent Iran from becoming a nuclear power.

He said President Ahmadinejad's call for Israel to be wiped off the map was "totally abhorrent" and stressed that tougher action will be taken unless Iran complies with four United Nations Resolutions and stops enriching uranium.

"Our country will continue to lead, with the US and our European partners in our determination to prevent an Iranian nuclear weapons programme. We stand ready to lead in taking firmer sanctions.

"Last month we took action against an Iranian bank involved in proliferation.

"We stand ready to lead in taking firmer sanctions and ask the whole international community to join us."

The Prime Minister had tried to begin his speech in Hebrew but struggled with the pronunciation of "Mazal tov", or good fortune, and "shalon aleichem" or peace be you.

However he received a standing ovation from the Knesset chamber as he concluded by quoting, again in Hebrew, Theodor Herzl, regarded as Israel's founding father,-"im tirtzu ein zo agadah" – if you will it, it is no dream.

[Cobra]

Russia and China will defend Iran as stated.
  In the last two years, Russia and Iran have signed pacts to defend each other in case of an attack.  China has also stated that it will not stand by and let the US attack Iran.

They will do no such thing. They may help military supplies wise and act as brokers for a cease-fire between the warring sides but they will not get involved militarily.

There will be no war with Iran this year.

[mike E. dangerously]

yep the Great Game against Russia and China is becoming a larger factor than ever, indeed Webster tarpley reckons the neocons have lost the debate and the Trilateralist's under Bzrezinski are going to try and make peace with iran and then take on China and Russia in a series of global proxy/covert wars in Africa and Asia.

tell me more about this neocon/Trilateralist fued,never heard of this.

[bigron]

British PM Warns Iran in Landmark Israel Speech

By AFP
http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5jzQDKCmfSLxfap86Emvz4e0Jr-3g

21/07/08 -- - JERUSALEM (AFP) — British Prime Minister Gordon Brown warned Iran on Monday it must freeze sensitive nuclear work or face more sanctions, in the first address by a British premier to the Israeli parliament.

He also railed against Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's "abhorrent" threats against Israel and declared that Britain stands alongside the Jewish state.

Brown, who held talks with Israeli and Palestinian leaders on Sunday, said peace was within their grasp, but only if Israel withdraws from settlements in the occupied West Bank and the Palestinians stamp out "terrorists".

His comments on Iran's nuclear drive echoed a warning by US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice that Tehran had two weeks to respond seriously to an international offer or face further "punitive measures."

"Iran now has a clear choice to make: suspend its nuclear programme and accept our offer of negotiations or face growing isolation and the collective response not of just one nation but of all nations round the world," Brown said.

"Just as we have led the work on three mandatory sanctions resolutions of the UN, the UK will continue to lead -- with the United States and our European Union partners -- in our determination to prevent an Iranian nuclear weapons programme."

The White House, meanwhile, signalled that it expected Iran to reject the US-backed incentives package.

"It is the position of the P5-plus-one that Iran should suspend its uranium enrichment, that we provided a very generous incentives package that they apparently are going to miss an opportunity to accept," said a spokeswoman.

In Paris, Solana also said a negative response from Iran would likely trigger further sanctions.

"Our relationship with Iran is a relationship of tracks, the political track, the diplomatic ... but at the same time a commitment to continue in New York," he told reporters after a meeting with European MPs.

"If there is no agreement on this, the United Nations will continue."

Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said that Israel "highly appreciates" Brown's "determination... (on the) issue of terrorism and Iranian nuclear armament.

"The most serious threat for stability in the Middle East and the global peace is rooted in... Tehran," he added.

Brown was introduced by parliament speaker Dalia Itzhik, who said "the Iranian nuclear spearhead is directed not only towards Israel but towards the entire West."

Brown's spokesman said the premier did not rule out "extended sanctions in some form on the oil and gas sector" in Iran, OPEC's number two producer.

"Our focus at the moment is on strengthening the sanctions regime to keep up the pressure on Iran," he said.

