Coming War With Iran - All Iran News Here

[Brocke]

Are We Being Conditioned To Accept a Pre-emptive Attack on Iran?...

...World War III
Should humanity risk World War III because George W. Bush told his Supreme Court he needed to torture whales and dolphins to prevent a sneak attack on Santa Barbara by Iran’s modern silent submarines?
The electronic, and what’s left of the print media, will be instrumental in withholding or biasing the news and editorial comment to get the world to accept the irreversible step of a Nuclear attack on Iran...

"torture whales and dolphins to prevent a sneak attack on Santa Barbara"?

Great article! I am aware of the new SONAR and the controversy regarding it's effect on marine life, however it's odd to put the above as a closing argument. 

[bigron]

US firms allowed to invest in Iran oil


PressTV

http://www.uruknet.info/?p=m54260&hd=&size=1&l=e


Wed, 13 May 2009


Five American companies participated last month in Iran's International Exhibition of Oil, Gas and Petrochemicals.
There is no barrier for the presence of foreign companies in the Iranian oil industry, says the head of National Iranian Oil Company (NIOC).

"The Islamic Republic has always welcomed the investment by all foreign companies in Iranian oil, gas and petrochemical projects, including US firms," Seyfollah Jashnsaaz said Tuesday.

He said there would be no legal obstacle if US firms want to negotiate over their investment in the Iranian oil industry, adding that their return would benefit all parties.

Five American companies and dozens of European firms participated last month in Iran's International Exhibition of Oil, Gas and Petrochemicals.

Iranian First Vice President Parviz Davoudi said earlier that US banks are among the international and foreign financial institutions that have shown an interest in opening branches in Iran.

"Several foreign companies are interested in investing in many fields in Iran, including Iran's banking system, oil, gas and energy," said Davoudi at the 14th International Oil, Gas and Petrochemicals Exhibition in Tehran.





 

[bigron]

From The TimesMay 15, 2009
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/middle_east/article6289593.ece



Leon Panetta's mission to stop Israel bombing Iranian nuclear plant

James Hider in Jerusalem

America’s spy chief was sent on a secret mission to Israel to warn its leaders not to launch a surprise attack on Iran without notifying the US Administration.

As Binyamin Netanyahu, the Israeli Prime Minister, prepares to visit Washington, it emerged yesterday that Leon Panetta, the head of the CIA, went to Israel two weeks ago. He sought assurances from Mr Netanyahu and Ehud Barak, the Defence Minister, that their hawkish new Government would not attack Iran without alerting Washington.

Concerns have been rising that Mr Netanyahu could launch a strike on Tehran’s atomic programme, in the same way that Israel hit Saddam Hussein’s Osirak reactor in 1981. Israel has been preparing for such an eventuality. It has carried out long-distance manoeuvres and is due to hold its largest civil defence drills this summer. The country’s leaders reportedly told Mr Panetta that they did not “intend to surprise the US on Iran”.

Mr Netanyahu will leave for Washington this weekend. He will meet Hillary Clinton, the Secretary of State, and Mr Obama, whom he will try to convince of the need for tougher action against Iran. Mr Obama favours trying to engage Tehran, but his efforts have been received coolly by President Ahmadinejad.

The Israeli leader is expected to insist that the US stays focused on Iran, rather than tackling stalled talks with the Palestinians.

Mr Netanyahu has held meetings with Arab leaders this week, including President Mubarak of Egypt and King Abdullah of Jordan. Both Sunni leaders share Israel’s fears of a resurgent Shia Iran.

In Aqaba, Jordan, yesterday King Abdullah told Mr Netanyahu there could be no regional peace without a Palestinian state. So far Mr Netanyahu has refused to commit to a two-state solution. Instead, he has talked about developing the Palestinian economy, with Palestinians having only limited sovereignty. That view is likely to cause confrontation with Mr Obama.

Mr Netanyahu raised the issue of Iran during a private meeting with Pope Benedict XVI in Nazareth yesterday. “I asked him as a moral figure to make his voice heard loud and continuously against the declarations coming from Iran of their intention to destroy Israel,” he said. .

“I think we found in him an attentive ear.” The Pope, who reiterated his calls for peace yesterday, did not give an account of the meeting.

[bigron]

US tells Israel to calm down on Iranian rhetoric


South Korea News.Net


http://www.uruknet.info/?p=m54325&hd=&size=1&l=e


Saturday 16th May, 2009

The Jerusalem Post has reported the US has told Israeli officials to tone down rhetoric on Iran and stop threatening a military strike on Iranian nuclear installations, especially ahead of presidential elections on June 12th.

The Obama administration, while saying it recognises that a nuclear Iran poses a threat to the stability of the Middle East, it still plans to offer Iranian leaders new approaches in return for freezing their nuclear program.

Obama administration officials have also said the new policies, while risky, should not be allowed to fail and might require Iran’s neighbours to accept the fact of a nuclear Iran.

Asked about the Iranian nuclear threat in an interview on on the weekend, Israeli Defence Minister Ehud Barak said Israel was "not taking any option off the table."

US officials have said military threats from Israeli officials prior to Iranian elections could only strengthen President Ahmadinejad and encourage the Iranian regime to speed up its nuclear ambitions with help from North Korea and Russia.





 

[bigron]

Israeli war on Iran completely insane
 
17/05/2009 09:40:00 PM GMT
http://aljazeera.com/news/articles/34/Israeli_war_on_Iran_completely_insane.html
 
 IAEA director general says Israel would be making a 'completely insane' move, should it stage a war on Iran.


(press tv) An IAF F-15I aircraft.
 

The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) director general says Israel would be making a 'completely insane' move, should it stage a war on Iran.

Head of the UN nuclear watchdog Mohamed ElBaradei advised officials in Tel Aviv to exercise restraint and allow the diplomatic approach of the Obama White House on the Iranian nuclear issue to proceed.

ElBaradei's comments, made in an interview with Der Spiegel released on Saturday, came as Israel is increasingly preparing the ground for a military strike on the Islamic Republic.

Tel Aviv, along with the West, accuses Tehran of taking steps towards developing atomic weapons through its nuclear drive.

This is while the Islamic Republic has repeatedly asserted that its nuclear energy program is not deviating from its stated goal of producing electricity to meet the country's growing demand.

The outgoing IAEA chief said that any military strike on Iran "would turn the region into one big fireball," warning Tel Aviv of a response from Tehran, which according to ElBaradei "could count on the support of the entire Islamic world."

Commander of the Iranian Army Ground Force General Ahmad Reza Pourdastan had earlier warned invaders of the country's crushing response to any military attack.

"The Islamic Republic's reaction to any transgression will be strong… and far greater than the initial act of aggression," he said in April.

Israel, which has recently received strong warnings against surprising the U.S. with a military strike on Iran, is reportedly conducting new military drills to prepare for a fight against foreign militaries which use MiG-29 Fulcrum fighters - a category that includes Iran.

Meanwhile Israeli Prime Minister, who will meet U.S. President Barack Obama on Monday, is aiming to talk Washington into altering its Middle East policies in favor of Tel Aviv, according to Transport Minister Yisrael Katz, Ynet reported.

The United States, Israel's closest ally, has already managed to use its influence in the UN Security Council to slap three rounds of sanctions against Iran, under the pretext that Iran is enriching weapons grade uranium.

This is while the UN nuclear watchdog confirms that Iran has only managed to enrich uranium-235 to a level 'less than 5 percent'.

Uranium, the fuel for a nuclear power plant, can be used for military purposes only if enriched to levels of above 90 percent.



-- Press TV

 

[bigron]

U.S. 'supports borderline terrorists against Iran' 


19/05/2009 10:20:00 PM GMT
http://aljazeera.com/news/articles/34/US_supports_borderline_terrorists_against_Iran.html

 
 Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei asserts that the U.S. harbors terrorists on Iran's western borders.


As the White House continues to claim that it seeks "change", the Leader of the Islamic Revolution asserts that the US harbors terrorists on Iran's western borders.

Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei, who is on an 8-day tour in the western Iranian province of Kordestan, spoke of enemy plans to destabilize the Iranian government from behind the western borders.

"The United States is promoting terrorism behind [Iran's] western frontiers... They [the US government] directly finance operations and organize terrorist movements to undermine the Islamic Republic," Ayatollah Khamenei said on Tuesday.

"We have information that Americans have evil plans for Kordestan... They're not planning to defend the rights of the Kurdish people but their aim is to dominate the Kurds and sow seeds of discord among them," the Leader said.

Ayatollah Khamenei's remarks on terrorist plots along the western borders comes after a revelation by investigative journalist Seymour Hersh in 2008 that US congressional leaders had secretly agreed to a $400-million funding request by then president George W. Bush for a major escalation in covert operations against the Iranian government.

According to Hersh, actions permitted under the secret directive include "the assassination of targeted officials" as well as operations across an extensive geographic area.

The White House has refused to comment on the Hersh report.

"Our Kurdish friends on the other side of the border have told us that US officers are paying the Kurdish youth on the Qandil hills in exchange for information," the Leader continued.

"They pay money to create mercenaries. That is below the dignity of Kurdish youth," Ayatollah Khamenei added.

Iran's bordering areas with Iraq have witnessed deadly clashes between Iranian armed forces and the Kurdish separatists of the Party of Free Life of Kurdistan (PJAK) -- an offshoot of the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK).

The outlawed group has been staging cross-border attacks in Iran since 2004 on behalf of "Iranian Kurdish interests" in an attempt to establish an independent Kurdish state.

An April 10, 2006 report by Hersh revealed that US troops were establishing contact with anti-government ethnic-minority groups in Iran such as the PJAK rebels.

Later in November 2006 Hersh wrote that, "Israel and the United States have also been working together in support of a Kurdish resistance group known as the Party for Free Life in Kurdistan. The group has been conducting clandestine cross-border forays into Iran."

According to Hersh, Israel has been providing the Kurdish group with "equipment and training." The group has also been given "a list of targets inside Iran of interest to the US."




-- Press TV

 

[bigron]

Iran Says It Test Fired Missile That Could Hit Israel, U.S. Bases in Mideast


Wednesday, May 20, 2009


AP. Nov. 12, 2008: Image taken at an undisclosed location in Iran shows a missile test fired by Iranian armed forces.


TEHRAN, Iran —

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said Iran test-fired a new advanced missile with a range capable of reaching Israel and U.S. Mideast bases, sending a provocative message days after President Barack Obama pressured Tehran to accept his offer for a dialogue.

The U.S. has criticized Iran's missile development and said such launches stoke instability in the Middle East.

The solid-fuel Sajjil-2 surface-to-surface missile tested has a range of about 1,200 miles, far enough to strike at southeastern Europe. It is a new version of the Sajjil missile, which Iran said it had successfully tested late last year with a similar range. Many analysts said the launch of the Sajjil was significant because solid fuel missiles are more accurate than liquid fuel missiles of similar range, such as Iran's Shahab-3.

"Defense Minister (Mostafa Mohammad Najjar) has informed me that the Sajjil-2 missile, which has very advanced technology, was launched from Semnan and it landed precisely on the target," state radio quoted Ahmadinejad as saying. He spoke during a visit to the city of Semnan, 125 miles east of the capital Tehran, where Iran's space program is centered.

Ahmadinejad is running for re-election in a June 12 vote and has been criticized by his opponents and others for antagonizing the U.S. and mismanaging the country's faltering economy. Iran said Wednesday that its constitutional watchdog has approved three prominent candidates to challenge Ahmadinejad, setting up a showdown between reformists and hard-liners.

Iran's nuclear and missile programs have alarmed Israel. The country's new prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, pressed Obama to step up pressure on Tehran when the two met in Washington on Monday. Israeli officials had no immediate comment on the Iranian missile launch.

Ahmadinejad has repeatedly called for Israel's elimination, and the Jewish state has not ruled out a military strike to deal with the Iranian nuclear threat.

After he met Netanyahu, Obama declared a readiness to seek deeper international sanctions against Iran if it shunned U.S. attempts to open negotiations on its nuclear program. The American president said he expected a positive response to his outreach for opening a dialogue with Iran by the end of the year. So far, the Obama administration has received a mixed response from Ahmadinejad.

In Washington, the White House had no immediate response to the purported missile test.

Most Western analysts believe Iran does not yet have the technology to produce nuclear weapons, including warheads for long-range missiles. The U.S. released an intelligence report about 18 months ago that said Iran abandoned a secret nuclear weapons program in 2003 under international pressure and has not restarted it.

Israel and several other countries have disputed the finding, but many in the West at least agree that Iran is seeking to develop the capability to develop weapons at some point. A group of U.S. and Russian scientists said in a report issued Tuesday that Iran could produce a simple nuclear device in one to three years and a nuclear warhead in another five years after that.

The study published by the nonpartisan EastWest Institute also said Iran is making advances in rocket technology and could develop a ballistic missile capable of firing a 2,200-pound nuclear warhead up to 1,200 miles "in perhaps six to eight years."

Iran says its missile program is merely for defense and its space program is for scientific and surveillance purposes. It maintains that its nuclear program is for civilian energy uses only.

After the testing of the Sajjil in November, a senior U.S. military official said Washington believed Iran was testing the first stage of what would be a two-stage rocket. Multiple stages allow long-range missiles to use less fuel.

Ahmadinejad touted the launch in the final weeks of a presidential campaign that could influence Iran's response to the U.S. outreach. Two of the three candidates approved by Iran's constitutional watchdog to run in the June election are reformists who favor improving ties with the West.

Hard-liners have used the Guardian Council in the past to block reformist candidates, but Mir Hossein Mousavi and Mahdi Karroubi were likely too high-profile to reject. The watchdog also approved a well known conservative candidate, Mohsen Rezaei, a former leader of Iraq's elite Revolutionary Guards who has joined his reformist competitors in criticizing Ahmadinejad for mismanaging Iran's economy.

The group rejected 471 other candidates who wanted to run, including illiterate peasants, a 12-year-old boy and 42 women, the Interior Ministry said in a statement.

Reformists, who believe they have a strong chance of defeating Ahmadinejad, have criticized the president for spending an inordinate amount of time and energy slamming the West. They say his behavior has isolated Iran and believe he should have focused on battling rising unemployment and inflation in the country.

Mousavi, a former prime minister who is seen as the leading challenger to Ahmadinejad, has said he would reshape Iran's policies and restore the country's dignity.

[bigron]

Apocalypse Not       

Stalin’s nuclear arsenal wasn’t the end of the world.

Ahmadinejad’s won’t be either.



By Michael C. Desch

May 18, 2009 Issue
Copyright © 2009 The American Conservative

http://amconmag.com/article/2009/may/18/00006/


The American Intelligence community has not yet concluded that Iran has even decided to develop a nuclear weapon, but the public debate has moved on to another question: what happens if it does?

There is an overwhelming consensus that it would be an unmitigated disaster for the Islamic Republic of Iran to develop its nuclear program to the point that it could produce a weapon. As Israel’s new prime minister, Benyamin Netanyahu, warned The Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg, “You don’t want a messianic apocalyptic cult controlling atomic bombs. When the wide-eyed believer gets hold of the reins of power and the weapons of mass death, then the entire world should start worrying, and that is what is happening in Iran.”

Despite many disagreements with Netanyahu and his xenophobic foreign minister, Avigdor Lieberman, President Obama shares the view that “there is no greater threat to Israel—or to the peace and stability of the region—than Iran.” As he told the American Israel Public Affairs Committee while campaigning last May,

The Iranian regime supports violent extremists and challenges us across the region. It pursues a nuclear capability that could spark a dangerous arms race and raise the prospect of a transfer of nuclear know-how to terrorists. Its president denies the Holocaust and threatens to wipe Israel off the map. The danger from Iran is grave, it is real, and my goal will be to eliminate this threat.

To be sure, America’s new Democratic president and Israel’s new right-wing government have very different strategies for preventing Iran from going ballistic. Obama and much of the international community think that engagement with the Iranians is the best way to prevent the Persian Gulf doomsday clock from ticking down to zero. In contrast, many in Israel, and a significant number of the Jewish state’s American supporters, believe that only the Gideon’s sword of a pre-emptive military strike will end the mad mullahs’ race to Armageddon.

Of course, not everyone shares the apocalyptic rhetoric of the “strike-before-it’s-too-late” crowd. Indeed, less fevered minds understand that even if Iran developed a rudimentary nuclear capability, the United States and Israel would have a huge missile advantage. According to the Federation of American Scientists, the U.S. has over 5,000 warheads deployed and a large number in reserve, while estimates of the Israeli stockpile range from 80 to 200 nuclear devices. At present, Iran has none and, even under worst-case scenarios, is unlikely to have more than a handful in the years to come.

Warheads without a way to deliver them aren’t much use. In this respect, Iran is a nuclear pygmy: it has no long-range missiles that can reach the United States. Its medium-range missile capability, which can theoretically reach Israel, is unreliable. In contrast, the Center for Defense Information estimates that Israel has between 100 and 150 Jericho missiles, plus more than 200 F-4E Phantom and F-16 Falcon aircraft capable of delivering nuclear weapons. The United States has almost 1,500 nuclear delivery platforms, including Minuteman III and MX intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBM’s), Trident I and II submarine launched ballistic missiles (SLBM’s), B-52H Stratofortress and B-2 Spirit long-range bombers, and a variety of tactical nuclear bombs and cruise missiles.

Still, even sophisticated analysts think that, on balance, an Iranian nuclear weapon would have deleterious, if not catastrophic, consequences. The concern is that once Iran develops a nuclear capability, it would become even more aggressive in supporting terrorist groups like Hezbollah in Lebanon or Hamas in Gaza. Another worry is that an Iranian bomb will set off a regional nuclear arms race. Finally, many Americans fear that once Iran fields a nuclear weapon, it will become even more meddlesome in Iraq. In other words, you don’t have to think that an Iranian nuclear weapon is the end of the world to believe that it would be better for all concerned if Tehran never got one.

Any time the conventional wisdom is so one-sided, it makes sense to ask whether it is truly wise or simply an unreasoning article of faith. What has been missing from the debate is a consideration of the possible benefits of Iran crossing the nuclear threshold. No doubt even this suggestion will strike many as the height of academic muddle-headedness. But there are compelling theoretical and historical reasons to think that, far from being a crisis, Iranian membership in the nuclear club might be beneficial to everyone—even Israel.

The theoretical basis for this admittedly counterintuitive claim is political scientist Kenneth Waltz’s famous Adelphi Paper, “The Spread of Nuclear Weapons: More May Be Better.” Waltz is not a marginal figure on the lunatic fringe, but rather ranks among the most influential international-relations theorists of the past 30 years. First published in 1981 by the prestigious International Institute for Strategic Studies in London—hardly a crackpot outfit—the paper argues that because nuclear weapons are only useful for deterrence of attacks upon their possessor’s homeland, their proliferation, unlike that of other weapons that can be used for offensive operations, should reduce the frequency and intensity of wars. His central assumption is that rational states quickly realize this is the consequence of the nuclear revolution.

History has provided strong evidence that the development of nuclear weapons makes nuclear powers more careful, particularly in their relationships with each other. While there were many Cold War crises between the United States and the Soviet Union (and China), none escalated into major combat, much less all-out nuclear war. The same logic has apparently operated in the Indo-Pakistani relationship, the Kargil conflict of 1999 notwithstanding.

There is good evidence to suggest that the containment of these crises was the result of both sides stepping back from the brink of conflict for fear of unleashing a nuclear nightmare. Reflecting back on the Cuban Missile Crisis almost 30 years earlier, former secretary of defense Robert McNamara noted, “the lessons of the missile crisis are simple: Nuclear weapons are useful only for deterrence.” Former Khrushchev aide Fyodor Burlatsky echoed this point, concluding, “it is impossible to win a nuclear war, and both sides realized that, maybe for the first time.”

But for many participants in today’s debate about the Iranian nuclear program, history is irrelevant because they think that the mullocracy in Iran is fundamentally different from the Cold War nuclear powers. They make two related arguments. First, Iran is an autocratic regime with little concern for the lives of its citizens, so it would not be deterred from nuclear war simply by the risk of suffering millions of casualties. Second, because Iran is a theocracy, it does not make rational strategic calculations, which are central to Waltz’s theory.

Proponents of the first proposition suffer from historical amnesia. The first two nuclear adversaries the United States faced—Stalin’s Soviet Union and Mao’s China—were hardly democratic regimes. Indeed, they rank among history’s most totalitarian political systems. Yet neither of these totalitarian regimes risked nuclear war.

Both regimes engaged in mass murder of their own citizens. Conservative estimates of the human cost of Stalin’s rule begin at 20 million deaths. Mao killed approximately the same number of his countrymen. Despite these sanguinary tendencies, neither regime was willing to risk nuclear war with the United States.

Both also indulged in irresponsible nuclear rhetoric. Stalin publicly pooh-poohed the American atomic bomb when told about it by President Truman at Potsdam in July 1945. Behind the scenes, however, he understood that atomic weapons represented a dramatic change in the nature of warfare and secretly began a crash program. The rhetoric of cavalier dismissal concealed a deep concern about nuclear weapons that, in turn, induced caution.

During his 1957 speech at the Moscow Meeting of Communist and Workers’ Parties, Mao also dismissed the nuclear-armed United States as “a paper tiger” and remarked elsewhere that a nuclear war with the U.S. would not be such a catastrophe because “if worse came to worst and half of mankind died, the other half would remain while imperialism would be razed to the ground and the whole world would become socialist.” But in private conversations with Field Marshal Sir Bernard Law Montgomery in September 1961, he argued that nuclear weapons “are not something to use. The more there are, the harder it will be for nuclear wars to break out.” This latter view apparently governed Chinese behavior.

The second objection to Waltz’s nuclear optimism is that Iran will not behave as a rational actor because it is an Islamic theocracy that values the afterlife more than the here and now. True, revolutionary Iran fought an eight-year war with Iraq and suffered almost a million casualties. But this is hardly evidence that its leadership and population have a martyrdom complex. It was, after all, secular Iraq, rather than Iran, that started the war, and the Islamic Republic was the first to accept the United Nations’ ceasefire in 1988 once it became clear that the conflict had reached a stalemate. This behavior hardly indicates an irrational commitment to fight to the last Iranian.

There is no doubt that the rhetoric of some Iranian leaders, particularly President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s florid threats that Israel will be “wiped off the map” and his ludicrous denials of the Holocaust, has been inflammatory and irresponsible. Yet we need to keep in mind that Iran is a much more complex political system than most Western media accounts suggest, and its president is not the most significant political actor in that country.

More importantly, when one looks systematically at recent Iranian history, as Trita Parsi has done in his essential Treacherous Alliance: The Secret Dealings of Israel, Iran, and the U.S., two things become clear. Iranian behavior toward the United States and Israel has been remarkably consistent, both before and after the Islamic Revolution. That continuity is largely explained by a realpolitik not so different from the logic that informed the policies of the Cold War superpowers.

At various times under both the Shah and the mullahs, Iran sought regional hegemony; at other times, under both regimes, it made overtures to the United States and even to Israel. Thus there is little reason to think that Iran would behave any differently than the Soviet Union or Communist China with nuclear weapons. If we could live with those rogue nuclear states, which were willing to sacrifice millions of their own people to advance an eschatological ideology, there is scant reason to think Iran poses a more serious threat.

One could go further and suggest that a nuclear Iran might even be beneficial to the United States. The nuclear stalemate played an important role in American efforts to contain the Soviet Union, and containment, in turn, had the effect of “mellowing” the regime, as George Kennan predicted in his famous Foreign Affairs article. Why should we not expect a regional stalemate involving the United States, Israel, and Iran to have a similar effect by simultaneously bolstering each nation’s territorial security without providing any of them with the means of conquest against other states?

Arguing that an Iranian nuclear capability could benefit Israel is admittedly a more controversial claim. But in addition to the possible mellowing of the Iranian political system, which would be a long-term benefit for Israeli security, there could be some immediate payoffs, too. A nuclear Iran would certainly change the dynamics of the Persian Gulf, with many Arab states desperately searching for a nuclear ally to balance against Iran. Aside from the United States, Israel is the only counterweight in the region. A nuclear Iran could warm relations between Israel and moderate Arab states throughout the region who regard a powerful Iran—Islamic or not—as a threat.

I’m not arguing that an Iranian nuclear deterrent would have immediate transformative effects. It certainly would not, as more than 40 years of Cold War crises demonstrate. I also concede that the ideal situation would be a world without conflict in which nuclear weapons would be unnecessary. But we don’t live in that world. And so I am led to conclude, based upon our best theory of international relations and the perspective of Cold War history, that an Iranian nuclear deterrent would solve more problems than it creates. To paraphrase the subtitle of Stanley Kubrick’s great nuclear satire “Dr. Strangelove,” it might just be time to stop worrying and learn, if not to love, at least to tolerate the Iranian bomb. 
__________________________________________

Michael C. Desch is a professor of political science and fellow of the Joan B. Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies at the University of Notre Dame. He is the author of Power and Military Effectiveness: The Fallacy of Democratic Triumphalism (2008).

[bigron]

The bomb Iran faction 

21/05/2009 05:30:00 PM GMT
http://aljazeera.com/news/articles/39/The_bomb_Iran_faction.html


(yopeace.org) There is clearly a faction of the power elite that is pressing for a U.S. attack on Iran.

 
 There’s no way the 67 million Iranian people would understand an attack as anything other than a savage assault on the Iranian nation.


By Gary Leupp

There is clearly a faction of the power elite that is, and has for some years been pressing, for a U.S. military attack on Iran. It is not advocating a war, at least openly, or an occupation of that vast nation; rather, it is advocating an operation similar in concept to the Israeli attack on Iraq’s French-built Osiraq nuclear reactor in 1981. In a word, it is both advocating an Israeli-like action and justifying it explicitly as one on behalf of Israel.

That Israeli raid on the Iraqi reactor in 1981, justified at the time by Tel Aviv as an act of “preemptive self-defense,” was condemned by the entire world as an egregious violation of international law. President Ronald Reagan directed the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations to vote with other members of the Security Council to condemn the attack. It is a measure of the Israelification of U.S. foreign policy that a quarter-century later Vice President Cheney and the neconservatives who used his office as their general headquarters praised this action and raised preemption to the status of a sacred U.S. military doctrine. What was the attack on Iraq in 2003, to eliminate its (imaginary) weapons of mass destruction, but a preemptive Osiraq raid on crack?

George Bush declared that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction threatening its neighbors, requiring U.S. action (despite lack of UN approval). Iran and Kuwait, recent victims of real Iraqi aggression, stated that they did not feel threatened. Neither did any other bordering state. That left, by implication, Israel. But Israel was not much discussed as an issue during the massive propaganda build-up to the Iraq War. The last thing its proponents wanted was to convey the impression that this was a war for Israel, although that was in fact the only country in the world where the war enjoyed any popularity outside the U.S. (It was, as Joe Klein put it in a 2003 column, “the casus belli that dare not speak its name.”)

With Iran, it’s very different. Those advocating the attack on Iran don’t mince words: the U.S. must, they tell us, use its armed might to destroy Iran’s nuclear program for Israel. For years now they’ve been telling us that Iran is months away from the bomb and that therefore Israel hovers on the edge of the abyss. Oh, the issue of Iranian nukes threatening Europe is also used to justify the construction of the Polish missile base and Czech tracking radar system which many mainstream analysts find at best strategically futile and diplomatically provocative to Russia. No one in Europe takes an Iranian nuclear threat seriously. And the U.S. rhetoric about those facilities last year following the Russian invasion of Georgia (following the Georgian attack upon South Ossetia), exposed their real purpose.

But to the Chicken Littles crying that the sky is falling, Iran’s nuclear program is an existential issue for Israel, hence for the Jewish people. There is a certain intransigent reasoning here and manifest desperation. One saw it in the screeching editorials of Norman Podhoretz in 2007 praying for Bush to bomb Iran to prevent a “nuclear holocaust.” One saw it in the Wall Street Journal op-ed piece by neocon Iran expert and Resident Scholar at the American Enterprise Institute Michael Ledeen, “Iran and the Problem of Evil” in June 2008 linking the entire history of anti-Semitism culminating in its European fascist varieties with Iranian Khomeinists and the Saudi Wahhabis. And one sees this craziness too in the ceaseless barrage of AIPAC-backed congressional resolutions targeting Iran.

The call for an attack on Iran, to the extent it is being voiced in the ruling class, is being most sharply framed by neocon columnists including some who recently served in the Bush administration. It is echoed by AIPAC and other Lobby organizations. In a just world the former would be completely disgraced by now, their lies about Iraq having been fully exposed, and the latter would be shamed into silence by the Israeli espionage scandal.

But now that the Justice Department has dismissed the AIPAC spying charges filed in 2005, the Lobby and neocons are proclaiming the decision as a “vindication” of the activities of Steven Rosen and Keith Weissman (passing U.S. documents pertaining to Iran to Israeli Embassy staff). An emboldened Jane Harman addressing AIPAC can made light of her wiretapped conversation with the “Israeli agent” revealed by Jeff Stein of the Congressional Quarterly. (You know, the guy who offered AIPAC money to buy her the chairmanship of the House Intelligence Committee in return for getting Rosen and Weissman off the hook.)