Sources said that could involve sanctions on spare parts for Tehran's fairly limited domestic oil refining capacity.

In his speech, Brown also took on Ahmadinejad, who has repeatedly attacked Israel's right to exist and said its arch-foe should be wiped off the map.

"To those who question Israel's very right to exist, and threaten the lives of your citizens through terror, we say: the people of Israel have a right to live here, to live freely and to live in security," he said.

"And to those who believe that threatening statements fall upon indifferent ears, we say in one voice: it is totally abhorrent for the president of Iran to call for Israel to be wiped from the map of the world."

Brown, on his first visit to Israel and the West Bank since becoming prime minister in June 2007, held talks with leaders on both sides on Sunday in a bid to help advance the faltering peace process.

US-led negotiations were revived in November but have made little visible progress since, with Israel's continued settlement expansion in the West Bank a key bone of contention.

Brown, whose predecessor Tony Blair is now the Middle East Quartet's envoy, has pledged new aid for the Palestinians to help kick-start their struggling economy while calling for Israel to halt settlement activity.

"I believe that a historic, hard-won and lasting peace that can bring security on the ground is within your grasp... I urge you to take it by the hand," Brown told the Knesset.

However, it depended on the Palestinians stamping out "terrorists" and "Israel freezing, and withdrawing from, settlements".

Copyright © 2008 AFP

[bigron]

No Attack On Iran

Protest Outside Pelosi's House

Video

KRON 4 News caught this symbolic die-in protest in front of Nancy Pelosi's San Francisco residence. Anti-War protesters demonstrate against US lead-up to a war with Iran and Nancy Pelosi's support for Bush administration policies and tactics. Booo Nancy!

 

Posted 21/07/08

"No War in Iran Protest - San Francisco, July 19, 2008"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8F4dFEMaO0o&eurl=http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article20328.htm

[bigron]

U.S. will never allow "second Holocaust": McCain


Mon Jul 21, 2008 4:21pm EDT

http://www.reuters.com/article/politicsNews/idUSL2117853020080721?rpc=401&


JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Republican presidential candidate John McCain said on Monday that the United States could never allow Iran to inflict a "second Holocaust" on the Jewish people, in comments aired on Israeli TV on the eve of a visit to Israel by his Democratic rival Barack Obama.

Israel, widely believed to have the Middle East's only atomic arsenal, has described Iran's nuclear program as a threat to its existence. Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert last month said it must be stopped by "all possible means."

Asked whether he would back Israel if it chose to attack Iran's nuclear facilities, McCain told Channel 2 TV:

"But I have to look you in the eye and tell you that the United States of America can never allow a second Holocaust."

McCain, trailing Obama in the polls, said he believed tougher sanctions on Iran might persuade Tehran to suspend uranium enrichment activity Western powers fear is a cover for making nuclear bombs.

"I think we Americans, joining with our European allies, can impose significant and very impactful sanctions on Iran," McCain said, hours before Obama was due to land in Israel for talks with Israeli and Palestinian leaders.

"I would hope that that would never happen. I would hope that Israel would not feel that threatened," McCain said, ruling out a face-to-face meeting with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad who has threatened to wipe Israel off the map.

The United States, Britain, France, Germany, Russia and China have offered Iran financial and diplomatic incentives to halt nuclear activity which Tehran says is aimed solely at generating electricity.

After talks in Geneva ended in stalemate on Saturday, the six major powers gave Iran two weeks to answer calls to rein in its nuclear activities or face tougher sanctions.

(Writing by Joseph Nasr; editing by Ralph Boulton)

[bigron]

July 22, 2008

Playing Games With Iran
 
by William O. Beeman


By now the structure of the U.S. game with Iran is clear. In the first move, the United States and Iran make some small progress toward improved relations. In the counter move, hardliners in the United States and Israel launch attacks against Iran in order to sabotage these improving relations.