The message of the AIPAC spy case dismissal seems to be: the foreign policies of these two countries are one, or if not so, the desire of the smaller to determine that of the greater is understandable and legitimate (since its very existence is at stake). There is really no such thing as “spying” or “treason” in this relationship. We’re all family, for God’s sakes! AIPAC emerges as strong as ever with half of Congress dutifully attending its convention.

That message rankles many in the Justice Department, including prosecutors who thought they had a cut and dried case against the AIPAC operatives. And I’d think there are many in the “intelligence community”---the professionals who use their research skills to prepare such reports as the November 2007 National Intelligence Estimate that stated “with a high degree of confidence” that Iran did not have an operative nuclear weapons program---who are galled by apparent Israeli influence on their work.

They must be irked their findings can be ignored by higher-ups who tell them, “No, you don’t understand; Iran threatens Israel with nuclear holocaust.” They are, in effect, being told that Israeli policy requires the circulation of false propaganda concerning Iran’s nuclear program, and that Washington is going to cooperate in that propaganda, ignoring its own intelligence.

That’s the message George Bush conveyed to his own intelligence services when, after the NIE was released (having been delayed a year by the intervention of Cheney’s office), he met with Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and told him the document didn’t “reflect his own views” about the Iranian nuclear program. (As though a man challenged to pronounce “nuclear” has “views” about Iran’s nuclear program of comparable sophistication to the heads of the Central Intelligence Agency, Defense Intelligence Agency, National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, National Security Agency, etc.!)

What better manifestation of the division within the ruling class than this division between a president, fed bogus intelligence by neocon advisors with a Southwest Asia regime-change agenda, and his own intelligence agencies?

There is a section, a rather larger section, of the ruling class that doesn’t buy the alarmist depiction of Iran, and doesn’t see the point of a U.S. attack. Certainly they don’t see Iran’s nuclear program as an existential threat to themselves. Indeed, the blowback potential of such an attack is obvious to all with eyes to see, conscious of the existing increasingly problematic consequences of the U.S. alliance with Israel, and not blinded by paranoia.

Maybe I’m projecting, but allotting some common sense to these people I’m assuming they realize there’s no way that public opinion in Europe, or in Latin America, Japan, China, South Asia, would see an Iran attack as anything other than an insanely immoral deployment of the preemption principle that underlay the Iraq attack. They’d see it as a ratcheting up of the bullying tactics that an hyper-puissance---in precipitous decline, maybe---felt compelled to adopt. Obama’s reputation would be toast.

There’s no way the 67 million Iranian people, most of whom view the nuclear program as an object of national pride, would understand a U.S. attack as anything other than a savage assault on the Iranian nation, and not the first by the U.S. As all Americans should know, the CIA overthrew the democratically elected government of Iran in 1953 to punish it for its efforts to nationalize the nation’s oil industry. It installed the Shah whose vicious rule provoked the most mass-based revolution ever to sweep an Islamic society in 1979.

But we must understand, a neocon like Ledeen (whom by the way an Italian parliamentary investigation has linked to the Niger uranium documents forgeries behind Bush’s infamous State of the Union speech claim) sees the CIA overthrow of Mossadegh as a great moment in history, a great CIA success story. And he emphasizes that no people in the Middle East love Americans more than Iranians and are more eager to be freed!

This kind of delusion recalls neocon predictions the U.S. troops would be greeted in the streets of Baghdad with flowers. It also recalls what the unnamed White House official told New York Times columnist Ron Suskind in the months leading up to the war based on lies in Iraq. He berated Suskind for being rooted in the “reality-based community,” among those who “believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality.”

The Bush insider warned against such belief, dismissing it as naïve: “That’s not the way the world really works anymore,” he declared. “We’re an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you’re studying that reality, we’ll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that’s how things will sort out. We’re history’s actors ... and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.” The Bush administration is gone, but that (Straussian?) mindset persists in some quarters.

Those who don’t buy the alarmist case against Iran may be becoming increasingly concerned over time about the success of the attack-advocates in advancing their cause; indeed, the frontal attacks on the Israel Lobby from academics like John J. Mearsheimer and Stephen M. Walt and former President Jimmy Carter--- unthinkable just a few years ago---testify to such concern. (On the Lobby and Iran, see especially pages 283-294 of the Mearsheimer-Walt book.)

Similarly the analyses of the “neoconservative” phenomenon, both as an intellectual movement that influences elite public opinion through such organs as the National Review and the Weekly Standard and editorial pages of the Wall Street Journal and as a self-proclaimed “cabal” within government, have come under scrutiny especially since 2003 when journalists like Seymour Hersh, Jeet Heer and William Pfaff all indicated concern with a genuine threat.

These days a well-known Jewish columnist, Time Magazine’s Joe Klein, in an exchange with Abraham Foxman notes a “dangerous tendency among Jewish neoconservatives to encourage a pre-emptive attack on Iran’s nuclear program. Their gleeful, intellectual warmongering—given the vast dangers and complexities of an attack on Iran--is nauseating.” (He wrote this in response to Foxman’s allegation that his critique of the influence of neoconservatism in producing the Iraq War constituted “anti-Semitism.”)

The neocons are sometimes described as an intellectual movement influenced by University of Chicago philosopher Leo Strauss as well as (in a curious way) Trotskyism, the principle proponents of which are almost entirely secular Jews and passionate Zionists. They argue that the U.S. should use its military power to bring “democracy” to the world and so many see them as neo-Wilsonians (with all the shoddy cynicism the originals represented).

But Strauss, as leading authority on his thought Shadia Drury points out, argues that deception is the norm in political life, that the big lie is necessary to get the masses to embrace wise policy. (Thus the occupations of Afghanistan and Iraq really have nothing to do with “democracy” but with unspoken geopolitical objectives.) The neocons have yet to be sufficientlyexposed, or defeated as a political force, but they’ve come under scrutiny in part because of the alarm some in the power structure feel at their rise to power in the early Bush years.

In Bush’s first State of the Union address, in January 2002, he made the reference to the “Axis of Evil,” bizarrely linking Iraq, Iran and North Korea to one another and---in that surreal atmosphere, in the minds of his audience, as the U.S. flag fluttered in the background of every TV screen 24/7---to 9/11.

He somehow, when he held the respect of 90% of the people (when he served as what the Straussian would call the “gentleman” ruler manipulated in the background by the “wise”), was able to conflate the rogue Saudis who destroyed the Twin Towers and attacked the Pentagon with absolutely unrelated phenomena---the countries of Iraq, Iran and North Korea, which had little to do with or even hostile relations with one another. Who was responsible for this preposterous phrase but neocon David Frum, associate of neocon Richard Perle, head of the Defense Policy Board who was to insist that Mohamed Atta met Saddam Hussein in Baghdad?

That phrase “Axis of Evil”---placing Iran in the same crosshairs as Iraq---drew consternation from European allies. Asked at a security conference in February what it meant, Assistant Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz, the top-ranking neocon in government, replied mysteriously, “You’re either for us or against us,” prompting continental editorialists to muse darkly about the descent of a kind of Manichaenism upon the post 9/11 US Here in this country while (following, one might say, the Straussian game plan) fear fed gullibility and the Big Lie generally worked well, many in the intelligentsia (and academia in particular) suspected that the Iraq War was based on calculated deception.

Whether it was the lies of Big Oil or the Military-Industrial Complex, clearly there were lies here. It was only after Iraq was firmly under U.S. occupation that the role of the neocons in the war preparations, and of Douglas Feith’s “Office of Special Plans” (what Mother Jones appropriately called the “Lie Factory”) in particular, became clear. (Most people still don’t know that Leo Shulsky, who headed the OSP under Feith, wrote this interesting paper “Leo Strauss and the World of Intelligence” with Gary J. Schmitt earlier in his career.)

Since then many have come to think that in their desire to reconfigure Southwest Asia in what they suppose to be the interests of Israel the neocons are (1) prepared to lie through their teeth, and (2) threaten to severely jeopardize U.S. security.

My own critique of the neocons, the Lobby and Israel differs from the mainstream ones, coming as it does from a left anti-imperialist perspective. I’ve made as much a fuss as anyone about the neocons’ lies, by way of exposure. (My first forays out of academic writing into political column writing were to perform the sort of exposure which was not entirely absent in the mainstream press---in fact it was there in bits and pieces for those who looked for it---but seldom sharply expressed.) But liars are of course representative of bourgeois politics and mainstream journalism in general; lying is quite normative and so it, even of a Straussian variety, is not the main issue here.

Nor is “U.S. national security” as mainstream analysts understand it---the security of an imperialist country, a country which is as about as aggressive as a country can possibly be in the history of the world---the issue for me. For me the issue is that this faction of the power elite has a known project---there’s no secret about it---to transform (or in their cynical euphemism “bring democracy to”) what they call “the Greater Middle East.” This includes Afghanistan and whatever other parts of Central Asia they find useful. Various benefits accrue from their project, which they link to such ruling-class objectives as the Indian Ocean-Caspian oil pipeline project and the establishment of permanent military bases in the region. And they are prepared to slaughter hundreds of thousands to achieve their aims.

A conception of Israeli security guides their project, and central to it was the bloody conquest of Iraq. But this is only the beginning of the project. Richard Perle, Douglas Feith, David Wurmser (who also worked in the OSP), and Meyrav Wurmser (of the Middle East Media Research Institute) all participated in the drafting of a white paper for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in 1996 entitled “A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm.” http://www.iasps.org/strat1.htm Many have observed how it envisions “regime change” throughout the region to “secure the realm” of Israel. The “effort can focus on removing Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq,” according to the report, “—an important Israeli strategic objective in its own right.”

Those bearing responsibility for the Iraq War, for the propaganda campaign leading up to it, for the editorials, for the disinformation, for the forged documents, for the coordinated public statements (“We don’t want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud over New York”), for the war---bear a heavy responsibility indeed. They are not limited to the neocons; as many have pointed out, Wolfowitz would be nothing without Rumsfeld, Libby would be nothing without Cheney, the Lie Factory products nothing without the performance of shame of Colin Powell at United Nations in February 2003. And Bush as Commander-in-Chief is ultimately responsible. But the neocons were unquestionably central players in the crime.

The neocons have generated enemies and lost credibility. But they’ve successfully eluded responsibility for their actions and continue to appear as respectable commentators on Fox News (if that’s not an oxymoron) and write columns for reputable publications. (Bill Kristol was just recently terminated as a New York Times columnist but was picked up by the Washington Post.) They are not without a lingering presence in the halls of power.

Dennis Ross, Hillary Clinton’s Special Advisor on the Persian Gulf and Southwest Asia (i.e., key advisor on Iran), also known as “Israel’s lawyer” for his efforts on behalf of the Jewish state as a U.S. diplomat during Israeli-Palestinian talks in 1999-2000), is probably the key such figure at present and a person to watch. He co-authored an op-ed piece in the Wall Street Journal Sept. 22, 2008 with Richard Holbrooke, R. James Woolsey, and Mark D. Wallace entitled, “Everybody Needs to Worry About Iran.” It stated without evidence that, “Iran is now edging closer to being armed with nuclear weapons, and it continues to develop a ballistic-missile capability.” In other words it was intended to make you worry and make you forget about the 2007 NIE.

(Former CIA boss Woolsey by the way seems a big enthusiast of the Noble Lie concept, having originally promoted the lie about the meeting between Mohamed Atta and an Iraqi embassy official in Prague and praised the disinformation articles about Saddam-al-Qaeda ties published by Jeffrey Goldberg in the New Yorker in 2002. He claimed that by showing that the Kurdish al-Ansar group was al-Qaeda affiliated and operating on Iraqi territory, Goldberg had decisively established Saddam’s al-Qaeda ties and put the CIA to shame.)

Ross is known to favor a policy of ultimatums to Iran followed by a naval blockade to prevent gasoline imports, then a blockade of oil exports, then massive air strikes on the nuclear facilities and military facilities. The goal would be not only the crippling of the nuclear program for a few years but the destruction of the military and regime. His may be a minority view within the administration, and his appointment even a sop to the Lobby, but he is dangerous.

The ruling class is clearly divided over how to deal with Iran, with the rise of Iran that has paradoxically accompanied the U.S. invasion of Iraq. Maybe this precipitous ascent occurred as a result of the cluelessness of neocon policymakers, few of whom understand Arabic or Persian or Middle East culture and history behind that of Israel. Maybe they genuinely didn’t understand the historical specificities of Shiism or the strength of Shiite solidarity. But by toppling the Sunni-based Baathists (whom the CIA had once favored as an alternative to communists or Islamists), the US brought pro-Iranian Shiite Islamists to power---to Tehran’s great delight.

Meanwhile China, replacing Japan as Iran’s main oil customer, signs more and more contracts for pipeline construction and Russia continues work on the Bushehr nuclear reactor. The Russians and Iranians say that that reactor is for entirely peaceful purposes, and the IAEA backs them up, while the Israelis insist that it (like Osiraq 28 years ago), ought to be bombed---by the U.S., preferably. But the fact that that hasn’t happened yet, and that indeed the Bush administration denied the Israelis bunker-busting bombs in 2008, shows that the “bomb, bomb, bomb Iran” faction of the US ruling class has been on the defensive if not decline for some time now.

I’m not saying the U.S. ruling class is fundamentally divided into factions that are divided over Israel or an Israeli security agenda, more deeply than it is divided, say, about how to grapple with the collapse of the economy. Nor am I suggesting that the struggle between these factions is the only dynamic shaping Middle East policy or foreign policy generally. Foreign policy is generally shaped by its framers’ perception of what serves the interests of the ruling class as a whole, which is to say, what generates maximum profit for corporations in which U.S. capitalists are invested.

It’s not unusual for the interests of the oil companies, for example, to diverge from the interests of Israel as promoted by the Lobby, although they can also converge. But there is a faction in the U.S. polity whose commitment to Israel, or to a particular vision of Israel’s security, seems to trump all other considerations including the broader “global interests” of U.S. imperialism. It is an understatement to say that during the George W. Bush years that faction was extraordinarily bold.

The general consensus in the ruling class seems to be at present that its needs are best served by this popular president as a uniting figure with a centrist politics that can distance the country from the Bush policies abhorred by the world and the American people while avoiding any major shifts in foreign policy. Thus we have plans for a gradual withdrawal from Iraq in accordance with the agreement already worked out by the Bush and Maliki regimes; a continued counterinsurgency war in Afghanistan that isn’t yet too controversial; continued Predator drone attacks on Pakistan, etc.

The plan is to stay the course on the Bush foreign policy that meets with the approval of the generals. There may be some significant shifts from the preceding administration in U.S. policy towards Latin America and Europe, Russia. On Iran we have renewed diplomacy, and perhaps even the vital concession that Iran indeed has the right under the NPT to enrich uranium and master the nuclear cycle despite some technical violations of the agreement years ago which the U.S. has used to vilify Iran but have nothing to do with Iran as a nuclear weapons threat. In this context we might be seeing the twilight of the neocons as a political force.