In the latest iteration of this game, the U.S. State Department has made an interesting gambit. It announced that Undersecretary of State William Burns would sit at the table on July 20 as members of the European Union entered into talks with Iran over its nuclear program. At the same time, the United States has been reported to be considering opening a formal American interests section in Tehran. These two actions will be the first serious public diplomatic activities between the two nations in nearly three decades. (Three earlier meetings in Baghdad between U.S. Iraqi Envoy Ryan Crocker and Iranian Ambassador to Iraq Hassan Kazemi-Qomi focused on security in Iraq).

The counter moves came fast and furious. First, former UN ambassador and prominent neoconservative John Bolton launched a jeremiad against the U.S. government on July 15 in the Wall Street Journal. Criticizing the administration for failing to act militarily against Iran, Bolton placed his hopes on Israel to carry out the military attack that he fervently desires. "Instead of debating how much longer to continue five years of failed diplomacy, we should be intensively considering what cooperation the U.S. will extend to Israel before, during, and after a strike on Iran," he wrote.

Following closely on Bolton's editorial, the New York Times printed another attack against Iran on Friday, July 18, just one day before the opening of the European talks, by Benny Morris, an historian at Ben-Gurion University. Like Bolton, Morris presents an Iranian nuclear weapons program as an established fact, implies that Iran would make a first-strike attack on Israel, and thus justifies preemptive military action on Israel's part.

Both Bolton and Morris base their attacks on false premises. Diplomatic dealings with Iran have, in fact, succeeded on the few occasions they have been tried. There is no proof anywhere that Iran actually has a nuclear weapons program at present, a fact underscored by the National Intelligence Estimate of December 2007. In fact, Iran's nuclear experiments are still at a primitive level, far from any possibility of manufacturing weapons. Iran has never directly threatened Israel and is not likely considering a first strike against Israel.

Such attacks have followed every minuscule improvement in U.S-Iranian relations during the Bush administration. Every first move in a warming trend – such as Iranian support for the U.S. war against the Taliban in Afghanistan, U.S. aid to Iran during the Bam earthquake in 2003, and Iran's formal offer to enter into comprehensive negotiations with the United States in 2003 – has been followed by sharp criticism from both inside and outside of the Brush administration. Detractors have countered these advances with accusations of Iranian support for Hezbollah and Hamas, and support for "special groups" attacking U.S. forces in Iraq. True to form, the U.S. military announced the launching of a new crackdown on weapons smuggling from Iran to coincide with the Saturday talks.

None of these accusations, along with the Iranian weapons program and plot to launch a first-strike against Israel, has ever been proven. The most memorable of these attacks was the labeling of Iran as part of the "Axis of Evil" in President George Bush's 2002 State of the Union Address, just as Iran's military aid to the United States was beginning to create a climate of trust between the two nations.

Bolton, Morris, and their ilk may represent the last, weak gasp of the hawks who would embroil the United States and Israel in a disastrous confrontation with Iran. Indeed, for the time being, it seems that cooler heads are prevailing. Though Western commentators described the talks at the one-shot Saturday meeting negatively as a "deadlock," William Burns' official presence at the table was an important benchmark. Iran did not accept the Western proposals on the spot, but was given two weeks to respond. The Iranians appeared pleased. Saeed Jalili, Iran's chief negotiator, called the negotiating process a "very beautiful endeavor."

Despite this progress, the power of the American and Israeli extremists should not be underestimated. They still have the ear of Vice President Dick Cheney and a dwindling coterie of his supporters in the Department of Defense. A group of Israeli politicians, including Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak and Israeli Defense Force Chief of Staff Gaby Ashkenazi, has arrived in Washington, according to Mother Jones magazine, presumably to convince the Bush administration to allow them to carry out their attack.

Hostile rhetoric against Iran also plays into the U.S. electoral process. For American politicians, Iran is a universal bogeyman, useful in an election year as a device to show elected officials as tough on foreign miscreants. Indeed, since the Iranian Revolution, U.S.-Iranian relations have been a centerpiece in election debates. Conspiracy theorists believe fervently that the Republican Party engineered an "October Surprise" in 1980 with Iranian officials – delaying the release of the American hostages until after the U.S. presidential election – and thus denied Jimmy Carter a second term. The purported event – true or not – has supplied a permanent political term for American elections.

In every presidential election since, U.S.-Iranian relations have been featured in presidential debates and campaign ads, with universal negativity toward Iran. This year is no exception with Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, and John McCain all expressing hostile attitudes toward Iran. And this year's October Surprise is the rumor that the Bush administration will bomb Iran just before the election to give a boost to John McCain. Unless the Israeli hawks get there first.

Reprinted courtesy of Foreign Policy in Focus.
 

 
Find this article at:
http://www.antiwar.com/orig/beeman.php?articleid=13173 

[bigron]

July 22, 2008

An Uncomfortable Conversation About Nukes
 
by Conn Hallinan
Foreign Policy in Focus



Why are Henry Kissinger, George Shultz, William Perry, and Sam Nunn writing opinion pieces in the Wall Street Journal calling for the abolition of nuclear weapons? Keep in mind, these four people are not just major defense hawks. People like Kissinger and Nunn helped push through the single most dangerous and destabilizing innovation in nuclear weaponry, the arming of missiles with multiple warheads. All four have supported every conflict the United States has engaged in since World War II, all have enthusiastically supported nuclear weapons, and none has suddenly gone kumbaya on us.

But all four have concluded that nuclear weapons no longer serve the interests of the great powers. Why the change of mind? The answer has some disquieting aspects.

Proliferation Consideration

The sudden concern with nuclear weapons is, in large part, due to the steady erosion of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and the real danger that the Big Five – China, Russia, the United States, France, and Britain – may one day confront a host of nations similarly armed. Countries like Brazil, Argentina, Syria, Iran, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Japan, South Korea, Egypt, Taiwan, and South Africa could all produce nuclear weapons in less than a decade if they wanted to. Several of these countries had begun the process before mothballing their programs several decades ago. Israel, Pakistan, and India, of course, already have nuclear weapons.

In the past, wars with countries like Vietnam, Afghanistan, and Iraq involved the loss of life and wealth – far greater for them than for us – but these countries never presented a serious obstacle to our use of military power. We might not "win" these wars in the conventional sense of the word, but none of these nations could prevent the United States from attacking them.

The acquisition of nuclear weapons has changed all that.

The Bush administration has invaded one member of its "axis of evil" and is threatening to attack a second, Iran. However, it is treading lightly in Northeast Asia. The Bush administration demonizes North Korea, but it has been careful not to let things get out of hand. Of course there are numerous reasons why White House rhetoric has not led to a war on the Korean peninsula, some of which have nothing to do with the fact that the North Koreans have nuclear weapons. But it is hard to argue with the conclusion that North Korea's nuclear weapons program has played a role in holding the U.S. military at bay. It is a powerful lesson for small countries threatened by bigger ones and an uncomfortable intervention in the non-proliferation debate.

More Than Your Average Weapon

It is a misnomer to talk about nuclear weapons as "weapons" in any meaningful sense. As John Hersey noted more than 60 years ago, the bomb that flattened Hiroshima was not just a bigger bomb. What it inflicted on that city and its residents is almost beyond human comprehension. Throughout his Pulitzer-Prize-winning book, Hersey struggled to make his readers understand what happened in Hiroshima, occasionally resorting to the devices of fiction to get his point across.

And that bomb was the equivalent of a firecracker compared to today's nuclear weapons. "Fat Boy," the weapon that flattened an entire city in a millisecond, was 15 kilotons. The average warhead today is between 150 and 250 kilotons, and there are monsters out there whose power is measured in megatons.

A nuclear war between India and Pakistan – something both countries came perilously close to at Kargil in 1999 – would do more than kill tens of millions of people. If both sides exchanged 50 warheads the size of the Hiroshima bomb, it would destroy 70 percent of the ozone in northern latitudes, and 45 percent of the ozone in the mid-latitudes where most of the world's population resides. The loss of the earth's protective ozone would mean a sharp rise in skin cancers and cataracts from massive increases in ultraviolet radiation.