But it is important to note the obvious, without being overly delicate about it: the government of Israel, its friends and advocates in the U.S., the neocons and the Lobby retain enormous political power to affect the course of policy. When AIPAC met this month, more than half the members of the House and Senate attended its gala night dinner, featuring the “roll call” when all the legislators rise when asked to demonstrate the lobbyists’ clout on Capitol Hill. Their willingness to take part in such a ritual under current circumstances is itself an extraordinary statement of Lobby power.

But this takes place at a time when the Obama administration is rumored to be heading for a confrontation with the new Netanyahu administration in Israel over the fundamental problem in the Middle East: the Israeli occupation of the Palestinian territories seized during the (preemptive) war of June 1967. By his selection of former Senator George Mitchell as special envoy to the Middle East Obama signaled that the U.S. would start getting serious about obliging Israel to comply with international law. This provoked an outcry from those worried about a shift from the Bush policy of ignoring the expansion of illegal Jewish settlements on the West Bank, Golan Heights and Shebaa Farms.

“Senator Mitchell is fair,” complained Abraham Foxman, national director of the Anti-Defamation League. “He’s been meticulously even-handed. But the fact is, American policy in the Middle East hasn’t been ‘even handed’ — it has been supportive of Israel when it felt Israel needed critical U.S. support. So I’m concerned. I’m not sure the situation requires that kind of approach in the Middle East.”

Obama however may be quite sure that after eight years of slavishly, unprecedentedly pro-Israeli policy the U.S. needs to try to establish some credibility as a rational if not dispassionate party in the Middle East. That means telling the Israelis they have to make peace with the Palestinians, stop settling their land and leave the illegal settlements they’ve established.

What he’s likely to be told is what Avigdor Lieberman, Israel’s new foreign minister (whom many Israeli’s consider a “fascist” for his views on Palestinians, a particularly harsh designation in the Jewish state) told the Jerusalem Post in a recent interview. He complained that “People try to simplify the situation with these formulas — land-for peace, two-state solution — it’s a lot more complicated.” The real problem, he declared, “is not occupation, not settlements and not settlers. The biggest obstacle is the Iranians.”

Lieberman has also surprised many lately by stating that Israel after years of threats would not attack Iran after all. On April 26 he told the Austrian Kleine Zeitung, “We are not talking about a military attack. Israel cannot resolve militarily the entire world’s problem. I propose that the United States, as the largest power in the world, take responsibility for resolving the Iranian question.” In other words, he’s leaving it to the U.S. to solve the problem of Iran as the precondition for Israel addressing the problem of peace with the Palestinians.

Meanwhile we read of another Israeli Air Force refueling drill between Israel and Gibraltar, a 3,800 km flight the first week of May. This could be preparatory for an attack on Iran or designed to signal the U.S.: “We’re serious. You do this for us, or we’ll do it ourselves. Either way, you’ll take the consequences with us, as your Vice President Cheney noted in January 2005 when he said, ‘the Israelis might well decide to act first, and let the rest of the world worry about cleaning up the diplomatic mess afterwards.’ So understanding our resolve, please do the right thing and do it instead of us!”

Because that really is the logic. And within the ruling circles of this imperialist country, where the interests of the masses don’t have much to do with decision-making, there are those who are terrified by this illogic. But then again you have the broad bipartisan support for AIPAC-drafted Congressional resolution 362 designed to provoke war with Iran.

Your characteristic politician—shallow, amoral, pragmatic, ignorant of the world and of history but acutely sensitive to constituency issues, calculating, reliant on opportunistic arrogant staffers---can simultaneously understand that something doesn’t make sense and yet requires political support. (Just like he/she may have concluded in high school that there probably was no God but for campaign purposes has to have a religious affiliation.) How many politicians have so much as cited the NIE?

Where this is all going to go is anyone’s guess. There’s a meeting coming up between Obama and Netanyahu May 18 in Washington. The Israeli press is expressing some anxiety about the encounter since US officials have made it clear the U.S. president will pressure Netanyahu on the settlements issue. Obama seems to want to say to the world that he’s serious about getting some justice for the Palestinians. He may believe he can do so at minimal political expense, and this could be a shrewd political device at this juncture given the deterioration of the U.S. position in the world. Following the global revulsion at the New Year’s Gaza blitzkrieg the U.S. can obtain political capital from a period of public tension with its de facto ally over the settlements.

In that likely context of tension, the calls for bombing Iran will continue, coming from Israel, from the neocon columnists, from the Lobby, maybe from some inside the State Department and Pentagon. The cooler heads in the power structure, including in the intelligence community fighting heroic rear-guard actions, will continue to say in various ways privately and publicly: “Look, this is stupid. Not only does Iran not constitute an ‘existential threat’ to the state of Israel, it doesn’t have a nuclear weapons program, period. That’s just not what the science says (not that these people care about science). That’s what some people want you to believe to scare you into supporting their criminal plot to attack a sovereign country, just like they did Iraq on the basis of lies.”

Again, I’m not saying this matter of attacking Iran is the most fundamental issue dividing the power elite at this time. Nor is it the main issue on the minds of the people. But it’s something a strongly determined faction in this country have successfully placed on the policy agenda. They owe a great debt to Dick Cheney who bearing no outward marks of Zionist sentimentality but merely Big Oil written all over his face while nurturing the neocons during two Bush terms in office constantly declared and gave pseudo-legitimacy to the argument that Iran could have a nuclear program for one reason only: nuclear weapons. (This despite the fact that successive U.S. administrations had promoted an Iranian civilian nuclear program in the ‘60s and ‘70s when the Shah was in power and the Ford administration was doing so when Cheney served as Ford’s chief of staff.)

Let’s now see what kind of clout this “bomb Iran” faction can muster vis-à-vis the reasonable people within the crisis-ridden U.S. ruling class. As pro-Taliban Islamists take power in much of Pakistan, the Taliban continues its revival in Afghanistan, and the policy of paying off the Sunni tribes in Iraq crumbles, U.S. imperialism confronts the limits of its power and has (so to speak) to rethink. “Time for some real apocalyptic savagery” think some, the crazy ones, who imagine using nukes against Iran. They know that there are tens of millions of Christian Zionists, including Tim LaHaye and Jerry B. Jenkins readers, who’d be down for unprecedented fireworks tomorrow, no questions asked. These folks aren’t providing intellectual leadership to the movement; they’re just yearning for the End Times and that affects their judgment.

Others probably think this has to be the time for a show-down with the nuts. One faction in the power elite must be thinking: They cannot be allowed to get their Iran attack on the basis of fantasy. Whatever one thinks about the mullahs, or Ahmadinejad, or Islam---they can’t be allowed another war-based-on-lies.

People on the radical left should observe the efforts of this faction, encouraging it of course, but observing how the root problem is really the system which nurtures and validates nuts like Wolfowitz, Perle, Feith, Bolton, and their media cheerleaders like Kristol and Podhoretz. But we should raise, if only for discussion the question: why is a system based indifferently on the pursuit of profit (which is what capitalist imperialism is all about) being asked to risk its health for this minor accretion to itself---the nuclear-powered settler-state of Israel--in a confrontation with Iran, a country that doesn’t even threaten the U.S. system (but actually in fact holds open broad investment opportunities with other imperialist countries are expoiting)?

What role do purely ideological factors play here? How do Zionism and, for some, biblical mythology about a Chosen People and a Promised Land intersect with and even outweigh other considerations such as “national security” in a conventional sense and most fundamentally, U.S. corporate profit?

In the collective mind of the U.S. ruling class, such questions are no doubt being posed, probably sometimes in wrong ways. Accused AIPAC spy Rosen now tells the Jerusalem Post his arrest was all due to anti-Semitism. There is such a thing as anti-Semitism, and a deep almost instinctual tendency to think in terms of ethnic stereotypes corrupts the American soul. The blogosphere abounds with commentaries that mix rational critique of U.S. policy with essentializing nonsense about the power of “the Jews” behind policy, without recognizing the diversity of Jewish opinion and the vital role of Christian Zionists with their belief in the End Times in enhancing Lobby strength.

But if the Lobby and the neocons step up their efforts to get the U.S. to bomb Iran on behalf of Israel (because make no mistake, that is exactly what is happening here), their opponents may respond in a way that produces a widespread campaign of criticism in society pertaining to Israeli influence and Lobby power such as we have not seen in this country. That would be a very good thing. The objects of scrutiny will likely however claim that they are victims of anti-Semitism, and some of this will be imaginary. But there is real anti-Semitism in this country, and there can be dangerously essentializing explanations and attributions that contribute to it.

This is the first time that a major U.S. foreign policy question has been posed very frankly as an Israeli security question, posed as such, it must be said, by the “bomb Iran” advocates themselves. If the debate heats up in the coming months, during which by everyone’s calculations Iran is reaching goals which it says are milestones in peaceful nuclear energy development and Israel says are unacceptable, many issues not typically central to US political discourse may come up. The public debate won’t be about blood and oil, bases and pipelines.

It will be about whether Israel is really threatened by Iran, a nation that hasn’t attacked another in centuries. It will be about whether the Lobby, on behalf of a nuclear power exposed as such, can successfully make the case that Israel as a nuclear power is truly threatened by a country with three thousand centrifuges producing small test batches of low enriched uranium.

It will be about whether conventional political discourse in this country (which has always in any case been conducted in code obscuring the raw class interests involved, always broadcast in a cynical language in which “democracy” means “capitalism” or at least U.S. imperialist interests), will be eclipsed for a time by a discourse in which “Islamofascism” and “nuclear holocaust” and other sensationalistic terms (ridiculous terms which the neocons got Bush to vocalize publicly) designed to stifle thought are at the center of public discussion.

And it may be in part about the usages of the anti-Semitism charge. It will be necessary to carefully follow and objectively analyze the “bomb Iran” faction, its struggle with its opponents, and its defenses from criticism in the months to come.

-- Gary Leupp is Professor of History at Tufts University, and Adjunct Professor of Religion. He is the author of Servants, Shophands and Laborers in in the Cities of Tokugawa Japan; Male Colors: The Construction of Homosexuality in Tokugawa Japan; and Interracial Intimacy in Japan: Western Men and Japanese Women, 1543-1900. He is also a contributor to CounterPunch's merciless chronicle of the wars on Iraq, Afghanistan and Yugoslavia, Imperial Crusades. He can be reached at: gleupp@granite.tufts.edu. This article appeared in CounterPunch.org.





-- Middle East Online

 

[bigron]

U.S. calls for collective action against Iran 

21/05/2009 03:42:00 PM GMT
http://aljazeera.com/news/articles/34/US_calls_for_collective_action_against_Iran.html

 
 Hillary Clinton backtracks on the imposition of more U.S. unilateral sanctions against Iran in favor of multilateral penalties.


Secretary of State Hillary Clinton backtracks on the imposition of more U.S. unilateral sanctions against Iran in favor of multilateral penalties.

Clinton told lawmakers on Wednesday that adding new unilateral sanctions against Iran was 'not really that helpful' at the present juncture.

She said, however, that if diplomacy could not work, multilateral sanctions backed by U.S. partners, notably China and Russia, were a better choice in curbing Tehran's nuclear program for now.

"We already have a lot of sanctions on the books but the most effective ones are the ones that we have been able to persuade a lot of our partners to pursue as well," Clinton said.

Clinton's Wednesday remarks were an apparent retreat from her earlier talks of sanctions in April. Clinton had said that the U.S. was left with no choice but to unilaterally impose 'very tough, crippling sanctions' against Iran should diplomatic means prove to be of no avail.

The West, spearheaded by the U.S. and Israel, accuses Iran - a signatory to the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) -- of pursuing a nuclear weapons program.

This is while Tehran has repeatedly said that a military nuclear program does not fit in its defense paradigm, saying that its nuclear program is aimed at producing electricity to meet its growing demand.

Asked about any linkage between the Israeli-Palestinian peace process and Iran's nuclear work, the former first lady told the lawmakers that the U.S. was seeking to persuade Arab nations that Iran was a bigger threat than Israel and that they should join an anti-Iran front.

I do believe that the "alliance which has come together of Israel and many of her Arab neighbors against Iran obtaining nuclear weapons is an opportunity that will enable us both to move forward with our engagement regarding Iran and our commitment to pursue diplomacy and to build a multilateral coalition" against Iran, she said.

Such coalition, according to Clinton, would be a 'great opportunity' to assist in achieving the two-state solution.

The U.S., along with the other four permanent members of the UN Security Council -- the UK, France, Russia and China -- plus Germany are discussing Iran's nuclear work.

While the UNSC, under U.S. pressure, has adopted three rounds of sanctions against Iran over its uranium enrichment work, Russia and China seem reluctant to further impose sanctions against the country.

Under different allegations including the development of nuclear military work, Washington has imposed various unilateral sanctions against Tehran since the two countries severed diplomatic ties thirty years ago.

Clinton's backtracking on more unilateral sanctions against Iran comes as earlier in May, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov had expressed dismay over Washington's threat of imposing further unilateral sanctions on Iran.

"We keep telling our partners that unilateral sanctions are not in line with our collective actions," Lavrov said at a joint press conference with Clinton, adding Russia saw no "sense" in any harsh sanctions against Iran but instead sought to return Iran to the negotiating table.

Iran says it favors talks over its nuclear work, but has called for logical negotiations without any preconditions. Iran also calls on the U.S. to manifest real changes rather than a mere change of tone in dealing with Iran.


-- Press TV

 

[bigron]

Israel to US: We reserve 'right' to bomb Iran 

22/05/2009 11:30:00 AM GMT
 

http://aljazeera.com/news/articles/34/Israel_to_US_We_reserve_right_to_bomb_Iran.html


Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has told the Obama administration that Tel Aviv “reserves itself operational freedom” on Iran, according to an aide.

The premier during his recent visit to Washington "clarified that Israel reserves itself operational freedom, and several of the most senior figures in the Obama administration said 'of course'," Netanyahu's national security advisor Uzi Arad told Israel Army Radio.

The remarks came a day after CIA Director Leon Panetta said that Tel Aviv knows that launching a military attack on Iran would mean "big trouble".

The CIA director acknowledged that he had recently visited Israel to warn its leaders against staging an attack on Iran.

"The Israelis are obviously concerned about Iran and focused on it. But [Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu] understands that if Israel goes it alone, it will mean big trouble. He knows that for the sake of Israeli security, they have to work together with others," Panetta said.

Arad, however, claimed that the US acknowledged that “it would not necessarily receive forewarning of an Israeli strike against Tehran's nuclear facilities.”