In short, a nuclear exchange between India and Pakistan – two minor nuclear powers – could derail the economies of nations across the globe, in particular those in the United States and Europe, whose northern latitude position make them particularly vulnerable to ozone depletion.

The Gang of Four

Enter Kissinger, Nunn, Perry, and Shultz. Nuclear weapons were fine with them when the Big Five and Israel held a monopoly on the devices. But India and Pakistan have joined the club, and several others are waiting in the wings. However, if the "Big Five plus three" proliferation dam has cracks in it, they are wholly self-inflicted.

When 181 nations signed the 1968 NPT, they thought they were taking the first step toward the abolition of nuclear weapons. In short, they took the treaty seriously. Article VI of the NPT, for instance, states: "Each of the parties to the treaty undertakes to pursue negotiations in good faith on effective measure relating to cessation of the nuclear arms race at an early date and to nuclear disarmament, and on a treaty on general and complete disarmament under strict and effective international controls."

This is the heart of the NPT. The smaller countries agreed to forgo nuclear weapons only because the nuclear powers agreed to scrap theirs and, further, disarm their conventional forces. Instead, the Big Five increased the number of warheads in their arsenals and raised their military budgets. Finally, when they threatened non-nuclear countries with nuclear weapons, they were violating a 1978 addendum to the NPT (which was reaffirmed in 1995).

President George W. Bush used such threats against Iraq, Syria, and the Sudan, and in 2006, former French President Jacques Chirac warned "states who would use terrorist means against us" risk a "conventional" response, but "it could also be of a different kind."

As for the section of Article VI that requires disarmament: the official U.S. military budget for fiscal 2009 will be $522 billion, but that figure doesn't include nuclear weapons, Homeland Security, Veterans Affairs, and a host of military programs in the State Department, Justice Department, and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. Excluding the interest we pay on past military debts ($207 billion), the real figure is $728 billion.

Even using the faux $522 billion figure, however, U.S. military spending makes up 47 percent of the world's total. Add the military expenditures of our NATO allies and that figure jumps to 70 percent.

In comparison, our "enemies" – Cuba, Syria, North Korea, Iran, and Sudan – make up 1 percent of the world's arms spending. Iran, which President Bush calls the most dangerous country in the world, spends $5 billion on armaments, what one might find rummaging through the couch pillows at the Pentagon. Teheran's entire budget would max out at 2.5 B-2 bombers.

The Gang of Four is worried that these "enemies" will try to close the enormous gap in military spending and capabilities by developing nuclear weapons. That, and their general fear of nukes falling into the "wrong hands," explains their interest in taking the NPT seriously.

Beyond the Gang of Four

There is certainly a growing sentiment to get rid of the world's nuclear weapons. In Germany, the increasingly popular Left Party is pressing for the removal of U.S. nuclear weapons. "If the federal government had some spine, it would immediately call on the U.S. to remove all nuclear weapons," Gregor Gysi, co-leader of the Left Party, toldDer Spiegel, "and preferably by destroying them." Pressured by the Left Party, the Social Democratic Party, a minority member of Germany's ruling coalition, is moving in the same direction. Niels Annen, the party's foreign policy expert, told the Berliner Zeitung that removing nuclear weapons from Europe "would be a huge step forward in terms of nuclear disarmament."

The United States is estimated to have between 150 and 240 B-61 warheads in Germany, Holland, Italy, Belgium, and Turkey.

Australia's Labor Party Prime Minister Kevin Rudd has called for establishing an "international commission on nuclear nonproliferation and disarmament" to lay the groundwork for reviewing the NPT in 2010 and begin the process of abolishing nuclear weapons.

In the United States, 79 religious organizations, representing Catholics, Protestants, Jews, and Muslims, have demanded that the Bush administration end its plans to reactivate U.S. nuclear weapons plants. "We call on our political leaders to show the moral and political courage necessary to bring about a shift in our nation's nuclear weapons posture," the organizations wrote in a letter to the Energy Department. "Today we have an historic opportunity to begin the journey out from under the shadow of nuclear weapons."

Presidential candidate Barack Obama said in October that "America seeks a world in which there are no nuclear weapons."

But any successful movement to abolish nuclear weapons will not only have to see that Article VI of the NPT is carried out, it will also have to address the treaty's preamble: "n accordance with the Charter of the United Nations, States must refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any State…."

As long as the great powers maintain the ability to invade countries, overthrow regimes, and bomb nations into subservience, weaker countries will inevitably try to offset those advantages. The quickest and cheapest way to do that is to develop nuclear weapons.

The threat of nuclear proliferation will not end until all nations have given them up. And the danger of nuclear weapons will not disappear until the weak need no longer fear the strong.

Reprinted courtesy of Foreign Policy in Focus.

 
Find this article at:
http://www.antiwar.com/orig/hallinan.php?articleid=13172 

[bigron]

Essential things Israelis and Iranians should know about each other 
 
By Trita Parsi and Roi Ben-Yehuda 
 
  http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1003236.html


The looming Iran-Israel confrontation has a seemingly deterministic quality to it. Listening to the politicians, one gets a sense that powers beyond our control are pulling us toward a 21st-century disaster. Yet a great deal of the force propelling us into confrontation is fueled by ignorance and dehumanization. Israel is demonized as "Little Satan," while Iranians are portrayed as irrational Muslim extremists.

Indeed, mutual ignorance of our respective societies plays into the hands of the hard-line leaders who are calling for blood and destruction. They manipulate and distort; above all, they do everything to prevent us from recognizing that the enemy has a face.

Not that either of us is naive enough to believe that mere knowledge of one another will offer a miraculous solution. We do believe, however, that mutual understanding will go a long way toward allowing us to feel empathy and compassion for each other, and to sound off at those calling for bloodshed and war.
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Here are some essential things Iranians and Israelis should know about each other:

1. Israel is a vibrant yet incomplete democracy

On his visit to the United States last fall, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad famously stated that there are no homosexuals in Iran. Well, in Israel there are plenty of homosexuals, and they are the only ones in the Middle East who have an annual gay pride parade in their capital city.

Democracy in Israel means that every citizen and group (Jewish or otherwise) has the right to express him/herself and assemble in public. Also, that every citizen is equal under the law, has voting rights, religious freedom, access to education, health care and economic opportunity.

Undoubtedly, Israel's democracy is still a work in progress. The fusion of religion and state has limited people's rights and freedoms (for example, Israelis of different faiths cannot legally marry one another in the country), and the de-facto secondary status of Israeli Arabs is an affront to the country's democratic ideals. Fortunately, many people in Israel are assiduously working to change the system from within.

2. Iran is a vibrant quasi-democracy

It is far from a full democracy, but neither is it a complete dictatorship. Its severe limitations notwithstanding, Iran has a lively civil society and possesses most of the building blocks for a successful democracy down the road. Iranians' struggle for democracy dates back to the 1906 Constitutional Revolution. Since then, Iranians have learned two important lessons.

First, war and democratization don't mix. As tensions between Iran and the outside world increase, the first to pay are Iran's pro-democracy and human rights activists. For Iran to move toward a democratic system, it needs peace and tranquility; bombs and surgical strikes will achieve the opposite.

Second, when you carry out a revolution, you know against whom you are revolting, but not necessarily for whom you are waging the revolution. Iranians have little appetite for another revolution. As unpopular as their current government is, they prefer gradual and manageable change.

3. Streets are named for poets

Just like Iran, Israel puts great value on the written word. In Israel, streets are named for poets - writers who have revived a people and its ancient language. It is the pen and imagination, more than the sword and muscle, that have been responsible for the creation of this nation. Israel's historical roots are traced in a book; its people are called the "People of the Book"; and its founding father, Theodor Herzl, a playwright, liked to write books. It is no surprise then that Israel leads the world in new book titles per capita, per year.