He explained that even in the past “Israel did not update the United States regarding military operations.”

Netanyahu, after his meeting with Barack Obama, declared that he had "reached a great understanding on Iran" with the US president.

Israel -- the sole possessor of a nuclear arsenal in the Middle East -- accuses Iran of making efforts to develop atomic bombs, maintaining that a "nuclear Iran" is the prime existential threat to its security.

Iran, which conducts a low-level enrichment program, is signatory to the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and has allowed the International Atomic Energy Agency to install surveillance cameras at its facilities and to conduct nuclear inspections.




-- Press TV

 

[skyfind]

As Israel rages, US plans for Iran war re-emerge
Fri, 22 May 2009 18:09:23 GMT
http://www.presstv.ir/detail.aspx?id=95621&sectionid=351020104

As Washington gets updates on Israeli plans to strike Iran, US President Barack Obama orders the Pentagon to rejuvenate contingency plans for the use of military in Iran.


US Secretary of Defense Robert Gates (left) says the Pentagon has updated its plans for using military force against Iran at the request of President Barack Obama.

Despite the prospects of diplomatic engagement with Tehran over its nuclear program, Defense Secretary and Pentagon chief Robert Gates said Friday that the White House has not ruled out the possibility of a military strike if diplomacy was to fail.

"Presidents always ask their military to have a range of contingency plans available to them," Gates told NBC television. "And all I would say is that, as a result of our dialogue with the president, we've refreshed our plans and all options are on the table."

In a turnabout from the policies of the Bush administration, President Obama says he seeks to diplomatically engage Iran over its disputed nuclear program.

Iran, which favors diplomacy to resolve the nuclear differences with the West, says the program is directed at the civilian applications of the technology.

The US and Israel, however, accuse the country of seeking military objectives in its pursuit.

The defense secretary's remarks come shortly after a visit by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to Washington.

Netanyahu's visit exposed deep differences between the two administrations over issues such as the stalled peace talks with the Palestinians and the US approach to deal with Iran.

According to the Israeli Radio, Netanyahu told Obama that Israel reserves the right to take unilateral military action against Iran, refusing to make a promise to follow the US lead.

The nuclear issue aside, President Obama's decision to engage Tehran in direct talks has raised concern in Israel that rapprochement between the two rivals -- which have not had diplomatic ties for nearly three decades -- would ultimately cool Tel Aviv's relations with its main ally.

Netanyahu's visit to the US has raised fears that the US president may have failed to avert an impending war in the volatile Middle East.

Israel, the possessor of Middle East's sole nuclear arsenal, has long strived to portray Iran as a regime hell-bent on an imminent nuclear war.

Iran says it has no plans to attack any country but continues to beef up its military capabilities to deter threats such as those originating from Israel.

MD/MMN

[bigron]

Ha'aretz: Obama quashed Israel military option against Iran


BY Yossi Melman, Haaretz Correspondent

http://www.uruknet.info/?p=m54500&hd=&size=1&l=e

May 22, 2009

Israel's military option against Iran has died. The death warrant was issued courtesy of the new U.S. administration led by Barack Obama.

All the administration's senior officials, from the president to his vice president, Joe Biden, Defense Secretary Robert Gates and others are sending strong, clear hints that Israel does not have permission to strike Iran. Yet, given their familiarity with the Israeli client, they have not made do with simple hints and intimations. Washington dispatched the new CIA director, Leon Panetta, to Israel. Panetta made clear to Netanyahu, in so many words, that an Israeli attack would create "big trouble."

Perhaps Israel at one point had just a small window of opportunity to exercise the military option, or, in other words, the possibility of attacking sites in Iran to prevent it from developing nuclear weapons. This is assuming, of course, that Israel indeed has the military capability for carrying out such a mission - an assumption that raises many questions. This is a mission that requires gathering pinpoint intelligence, to identify the precise targets without harming thousands of innocent civilians.

Simply put, one of the targets of such a strike is the uranium enrichment facility in Isfahan, which lies in the heart of a congested civilian population. A realistic military option is also contingent on fighter jets finding undetected routes, as well as carrying a sufficient payload of bombs and missiles to inflict heavy damage on the targets.

Let us assume that Israel does, indeed, have a reasonable military capability which would enable it to strike at the targets, inflict heavy damage and set Iran's nuclear program back a few years. The opportunity to realize this capability arguably presented itself to Israel a few years ago. Iran at the time was subject to an intense international offensive. Inspectors of the International Atomic Energy Agency repeatedly exposed its lies and levied sanctions against the Tehran regime.

Threats made by President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to wipe Israel from the map and his insistence on denying the Holocaust aroused great sympathy for Israel. This sympathy was buttressed by the Olmert government's willingness to hold peace talks with Syria and seek an agreement with the Palestinians. Above all, this friendly international atmosphere was backed by an accommodating Republican administration and a president who was ready to support (or to turn a blind eye to) any Israeli operation. In addition, Iran's ability to respond to an attack with missiles was limited.

But all this is now in the past. The sanctions are stuck. Ahmadinejad has, for the time being, softened his bellicose rhetoric. The production of Iranian missiles has doubled.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is not ready to recognize the right of the Palestinians to a state of their own, nor does he have any intention of holding serious negotiations with Syria, regarding withdrawal from the Golan Heights. This position reduces international support for Israel. Yet, most importantly, there is a new president in Washington, one who has outlined a new policy vis-a-vis Iran. He has announced the start of negotiations with Iran, and even though he mentioned that the talks will have to be concluded by the end of this year, he did not set a clear deadline. All these factors, including the explicit statements made by administration officials, put Israel in its place.

The supreme tenet of Israeli defense policy states that Jerusalem must not launch any strategic initiative that stands in contradiction, or places in harm's way, the clear interests of the United States. This stance has underpinned every fateful decision taken by Israel relating to matters of war and peace. Israel embarked on the Six-Day War only after it was convinced that the U.S. would not oppose. In the hours leading up to the Yom Kippur War, Israel refrained from launching a preemptive strike for fear that Washington would blame it for starting the war. Israel invaded Lebanon in 1982 only after Defense Minister Ariel Sharon came under the impression that the U.S. would view the move with understanding. During the first Gulf War in 1991, the U.S. did not permit Israel to respond to Iraqi scud missiles, and Israel obliged.

If this tenet remains the cornerstone of defense policy, then Israel once again will not act against the explicit wishes of the U.S. Thus, when Israeli leaders say that "all options are open," this is nothing but a dog's bark being louder than his bite. Or, if you will, a mouse that roars. If the U.S. does not alter its policy, then Israel no longer has the military option at its disposal - if it ever had such an option at all.




 

[bigron]

Bringing Iran In From the Cold

By Nader Mousavizadeh

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article22679.htm

May 22, 2009 "Washington Post' -- -Thursday, May 21, 2009 -- A fateful consensus is forming around the proposition that war with Iran is inevitable. The failure of the past eight years' non-diplomacy has resulted in a worst-case scenario whereby Iran, most experts agree, has passed the point of no return in terms of technical nuclear weapons capability without violating its legal obligations under the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.

Witness, then, the remarkable display of Arab-Israeli unity at the White House: Monday's message from Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu about existential threats echoing Arab warnings about the Persian menace on the horizon. Palestine is passé, Iran is in -- and the great debate, we are now to believe, concerns whether the road to Tehran runs through Jerusalem or vice versa.

As a rising regional power with a record of sponsoring Hezbollah and Hamas as agents of influence, Iran is using every weapon -- symmetrical and asymmetrical -- to disrupt the established order. Answering this challenge without war will require a diplomatic shift beyond mere engagement.
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By focusing on the means of Iran's ascendancy -- its pursuit of a nuclear weapons capability and its support for Hezbollah and Hamas -- we are avoiding the vital question of ends. Concentrating on capabilities instead of intentions, we are missing the far more consequential opportunity to challenge the Iranian regime to a real debate about the country's legitimate place in the regional security architecture and the deeply illegitimate ways Tehran seeks to achieve it.

In other words, it's not about the bomb.

And yet preventing Tehran from gaining nuclear weapons status has gained dangerously totemic status as a national security aim of the United States and its allies. Leave aside the possibility that an Israeli government disinclined toward a two-state solution would find reason to direct the world's focus away from Gaza. Ignore, too, the likelihood that Arab regimes struggling to justify their rule may be keen to change the subject. The United States remains captive to three decades of Cold War thinking where Iran is concerned, and nothing in the new administration's policy suggests a shift as fundamental as the one required.

While the Obama administration appears likely to resist the near-term pressure for military action (not least because of its preoccupation with the creeping Talibanization of Pakistan, Iran's already nuclear-armed neighbor to the east), its mix of rhetorical innovation and policy continuation is unlikely to produce a different outcome.

This presents a timeline of a war foretold: Over the next few months, a set of U.S. diplomatic gestures will probably be met with skepticism and stalling in Tehran. New and alarming intelligence about possible covert nuclear programs will surface, accompanied by a step-up in Hamas and Hezbollah activity. The administration will conclude that its outstretched hand has been met with the familiar fist and will seek U.N. support for crippling sanctions. As Russia and China decline to join a meaningful sanctions regime, proponents of military action will argue that all other options have been exhausted. War will be upon us.

To avoid this calamity, we need to reverse our starting point in engagement -- away from the bomb and Iran's sponsorship of Hezbollah and Hamas -- and discard the notion that bigger sticks and bigger carrots will alter Tehran's strategic calculus. Our goal should be a new geostrategic environment in the Persian Gulf, in which Iran has fewer reasons to pursue overt nuclear weapons status, and in which it won't trigger a cascade of conflict if it nonetheless decides to do so. Rather than allow capabilities over which we have little control to force our hand, we should seek a new framework of intentions in our diplomacy with Iran.

This means opening direct bilateral talks without preconditions, focused on the many areas of common urgent concern, beginning with Pakistan, Afghanistan and Iraq. By building trust through joint efforts in arenas where Iranian and U.S. interests greatly coincide, we can move toward candid acknowledgment of each side's legitimate interests.

From Iran, this would require acceptance of the U.S. regional role; agreement that Hezbollah and Hamas pursue their interests through political, and not military, means; and a return to its previous policy of supporting whatever deal the Palestinians make with Israel. From the United States, this would require recognition of the sources of strategic paranoia in Tehran -- the legacy of its 10-year war with Iraq; being surrounded by nuclear powers, including Pakistan, India, Russia, Israel and the United States; and a 30-year history of antagonism with the world's greatest power. From this can flow acceptance of a legitimate Iranian role in Gulf security brokered by the United States and including Iran's Arab neighbors; and over time, Iran's reintegration into the international community and the lifting of sanctions -- all conditioned upon unequivocal security guarantees for U.S. allies in the region.

A shift of this magnitude in national security policy will require a leap of faith. Pragmatism in foreign policy -- however welcome a tonic after the past eight years -- has its limits, morally and philosophically. In the case of Iran, it is also a strategic dead end. Only a fundamental shift toward a policy of calculated coexistence will ensure the long-term defense of our interests and the security of our allies. It is also the best hope for the people of Iran and their struggle for a modern, free and open society.

The Bush administration fought the battle of capabilities with Iran and lost. The battle of intentions can still be won.

The writer, a special assistant to U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan from 1997 to 2003, is a consulting senior fellow at the International Institute for Strategic Studies.

[Optimus]

Obama updates military plans for Iran 
http://www.iol.co.za/index.php?set_id=1&click_id=22&art_id=nw20090522191949993C584606
May 22 2009 at 08:03PM 
 

Washington - The Pentagon has updated its plans for using military force against Iran at the request of President Barack Obama, Defence Secretary Robert Gates said on Friday.

The United States has not ruled out the possibility of a military strike if diplomacy fails to resolve the international dispute over Iran's nuclear activities, Gates said.

"Presidents always ask their military to have a range of contingency plans available to them," Gates told NBC television.

"And all I would say is that, as a result of our dialogue with the president, we've refreshed our plans and all options are on the table."

Obama has strongly backed the diplomatic effort to rein in Iran's nuclear programme and is exploring ways to break with past American policies and open up one-on-one discussions with Tehran.

Obama said 30 years of trying to isolate Iran have failed to prevent the country from pursuing nuclear technology the West suspects is intended to develop an atomic bomb.

Iran says its uranium enrichment programme is solely for meeting energy needs.

During a visit by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Monday, Obama said that he would expect a positive response to his diplomatic overtures by the end of 2009.

Obama also said he will pursue tougher international sanctions if Iran does not comply with UN demands regarding its nuclear ambitions. - Sapa-dpa

[bigron]

AFGHANISTAN: COULD AFGHAN RESUPPLY EFFORTS PROMOTE US-IRANIAN COOPERATION?

Deirdre Tynan

http://www.uruknet.info/?p=m54536&hd=&size=1&l=e

May 24, 2009



The Defense Department’s US Transportation Command is leaving no stone unturned in its efforts to find alternative routes of supply to Afghanistan. Documents obtained by EurasiaNet indicate that efforts to both ease and widen the flow of non-lethal materiel to NATO and US troops fighting the Taliban could potentially require cooperation between the United States and Iran.

The US Transportation Command (USTRANSCOM) solicited transit proposals in November of 2008 under the guise of a "market survey." One of the proposals received, submitted by a Turkish transport firm called Son Logistics, would use overland routes via Turkmenistan and Iran to deliver supplies to Afghanistan.

Behcet Kutlu, a Son Logistics executive, declined to comment on the company’s proposal. But according to documentation submitted to USTRANSCOM, and obtained by EurasiaNet under the Freedom of Information Act, the company has lengthy experience in transporting cargo from the United States and Europe via Iran and Turkmenistan to Afghanistan.

"[Over the past] five-years we have already transported approximately 2,000 trucks and approximately 150 low-bed [trucks] to Hairatan, Kabul, and some other destinations," said the Son Logistics proposal submitted to USTRANSCOM. "Our office in Afghanistan can also help us to receive tax exemption letter upon request and our depot and 25 professional people will ensure [the] transport [of] cargo to their final destinations safely and [in the] fastest way in Afghanistan."

Another proposal, submitted by Cross Ports Europe, a London-based transport company, envisioned an Iranian connection in a potential new supply chain. "All connection via Central Asia [Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan] to Hairatan and Tourghundi [in Afghanistan] can be arranged from Bandar Abbas [Iran] and Poti [Georgia] as well as via Russian ports."

"There are no other routes connecting Afghanistan to the rest of the world except ? via Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Karachi [Pakistan], Iran and air lift from Dubai," it adds.

US efforts to speed the flow of good into Afghanistan have already received a boost from a recently announced deal involving Korean Air and the government of Uzbekistan. Under that pact, Korean Air will develop a major air cargo hub near the Uzbek city of Navoi. The hub, according to Uzbek leaders, is already handling NATO supplies bound for Afghanistan. [For background see the Eurasia Insight archive]. The Uzbek air option joins several recently opened overland routes via Uzbekistan and Tajikistan that are being used for resupply operations.

But it seems likely that if US President Barack Obama’s surge strategy for Afghanistan is to be successful, more routes need to be opened. The main resupply routes through Pakistan have become increasingly vulnerable to Islamic militant attacks over the past year.

For the United States, Turkmenistan is perhaps the most attractive of untapped options. A source familiar with US efforts to expand the resupply network in Central Asia said American officials have been pressing President Gurbanguly Berdymukhamedov for needed permission, but so far the Turkmen leader has resisted. Becoming a major cog in the resupply machinery would endanger Turkmenistan’s long-cultivated image as a neutral state, and thereby create political and economic problems for Ashgabat. Any perceived change in Turkmenistan’s foreign policy orientation would "likely freak out" Moscow, the source told EurasiaNet.

There are several Turkmen transit blueprints waiting for implementation, if Berdymukhamedov ever gives the go-ahead.

The industrial and defense division of Daher, a French maritime and industrial transportation giant, told USTRANSCOM that non-military goods leaving Northern Europe could reach Afghanistan through its "preferred trucking route" via Turkmenistan should "transit rights become available."

"This option does not transit Russia and is the traditional line-haul route used by Daher to reach Afghanistan. The truck drivers we use know this route and, in particular, all border crossings, as well the local customs officials along the route. We have moved over 1,000 forty-foot containers as well as over 600 full truck loads of palletized cargo using the route," the company stated.

Daher said it would take 21 days for goods leaving France to reach Tashkent, Uzbekistan; 25 days to reach Dushanbe, Tajikistan, or Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan; and a total of 30 days to reach Kabul in Afghanistan.

Given Turkmenistan’s reluctance to participate, opening an Iran conduit is not as off-the-wall an idea as it would seem at first glance, the source said. The source noted that the interests of both the United States and Iran in Afghanistan "are close." Given this fact, the notion of a transit route should at least be explored.

Germany is already probing the feasibility of an Iranian resupply route. In April, the Iranian news agency IRNA quoted an unnamed German army source as saying German companies were in talks with their Iranian counterparts to agree new transport routes for non-military goods to Afghanistan. Both rail and road routes were reportedly under consideration.

"If a framework deal can be cut with them, why not?" the source said.


Editor's Note: Deirdre Tynan is based in Bishkek.



 

[bigron]

They May Not Want The Bomb

And other unexpected truths.


 Emerging Iran
Inside a land poised between tradition and modernity




Fareed Zakaria
NEWSWEEK
http://www.newsweek.com/id/199147?from=rss


From the magazine issue dated Jun 1, 2009
Everything you know about Iran is wrong, or at least more complicated than you think. Take the bomb. The regime wants to be a nuclear power but could well be happy with a peaceful civilian program (which could make the challenge it poses more complex). What's the evidence? Well, over the last five years, senior Iranian officials at every level have repeatedly asserted that they do not intend to build nuclear weapons. President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has quoted the regime's founding father, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, who asserted that such weapons were "un-Islamic." The country's Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, issued a fatwa in 2004 describing the use of nuclear weapons as immoral. In a subsequent sermon, he declared that "developing, producing or stockpiling nuclear weapons is forbidden under Islam." Last year Khamenei reiterated all these points after meeting with the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, Mohamed ElBaradei. Now, of course, they could all be lying. But it seems odd for a regime that derives its legitimacy from its fidelity to Islam to declare constantly that these weapons are un-Islamic if it intends to develop them. It would be far shrewder to stop reminding people of Khomeini's statements and stop issuing new fatwas against nukes.


Following a civilian nuclear strategy has big benefits. The country would remain within international law, simply asserting its rights under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, a position that has much support across the world. That would make comprehensive sanctions against Iran impossible. And if Tehran's aim is to expand its regional influence, it doesn't need a bomb to do so. Simply having a clear "breakout" capacity—the ability to weaponize within a few months—would allow it to operate with much greater latitude and impunity in the Middle East and Central Asia.

Iranians aren't suicidal. In an interview last week, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu described the Iranian regime as "a messianic, apocalyptic cult." In fact, Iran has tended to behave in a shrewd, calculating manner, advancing its interests when possible, retreating when necessary. The Iranians allied with the United States and against the Taliban in 2001, assisting in the creation of the Karzai government. They worked against the United States in Iraq, where they feared the creation of a pro-U.S. puppet on their border. Earlier this year, during the Gaza war, Israel warned Hizbullah not to launch rockets against it, and there is much evidence that Iran played a role in reining in their proxies. Iran's ruling elite is obsessed with gathering wealth and maintaining power. The argument made by those—including many Israelis for coercive sanctions against Iran is that many in the regime have been squirreling away money into bank accounts in Dubai and Switzerland for their children and grandchildren. These are not actions associated with people who believe that the world is going to end soon.

One of Netanyahu's advisers said of Iran, "Think Amalek." The Bible says that the Amalekites were dedicated enemies of the Jewish people. In 1 Samuel 15, God says, "Go and smite Amalek, and utterly destroy all that they have, and spare them not; but slay both man and woman, infant and suckling, ox and sheep, camel and ass." Now, were the president of Iran and his advisers to have cited a religious text that gave divine sanction for the annihilation of an entire race, they would be called, well, messianic.

Iran isn't a dictatorship. It is certainly not a democracy. The regime jails opponents, closes down magazines and tolerates few challenges to its authority. But neither is it a monolithic dictatorship. It might be best described as an oligarchy, with considerable debate and dissent within the elites. Even the so-called Supreme Leader has a constituency, the Assembly of Experts, who selected him and whom he has to keep happy. Ahmadinejad is widely seen as the "mad mullah" who runs the country, but he is not the unquestioned chief executive and is actually a thorn in the side of the clerical establishment. He is a layman with no family connections to major ayatollahs—which makes him a rare figure in the ruling class. He was not initially the favored candidate of the Supreme Leader in the 2005 election. Even now the mullahs clearly dislike him, and he, in turn, does things deliberately designed to undermine their authority. Iran might be ready to deal. We can't know if a deal is possible since we've never tried to negotiate one, not directly. While the regime appears united in its belief that Iran has the right to a civilian nuclear program—a position with broad popular support—some leaders seem sensitive to the costs of the current approach. It is conceivable that these "moderates" would appreciate the potential benefits of limiting their nuclear program, including trade, technology and recognition by the United States. The Iranians insist they must be able to enrich uranium on their own soil. One proposal is for this to take place in Iran but only under the control of an international consortium. It's not a perfect solution because the Iranians could—if they were very creative and dedicated—cheat. But neither is it perfect from the Iranian point of view because it would effectively mean a permanent inspections regime in their country. But both sides might get enough of what they consider crucial for it to work. Why not try this before launching the next Mideast war?

URL: http://www.newsweek.com/id/199147

[bigron]

Monday, May 25, 2009
20:06 Mecca time, 17:06 GMT 
http://english.aljazeera.net/news/middleeast/2009/05/200952516828671353.html

 
News Middle East 
 
Iran rejects nuclear dialogue 

 
Ahmadinejad has repeatedly said that Iran will not stop enriching uranium [File: AFP]
 
Iran's president has ruled out any talks with major powers over its nuclear programme, saying the issue is "closed".

"We have said this before and we are saying it right now, that we will not talk about the nuclear issue with those outside the IAEA [International Atomic Energy Agency]," Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said on Monday.

Ahmadinejad did offer to "debate ... on global issues as well as world peace and security" with Barack Obama, his US counterpart, at the UN General Assembly in September.

Obama has urged a "serious process of engagement" with Iran, but last week threatened deeper sanctions if Tehran did not respond positively to attempts to open dialogue over Iran's nuclear agenda.

Western nations, including the US, have accused Iran of planning to develop atomic weapons, but Tehran insists that it only wants the technology for energy production.

Javier Solana, the European Union foreign minister, held talks with Said Jalili, Iran's nuclear negotiator, in April about discussions with the so-called P5-plus-1, which includes the US, Britain, France, China, Russia and Germany.

The group's dialogue with Iran has been on hold since last September.

North Korea denial

Speaking after North Korea tested an atomic weapon on Monday, Ahmadinejad denied any co-operation with Pyongyang on nuclear development and criticised nations which were constructing nuclear weapons.

"In principle we oppose the production, expansion and the use of weapons of mass destruction," he said.

"...all of the countries who have nuclear weapons must enroll in a collective commitment and be disarmed within a clear plan and timetable" .Mahmoud Ahmadinejad,  Iranian president


 
"The worst thing that a government could do would be to spend a nation's resources, which should be spent for people's welfare, to produce and store nuclear weapons.

"We oppose this and all of the countries who have nuclear weapons must enroll in a collective commitment and be disarmed within a clear plan and timetable."

Ahmadinejad made the remarks as he campaigned for the June 12 presidential election, during which he faces a challenge from liberal candidates advocating at least some detente with the US.

Iran has repeatedly rejected calls for it to halt uranium enrichment, a process used to develop fuel for a nuclear reactor, but which call also be used to produce an atomic warhead.

An Israeli foreign ministry document leaked to the media on Monday said that Venezuela and Bolivia were suspected of selling uranium to Iran.

It also claimed that Caracas was helping Tehran skirt UN imposed sanctions.
 
 Source: Agencies 
 
 

[bigron]

Striking Iran can lead to Armageddon 


28/05/2009 10:00:00 AM GMT
http://aljazeera.com/news/articles/39/Striking_Iran_can_lead_to_Armageddon.html


The standoff with Iran cannot be resolved militarily


 In dealing with Iran’s nuclear ambitions, the U.S. needs to focus on how to make better use of impartial instruments.


By Jalal Alavi

In his May 19 interview with AFP [1], reformist presidential candidate Mehdi Karroubi reminded the world in no uncertain terms how Iran ’s nuclear program, including its uranium enrichment component, would remain under the sole authority of the Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, regardless of the outcome of the June 12 presidential election.

A week after Karroubi’s reminder [2], Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the incumbent president, made the declaration that Iran’s nuclear issue was no longer up for discussion outside the framework of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).

Lest the reminders by Karroubi and Ahmadinejad fail to end months of speculation in Western political circles, including the White House, regarding the possibility of a swift diplomatic breakthrough in the nuclear standoff once a new president is sworn into office in Iran.

Khamenei, as part of an eight-day visit to the highly volatile Kurdistan Province, issued the warning that any sort of compromise with the “enemies” of Iran would be tantamount to sheer capitulation on the part of the Islamic Republic and thus would be unacceptable.

Accordingly, Khamenei urged the Iranian electorate not to vote for candidates who may be inclined to the possibility of ending Iran’s isolation in the international community through rapprochement with the West.

This, of course, was a call the immediate, though certainly not the only, ramification of which was Ahmadinejad’s opportunistic chastisement of reformist former president Mohammad Khatami, during whose tenure Iran temporarily suspended uranium enrichment, so as to show goodwill and thus pave the way for more constructive negotiations with the West.

The above being the case, the question arises as to how the United States, as the main actor in the nuclear standoff with Iran, should deal with those aspects of Iran’s nuclear program it deems suspicious, especially in light of President Barack Obama’s friendly overtures to Iran, which incidentally are being seriously challenged by Israel’s continued pressure on the United States to rein in that country’s nuclear program in a more aggressive manner.

To answer the above question, one must be willing to entertain the idea that the Obama administration does not see war as an extension of diplomacy by other means, and that the United States is capable of learning from past mistakes, though obviously this has not always been the case.

Consequently, it would be proper to assume, for example, that the United States would, as a result of its failures in Afghanistan and Iraq, opt to pursue an approach that is diplomatic and multilateral, rather than military and unilateral, in nature for resolving the standoff with Iran, for the latter approach (i.e., military and unilateral) would surely further debilitate the U.S. position in the international system of states, politically as well as economically.

That the U.S. obligation to the safety and security of its allies, especially Israel, must not exceed the limits imposed by its own national interest and security considerations is a logical proposition hardly in need of further elaboration here.

But let us consider for a moment the removal of the Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein from power, which might have helped the strategic interests of Israel but surely not those of the United States, for whom stability in the Middle East is and has always, except for the period in which George W. Bush was president, been a priority.

Ever since the fall of Saddam Hussein (an event even George W. Bush’s father was careful not to let happen during his tenure as president), Iraq has, in spite of what appears on the surface, been on the verge of collapse and disintegration, thus increasing the possibility of further instability and bloodshed in the region, which in turn would have more devastating effects on the U.S. and the entire world economy.

The worsening situation in Afghanistan is yet another cause for worry, the reverberations of which have further destabilized America’s traditional ally Pakistan.

Clearly, then, America’s hitherto military approach to issues relating to the Middle East has grossly backfired, thus requiring the Obama administration to be ever more diligent about opening a new front in the region by striking Iranian nuclear facilities based on mere hunches or fabricated intelligence.

This, of course, is not to mention the potential involvement of Russia, which should logically be the case if it were to prevent the further expansion of U.S. and NATO forces in the region. Here, it is worth recalling Russia’s past warnings against a potential U.S. or Israeli strike on Iranian nuclear facilities, which incidentally explains the ease with which Ahmadinejad has been able to threaten Israel with annihilation [3].

Viewed from the above perspective, it becomes all too evident that the standoff with Iran cannot be resolved militarily; hence the futility of U.S. and Israeli threats to that effect as well as the strategy of pitting Arabs against Iranians in the hope of securing not so much the isolation of Iran as access to the former’s funds and military bases, which has so far had the mere effect of destabilizing the very major and minor Arab states that have opted to become party to such an underhanded scheme.

Thus, in dealing with Iran’s nuclear ambitions, which, according to a recent U.S. intelligence assessment, have, since 2003, been quite peaceful in nature, the U.S. needs to focus more on how to make better use of such impartial instruments as the IAEA rather than the use of force, which could very easily ignite a third world war (see the latter part of note 3 below as to why this may happen).

What is more, dealing with Iran’s nuclear program in the above rational manner can also have the effect of improving Iran’s prospects for genuine democratization, for it will not play into the hands of the proponents of the status quo, for whom any sort of U.S. or Israeli military threat can, unlike economic sanctions, for example, serve as a convenient pretext for cracking down on dissent.

Let us hope, then, that the above does not fall on deaf ears in Washington.

-- Jalal Alavi is a sociologist and political commentator based in Britain.

Notes:

1. ‘ Iran ’s ex-assembly speaker vows “moderate” reforms’, AFP, May 19.

2. ‘ Iran ’s Ahmadinejad rejects Western nuclear proposal’, Washington Post, May 25.