As in Iran, everyday conversations in Israel are as likely to be peppered with literary references as with practical concerns.

4. Iranians are lonely and distrustful

Much like Israelis, Iranians feel painfully isolated in the Middle East. They are surrounded by people with whom they share neither language nor religion. Iran is majority Persian and Shi'ite; its neighbors are majority Arab and Sunni.

Nor does Iran have many friends beyond the Middle East. If anything, the international community has never treated them fairly, Iranians believe. In the last century alone, Iranians have contended with colonization and decades of foreign intervention, not to mention an eight-year war against Saddam Hussein, in which the entire world sided with Iraq.

The United Nations didn't consider Saddam's invasion a threat to international peace and security; it took the Security Council more than two years to call for a withdrawal. Another five years passed before it addressed Saddam's use of chemical weapons. For the Iranians, the lesson was clear: When in danger, Iran can rely on neither the Geneva Conventions nor the UN Charter for protection. Just like Israel, Iran has concluded that it can rely only on itself.

5. Zionism is not a dirty word

In a show of disrespect, many leaders in Iran refer to Israel as the "Zionist regime." While being called a "regime" may not be flattering, for most Israelis, Zionism is not a dirty word.

From within, Zionism is a national liberation movement, whose aim it is to create a safe haven for Jewish people, culture and national identity. Zionism is the Jewish people's answer to the centuries-old impulse to erase them from history. When Ahmadinejad and his ilk speak of Zionism's imminent doom, they are in fact strengthening the very movement they seek to eliminate.

Israelis joke that Israel is the only country in the world where the words "dirty Jew" mean a Jew who has not taken a shower. In a way, this joke encapsulates the essence of Zionism. Everything else is commentary.

6. Sympathy with Palestinians, but no desire for conflict with Israel

Ahmadinejad's venomous rhetoric notwithstanding, Iranians don't spend much time thinking about Israel. They are far more concerned about Iran's crippled economy and rampant corruption. While the sympathies of most Iranians fall squarely with the Palestinians, this is not an issue they feel their country must be actively involved in.

Iranians will fiercely defend their independence and territory, yet they have no desire for conflict with Israel. Iranians remember Alexander's sacking of Persia, the Arab conquest in the seventh century C.E., the Mongol invasion, and the 1953 CIA coup against Iran's democratically elected prime minister. But there is no recollection of any conflict with the Jewish people because there hasn't been one. Most Iranians would like to keep it that way.

Roi Ben-Yehuda is an Israeli-American writer living in Spain. He is a
regular contributer to Jewcy and France 24. His blog can be read at
Roi's Word Weblog

Dr. Trita Parsi is the author of "Treacherous Alliance - The Secret
Dealings of Israel, Iran and the US" (Yale University Press, 2007), a
Silver Medal Recipient of the Council on Foreign Relations' Arthur
Ross Book Award, the most significant award for a book on foreign
affairs.
www.tritaparsi.com

 

[Dan]

Thats right, I forgot.  We can totally trust the Russians.  And the Chinese have only our best interests in mind, what with the low cost lead toys they are pushing on us.

The Russians have been doing exactly what you could expect them to do since the end of the cold war.  Laying low, and rearming.  They have been flexing their muscles and puffing their chest at the actions the US has been taking for the last couple of years.  And they did sign a military response agreement with Iran.  I will try to find that and post it.

China has been buying up all of our debt.  They are our number one financier and not by accident.  China is making leaps in the race to be a ultra super power.  They will surpass the US as the number one country if this all plays out according to the script.

Dan

[Switters]

Well Condy Rice and Gordon Brown have given the two week ultimatum...

I'm just not sure if that means we'll (Israel or U.S.) strike in two weeks or just put that full-press embargo in place.

Either way, it sounds like "it's on" in two weeks.  We saw the same deadlines and ultimatum's in place before Iraq.

Deja Vu.