3. Of course, the US backing of Israel has also made it easy for the latter to make threats against Iran. In a sense, the proper way of looking at the regional rivalry between Israel and Iran is to see it as an extension of a much deeper power struggle between the United States and Russia for the strategic control of the Middle East, which used to also be the case during the Cold War.




-- Middle East Online

 

[Brocke]

Iran: Access to Facebook Restored

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published: May 26, 2009

Without comment, Iran restored access Tuesday to the social networking site Facebook. Its blocking on Saturday generated accusations that Iran was trying to muzzle the opposition during the presidential campaign. Mir Hussein Moussavi, left, the main challenger to President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, has used Facebook to mobilize support among young voters.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/27/world/middleeast/27briefs-webIran.html?_r=1&ref=technology

[bigron]

THE ROVING EYE


Pipelineistan goes Iran-Pak



By Pepe Escobar

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/KE29Df02.html

The earth has been shaking for a few days now all across Pipelineistan - with massive repercussions for all the big players in the New Great Game in Eurasia. United States President Barack Obama's AfPak strategists didn't even see it coming.

A silent, reptilian war had been going on for years between the US-favored Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India (TAPI) pipeline and its rival, the Iran-Pakistan-India (IPI) pipeline, also known as the "peace pipeline". This past weekend, a winner emerged. And it's none of the above: instead, it's the 2,100-kilometer, US$7.5 billion IP (the Iran-Pakistan pipeline), with no India attached. (Please see Pakistan, Iran sign gas pipeline deal, May 27, 2009, Asia Times Online.)

This whole saga started way back in 1995 - about the time

 

California-based Unocal started floating the idea of building a pipeline crossing Afghanistan. Now, Iran and Pakistan finally signed a deal this week in Tehran, by which Iran will sell gas from its mega South Pars fields to Pakistan for the next 25 years.

According to Iranian energy officials speaking to the ISNA news agency, the final deal will be signed in less than three weeks, slightly after the first round of the Iranian presidential election. The last 250 km of a 900-km pipeline stretch in Iran between Asalouyeh and Iranshahr, near the border with Pakistan, still needs to be built. The whole IP pipeline should be operational by 2014.

The fact that Islamabad has finally decided to move on is pregnant with meaning. For the George W Bush administration IPI was simply anathema; imagine India and Pakistan buying gas from "axis of evil" Iran. The only way to go was TAPI - an extension of the childish neo-conservative belief that the Afghanistan war was winnable.

Now, IP reveals Islamabad's own interests seemed to have prevailed against Washington's (unlike the virtually US-imposed Pakistan army offensive against the Taliban in the Swat Valley). The Barack Obama administration has been mum about IP so far. But it will be very enlightening to hear what former Bush pet Afghan Zalmay Khalilzad - who's been infiltrating himself as the next CEO of Afghanistan - has to say about it. (Please see Slouching towards Balkanization, May 22, 2009, Asia Times Online.) Khalilzad's Pipelineistan dream, since the mid-1990s, has always been a trans-Afghan pipeline capable of bypassing both Iran and Russia.

IP, IP, hurrah
India, for a number of reasons (the pricing system, transit fees and above all, security) de facto shelved the IPI idea last year. Had it not been the case, IPI would become a powerful vector in terms of South Asian regional integration - doing more to stabilize India-Pakistan relations than any diplomatic coup. Nevertheless, both Iran and Pakistan still have left an open door to India.

India's (momentary?) loss will be China's gain. Since 2008, with New Delhi having second thoughts, Beijing and Islamabad had set up an agreement - China would import most of this Iranian gas if India dropped out of IPI. China anyway is more than welcome business-wise to both Iran and Pakistan. Only in transit fees, Islamabad could collect as much as $500 million a year.

For Beijing, IP could not be more essential. Iranian gas will flow to the Balochistan province port of Gwadar, in the Arabian Sea (which China itself built, and where it is also building a refinery). And Gwadar is supposed to be connected to a proposed pipeline going north, mostly financed by China, along the Karakoram Highway (which by the way was largely built from the 1960s to the 1980s by Chinese engineers ... ).

Pakistan is the absolutely ideal transit corridor for China to import oil and gas from Iran and the Persian Gulf. With IP in place and with multi-billion-dollar, overlapping Tehran-Beijing gas deals, China can finally afford to import less energy via the Strait of Malacca, which Beijing considers exceedingly dangerous, and subject to Washington's sphere of influence.

With IP, not only China wins; Russia's Gazprom also wins. And by extension, the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) wins. Russian deputy Energy Minister Anatoly Yankovsky told the Kommersant business daily, "We are ready to join the project as soon as we receive an offer."

The reason is so blatant that Gazprom officials have not even bothered to disguise it. For Russia, IP is a gift-from-above tool in rerouting gas from Iran to South Asia, and away from competing with Russian gas. The big prize, in this case, is the Western European market, dependent almost 30% on Gazprom and the source of 80% of Gazprom's export profits.

The European Union is desperately trying to keep the Nabucco pipeline project - which bypasses Russia - afloat, so it may reduce its dependence on Gazprom. But as anyone in Brussels knows, Nabucco can only work if it is provided enough gas by either Iran or Turkmenistan. The Turkmenistan distribution system is controlled by Russia. And a deal with Iran implies no more US sanctions - still a long way away. With IP in place, Gazprom reasons, Nabucco is deprived of a key supply source.

All eyes on Balochistan
With IP firmly in place, the strategic spotlight focuses even more on Balochistan. (Please see Balochistan is the greatest prize, May 9, 2009, Asia Times Online.) First of all, there's an internal Pakistani question to be settled. An editorial in the Pakistani daily Dawn has stressed how Islamabad must be serious about hiring indigenous Balochi labor and making sure "the gains of the economic activity ... are focused on Balochistan for the benefit of its poverty-stricken people".

The port of Gwadar, in southwest Balochistan, near the Iranian border, is indeed bound to become a new Dubai - but not the way the vice president Dick Cheney and gang in Washington once dreamed of. Gas from the South Pars fields in Iran will definitely flow though it. As for gas from the Daulatabad fields in Turkmenistan, assuming TAPI ever gets built though war-torn Afghanistan, that's much more unlikely.

This all raises the crucial question: how will Islamabad deal with ultra-strategic Balochistan - east of Iran, south of Afghanistan, and boasting three Arabian sea ports, including Gwadar, practically at the mouth of the Strait of Hormuz?

The New Great Game in Eurasia rules that Pakistan is a key pivot to both North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and the SCO, of which Pakistan is an observer. Balochistan de facto incorporates Pakistan as a key transit corridor to Iranian gas from the monster South Pars fields, and not to a great deal of the Caspian wealth of "gas republic" Turkmenistan. For the Pentagon, the birth of IP is mega bad news. The ideal Pentagon scenario is the US controlling Gwadar - in yet one more prime confluence of Pipelineistan and the US Empire of Bases.

With Gwadar directly linked to Iran and developed virtually as a Chinese warehouse, the Pentagon also loses the mouth-watering opportunity of a long land route across Balochistan into Helmand, Nimruz, Kandahar or, better yet, all of these three provinces in southwest Afghanistan, where soon, not by accident, there will be another US mega-base in the "desert of death". From a Pentagon/NATO perspective, after the "loss" of the Khyber Pass, that would be the ideal supply route for Western troops in the perennial, now rebranded, GWOT ("global war on terror").

Balochis surging
Islamabad has promised an all-parties conference "within days" to seriously deal with Balochistan. No one is holding their breath. Over a year ago, Balochistan was promised greater control over its immense natural resources - the undisputed, number-one Baloch grievance - and a massive aid package. Not much has happened.

Punjabis derisively refer to Balochistan's "backwardness". But the heart of the matter is systematic, hardcore pillage by Islamabad - combined with hardcore repression and serial Latin America-in-the-1970s-style "disappearances" of political activists and senior Baloch nationalists. Not to mention virtually no investment in health, education and job creation. This Third World dictatorship catalogue of disasters fuels Baloch nationalism and separatism.

Islamabad's paranoia is "foreign involvement" in the different strands of Balochistan's nationalist movements. That would be, in fact, the CIA, MI5 and the Israeli Mossad, all engaged in overlapping agendas which manipulate Balochistan for balkanization of Pakistan purposes and/or as a base for the destabilization of neighboring Iran's southeast. While the Taliban, Afghan or Pakistani, can roam free across Balochistan, Baloch nationalists are intimidated, harassed and killed.

Sanaullah Baloch, a secretary of the Balochistan National Party-Mengal, told Dawn how "several Baloch political parties tried to file charges against [former president General Pervez] Musharraf, but the country's institutions lack the will or courage to accept our plea against him." Studies show that rural poverty in Balochistan when Musharraf was in power increased 15% between 1999 and 2005.

Sanaullah Baloch roundly denounces the "civil-military elites" of Pakistan as implicated in the systematic repression going on in Balochistan; "Without their consent, no political regime can undo their policy of continued suppression."

And his analysis of why Islamabad has made a deal with the Taliban in Swat but won't do a deal with Balochis could not be more enlightening: "The establishment in Pakistan has always felt comfortable with religious groups as they do not challenge the centralized authority of the civil-military establishment. The demands of these groups are not political. They don't demand economic parity. They demand centralized religious rule which is philosophically closer to the establishment's version of totalitarianism. Islamabad's elite are stubborn against genuine Baloch demands: governing Balochistan, having ownership of resources, and control over provincial security."

So Islamabad still has all it takes to royally mess up what it has accomplished by approving IP. For the moment, Iran, Pakistan, China and Russia win. The SCO wins. Washington and NATO lose, not to mention Afghanistan (no transit fees). But will Balochistan also win? If not, all hell will break loose, from desperate Balochis sabotaging IP to "foreign interference" manipulating them into creating an even greater, regional, ball of fire.

Pepe Escobar is the author of Globalistan: How the Globalized World is Dissolving into Liquid War (Nimble Books, 2007) and Red Zone Blues: a snapshot of Baghdad during the surge. His new book, just out, is Obama does Globalistan (Nimble Books, 2009).

[bigron]

Several killed in Iran mosque blast 
 
http://english.aljazeera.net/news/middleeast/2009/05/200952817733342708.html

 

 
A blast in a mosque in the southeastern Iranian city of Zahedan has killed 15 people and wounded 50 others, the official IRNA agency says.

The toll from the explosion, which struck Amir al-Mohini mosque on Thursday, was based on preliminary reports, IRNA said.

The agency quoted an unnamed official as saying that part of the mosque was destroyed and that rescue teams were transferring the bodies of the dead and injured.

Officials were investigating the cause of the explosion, it said.

Zahedan is the capital of Sistan-Baluchestan province, which shares a border with Pakistan and is the scene of frequent clashes between Iranian police on the one hand and drug dealers and armed groups on the other hand.
 
 

[Satyagraha]

To add to bigron's post - a little info from Pakistan tv news:

15 killed in Iran mosque blast

TEHRAN: Iran's official news agency says an explosion in a mosque has killed 15 people and wounded 50 others in southeast Iran.

Thursday's report says officials were investigating the cause of the explosion in the Iranian city of Zahedan, some 1,000 miles (1,600 kilometers) southeast of the capital, Tehran.

It quotes an unnamed official as saying part of the mosque was destroyed and rescue teams were transferring the bodies of the dead and injured.

In 2007, a bombing by the militant group Jundallah, or God's Brigade, said to have links to al-Qaida killed 11 members of Iran's Revolutionary Guards in Zahedan.

The area near the Pakistani border has also witnessed clashes between Iranian security forces and drug smugglers.

[Satyagraha]

Iran accuses US over mosque bombing
Friday, 29 May, 2009 | 04:06 PM PST
http://www.dawn.com/wps/wcm/connect/dawn-content-library/dawn/news/world/04-iran-mosque-bombing-worshippers-qs-03

TEHRAN: Iranian officials Friday accused the US of hiring those behind a suicide bombing of a Shiite mosque in southeastern Iran that killed 23 people and linked the attack to next month's presidential vote.

‘Three people involved with the terrorist incident were arrested,’ Jalal Sayah, deputy provincial governor of the Sistan-Baluchistan province that borders Pakistan and Afghanistan, told Fars news agency.

‘According to the information obtained they were hired by America and the agents of the arrogance,’ Sayah said. Iranian officials usually use the term ‘global arrogance’ in reference to Iran's arch-foe the United States.

The suicide attack during Thursday evening prayers at the Shiite Amir al-Momenin mosque in Zahedan, the restive capital of Sistan-Baluchistan, killed 23 people and wounded 125 others.

‘This catastrophe was a suicide terrorist attack,’ Zahedan MP Payman Foroozesh told ILNA news agency.

Provincial justice chief Ebrahim Hamidi said the attacker ‘had stood in the last line of male worshippers during the evening prayer, carried out the bombing and died.’

Hamidi told ISNA news agency that one person had been arrested for the bombing and ‘charged with armed opposition and acting against national security. But his motive cannot be presented for the moment.’

He said most attacks in the restive province were carried out by a Sunni rebel group headed by ring leader Abdolmalek Rigi, but he could not confirm whether the group could be blamed for Thursday's bombing.

Iran's former premier and presidential hopeful Mir Hossein Mousavi too blamed ‘foreign forces’ for Thursday's attack.

Mousavi at a media conference with journalists from international news networks said incidents such as the mosque bombing ‘have either been influenced or supported by foreign forces.’

‘The fewer foreign forces in the region, the more security there is. They provoke extremism in the region such as the incident in Zahedan,’ said Mousavi, one of four candidates standing in the June 12 presidential election.—AFP
 

http://www.dawn.com/wps/wcm/connect/dawn-content-library/dawn/news/world/04-iran-mosque-bombing-worshippers-qs-03


Copyright © 2009 - Dawn Media Group

[bigron]

Iran official blames U.S. in deadly mosque bombing


Fri May 29, 2009 5:45am EDT
By Zahra Hosseinian and Fredrik Dahl

http://www.reuters.com/article/worldNews/idUSTRE54R5O320090529?feedType=nl&feedName=usmorningdigest

TEHRAN (Reuters) - A provincial official said on Friday those behind a mosque bombing that killed around 20 people in Iran had been hired by the United States, Tehran's arch-foe, a semi-official news agency reported.

Jalal Sayyah, at the governor's office in Sistan-Baluchestan province, said three people had been arrested in connection with Thursday evening's blast in a crowded mosque in the southeastern city of Zahedan, near Pakistan.

The explosion, which some Iranian news agencies say may have been a suicide bombing, took place on a religious holiday two weeks before the June 12 presidential election in the mainly Shi'ite Muslim country. More than 80 people were wounded.

It was the deadliest such bombing incident in the Islamic Republic in more than a decade. In April 2008, a blast in a mosque in the southern city of Shiraz killed 14 people.

"It has been confirmed that those behind the terrorist act in Zahedan were hired by America and the arrogance's other hands," Sayyah told Fars News Agency.

Iranian leaders, who often accuse the United States and its allies of seeking to destabilise it, refer to Washington as the "Great Satan" guilty of "global arrogance."

Iran says a Sunni rebel group, Jundollah (God's Soldiers), which has been operating in the border region is part of the Sunni Islamist al Qaeda network and has accused the United States and Britain of backing it.

The province is home to Iran's mostly Sunni ethnic Baluchis and it is scene of frequent clashes between security forces and heavily armed drugs smugglers and bandits.

"BLOOD OF THE OPPRESSED"

Sistan-Baluchestan governor Ali Mohammad Azad put the death toll at 19, but other officials were quoted as saying 21 or 23 had died. One news agency, ILNA, said hours after the explosion on Thursday that 30 people were killed.

"The terrorist team behind the blast have been arrested and interrogation of them is continuing," Azad told the official IRNA news agency.

In April, Iran's intelligence minister said it had arrested a group of people linked to Israel who were planning bombings ahead of the election, in which hardline President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is seeking a second four-year term.

A Sistan-Baluchestan representative of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei also pointed at involvement of foreign powers in comments cited by the ISNA news agency.

"Again blood of the oppressed is on the hands of terrorist criminals and those who are fed by the global arrogance," the unnamed official said in a statement.

Iranian media said a big part of the mosque was destroyed by the blast, which took place when many worshippers were inside. Three days of mourning were declared in the province.

"Among the wounded is a four-year-old who had gone to the mosque for prayers along with the family," Azad said.

In June 1994, a blast killed 26 people at the Imam Reza shrine in the northeastern city of Mashad, the worst bombing in Iran since the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq war.

(Editing by Alison Williams)

[menace]

Shots fired at Iran president's campaign office

Gunmen on motorcycles fired Friday on a campaign office for President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, wounding two adults and a child, according to a report by Iran's state-run news agency

The shooting happened about 5 p.m. in front of the entrance to the campaign office, campaign representative Mohammed Reza Zahed Shaikhi told IRNA.

Ahmadinejad, who is running for a second term in office, was not present. Iran's presidential election will take place on June 12.

The attack happened in Sistan-Balochistan province in southeastern Iran, the same province where a Shia mosque was bombed Thursday. Several suspects have been arrested in connection with Thursday's attack in the town of Zahedan, which killed between 15 and 20 people, according to Iranian media reports.

No group publicly accepted responsibility for the mosque attack, but the provincial governor, Ali-Mohammad Azad, blamed a terrorist group that he said would be unveiled to the public once the suspects have been interrogated, IRNA reported.

http://www.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/meast/05/29/iran.mosque.explosion/

[Satyagraha]

Iran hangs three over Friday mosque bombing
Updated at: 1137 PST,  Saturday, May 30, 2009

TEHRAN: Iran executed in public three men convicted of involvement in a deadly mosque bombing in the southeast of the country, the news agency reported on Saturday.

"Three people convicted of being involved in the recent terrorist bombing in Zahedan were hanged in public on Saturday morning," the news agency said, adding that the execution took place near the mosque where the bombing took place.

A provincial official said on Friday that the people behind the bombing were hired by the United States, an accusation Washington rejected.

http://www.geo.tv/5-30-2009/43135.htm

[Satyagraha]

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-iran-hang31-2009may31,0,7551710.story

Three hanged in Iran mosque bombing
Local TV broadcast images of the execution. Iranian authorities allege the men were connected with a separatist group and were involved in the attack Thursday that killed at least 25 and injured 125.
By Borzou Daragahi

11:26 AM PDT, May 30, 2009

Reporting from Tehran — Less than 36 hours after a deadly bombing in southeastern Iran, three men were hanged today in front of the same mosque they allegedly targeted, official media reported.

Local television broadcast images of the hanging, showing three people hanging from the gallows and spectators watching the execution from behind a metal gate, according to BBC Monitoring, a news service that tracks Iranian broadcast media.

Iranian authorities accused the men of involvement in the Thursday evening bomb blast at the mosque in the city of Zahedan, which left as many as 25 dead and 125 injured.

Authorities alleged that the men were connected to the ethnic Baluch separatist group Jundollah, a militant group fighting the central government. Iran has charged that the group is backed by the U.S.

The quick turnaround was the result of competent police work, Jalal Sayyah, a local government official in the region, told the official Islamic Republic News Agency.

He said intelligence officials launched an investigation immediately after the bombing and caught the suspects, who were allegedly involved in similar activities in the past, including a 2007 attack on a bus carrying members of the Revolutionary Guard and bomb attacks on mosques and a university.

The death sentences were issued by a judge this morning.

"They confessed to illegally bringing explosives into the country and giving them to the main element behind the bombing," said a statement issued by provincial chief justice, Ebrahim Hamidi, according to state television. "They were convicted of being enemies of God and corrupt on the earth and of acting against national security."

=======================
Swift justice in a fascist state - no need for lawyers, no need for miranda rights... soon the US will be able to do the same.

[bigron]

Obama wants to end Iran issue by year's end 


02/06/2009 05:06:00 PM GMT
http://aljazeera.com/news/articles/34/Obama_wants_to_end_Iran_issue_by_year_s_end.html
 


US President Barack Obama says he wants to see progress in direct talks with Iran on the country's nuclear program by the end of the year.

The Obama administration says it seeks to create a change in tone towards Iran from the hostile one adopted by Washington during George W. Bush's term.

In a Tuesday interview with BBC, however, Obama repeated US allegations that Iran aims to develop nuclear weapons.

"What I have said is that it is in the world's interests for Iran to set aside ambitions for a nuclear weapon," he said, adding the best way for that to be accomplished was 'through tough direct diplomacy'.

"Although I don't want to put artificial time tables on that process, we do want to make sure that, by the end of this year, we've actually seen a serious process move forward," Obama added, on the eve of a trip to the Middle East.

Since taking office as the US president in January, Obama talked of a policy change toward Iran, saying the US would extend a hand of peace to Iran if it 'unclenched its fist'.

The Islamic Republic was invited to an international conference on Afghanistan in March. Washington has also backed Iran's participation on a G8 meeting on Afghanistan and Pakistan later this month.

The Obama administration however has extended Clinton-era sanctions. It has also imposed sanctions on six Iranian firms over alleged links to Tehran's missile and nuclear work last month.

Iranian officials have described a real shift in US foreign policy toward Iran as the key to successful talks.

Tehran says Washington should manifest a 'genuine' change in action rather than a change in tone by lifting anti-Iran sanctions and stopping to spread allegations against the country.




-- Press TV

 
 


 

[bigron]

Obama to invite Iran to 4th of July celebrations? 


02/06/2009 05:00:00 PM GMT
http://aljazeera.com/news/articles/34/Obama_to_invite_Iran_to_4th_of_July_celebrations_.html
 
 


After an unprecedented Nowruz message to Iranians, the Obama administration reportedly takes a step to invite envoys from the Iranian government to celebrate the 4th of July.

The US State Department has sent a cable to its various embassies and consulates all over the world notifying them that "they may invite representatives from the government of Iran" to the annual reception of America's Independence Day celebrations, according to a report by the New York Times.

A senior State Department official, speaking on condition of anonymity, made public the authorization for the issuance of invitations to the Iranian side.

The move comes as another step in a series of efforts in line with President Barack Obama's promise to extend a hand of peace to Iran if it "unclenched its fist".

"It is another way of saying we are not putting barriers in the way of communicating," said one administration official. "It is another way of signaling that there is an opportunity that should not be wasted."

The Obama White House has been looking at a range of methods to create a change in tone from the hostile one adopted by the Bush administration with regards to Iran.

Earlier in March, the White House said President Obama wanted to "send a special message to the people and government of Iran on Nowruz, acknowledging the strain in our relations over the last few decades."

Following the American move -- described as an overture --, an aide to President Ahmadinejad welcomed "the wish of the president of the United States to put away the past differences".

The Islamic Republic was invited to an international conference on Afghanistan in March. Washington has also asked for Iranian cooperation on neighboring Iraq as US forces prepare to leave the war-battered country.

There has also been talk of President Obama writing a letter to top officials in Iran. After Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad sent a congratulatory letter to the US president for his election, reports claimed that the US State Department started working on drafts of a response letter.

Reopening a US interests section in Tehran is believed to be another possibility that could lead to an end in the thirty years of animosity between the two countries.




-- Press TV

 

[Satyagraha]

Bomb Said to Be on Flight Almost Taken by Former Iranian President

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/02/world/middleeast/02iran.html?ref=middleeast

By NAZILA FATHI
Published: June 1, 2009

TEHRAN — Former President Mohammad Khatami was expected to fly on a domestic flight on Saturday night that was found to have a homemade bomb aboard, an Iranian newspaper reported Monday.

The daily newspaper Sarmayeh said Mr. Khatami had been scheduled to fly on the Kish Air flight to Tehran from the southwestern city of Ahwaz on Saturday evening, but that he had taken another flight instead. It was unclear why he had changed his plans.

Mr. Khatami has been traveling and campaigning in support of Mir Hussein Moussavi, a moderate politician and the most serious challenger to President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad ahead of June 12 elections.

The semiofficial Fars news agency reported Sunday that a homemade bomb was found in a lavatory on the Kish Air flight, which had 131 passengers aboard. It said about 15 minutes into the flight the plane turned back to the Ahwaz airport, where authorities defused the device. The agency gave no further details.

Saeed Leylaz, a political analyst and an ally of Mr. Khatami, confirmed that Mr. Khatami had been scheduled to be on the plane but cautioned that there may not have been a bomb on board, and if there were, it may have been meant as a warning.

“Maybe there was no bomb,” he said. “Maybe they just wanted to threaten him. We are not certain yet that there was really a bomb on the plane.”

The episode occurred as unofficial polls suggested that Mr. Moussavi was pulling ahead of Mr. Ahmadinejad before next week’s presidential election.

There have been several episodes of violence in Iran recently. The official Press TV reported Monday on its Web site that five people were killed in the southeastern city of Zahedan in an arson attack on a bank linked to the paramilitary Basij force, which is often involved in crackdowns on dissidents. The five men were employees of the Mehr Financial and Credit institution, Press TV said.

Iran is a predominantly Shiite country, but there is a large community of Sunni Muslims in the south, including in Zahedan, where Sunni militants say they are fighting for greater autonomy from Iran’s Shiite leadership.

A suicide bomber killed 25 people and wounded more than 140 at a Shiite mosque in Zahedan on Thursday. A Sunni militant group called Jundullah claimed responsibility for the attack.

Iran executed three men on Saturday that the authorities said had provided explosives for the mosque bombing.

[bigron]

Ahmadinejad: Blair apologized to Iran


PressTV

http://www.uruknet.info/?p=m54843&hd=&size=1&l=e


Thu, 04 Jun 2009 00:02:07 GMT

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad says former British prime minister Tony Blair has sent a letter to apologize to Iran regarding the sailors' case.

During a TV debate with his rival Mir-Hossein Mousavi which was broadcast live on Wednesday, he defended his foreign policy and said Blair's letter had prompted his government to release the 15 British sailors who were captured by Iranian forces after trespassing in Iran's waters in 2007.

"The sailors were captured and after the issue reached a climax, Mr. Blair sent a letter of apology. He said they would change their policy toward Iran. The related documents are in the Foreign Ministry ... I believe that one of the most beautiful things the Islamic Republic did was the release of the sailors," he said.

The remarks were made after Mousavi criticized Ahmadinejad's foreign policy and mentioned the case as an example of the current administration's failed policies.

He asked Ahmadinejad why after the Iranian forces arrested the sailors, the government created a crisis through calling for their execution and despite the hype, shortly afterwards the administration set them free and gave them gifts.

Mousavi claimed that "the official see-off ceremony" at the time of the sailors' departure was due to threats issued by Britain and that overall, the case damaged Iran's reputation.

The former Iranian prime minister also noted that President Ahmadinejad's denial of the Holocaust had dear consequences for the Islamic Republic.

President Ahmadinejad, however, defended his polices and reiterated that his performance in the international arena had brought dignity to Iran.

RZS/SME/RE



 

[bigron]

Iran can supply Nabucco if relations normalise -U.S.

Reuters

http://www.uruknet.info/?p=m54857&hd=&size=1&l=e

ANKARA, June 4, 2009 (Reuters) - Iran can participate in the European-Union backed gas Nabucco pipeline if Washington normalises relations with Tehran, the U.S. Secretary of State's Special Envoy for Eurasian Energy said on Thursday.

The Nabucco pipeline, conceived as a way to decrease Europe's dependence on Russian natural gas has been unable to find sufficient throughput for the 31 billion cubic metre pipeline.

The project is competing with the rival Russian-backed South Stream project to feed growing European gas consumption.

Nabucco consortium member Turkey has supported Iran's participation in the project, but the idea has been largely dismissed due to U.S. opposition to Iran's participation in the pipeline.

Iran has the world's second largest gas reserves, almost 16 percent of the world's total, but currently has no major net exports, partly because U.S. and U.N. sanctions have deterred investment by Western firms with expertise and technology.

Special Envoy Richard Morningstar also said that the United States supported the supply of natural gas from northern Iraq to Europe through the pipeline, an idea put forward by a group of European and Arab energy companies last month.

However Baghdad has said it would block the $8 billion project. (Reporting by Zerin Elci, Writing by Thomas Grove; Editing by Keiron Henderson)





 

[skyfind]

Iran mass produces new ground-to-air guided missile
Sat, 06 Jun 2009 07:42:10 GMT

http://forum.prisonplanet.com/index.php?action=post;topic=46062.800;num_replies=837

Iran's Defense Minister Brigadier General Mostafa Mohammad-Najjar inaugurates the production line of domestically-made supersonic ground-to-air missile system.

Mohammad-Najjar says the smart missile system, called 'Shahin' has a range of more than 40 kilometers.

He added that the system, capable of targeting fighter jets and helicopters, will promote Iran's defense capabilities against possible air attacks.

The research and production phases of the defense system, including missile, missile interceptors, hardware and software networks and launch pad have been carried out by Iranian experts, said Mohammad-Najjar on Saturday after launching the production line of the system.

Last month, Iran test-fired a new deterrent ballistic missile, the Sejjil II, with a 2000-kilometer surface-to-surface range.

The developments come as the country, which has been targeted by a series of sanctions over its independent stance, beefs up its defense amid increased Israeli threats to strike Iranian nuclear facilities.

Iran also launched a production line for manufacturing autocannons to mount on warships.

"The final range of the 40-millimetre naval autocannon, named Fath (Victory), is 12 kilometers; (more than seven miles) it shoots 300 projectiles per minute," Mohammad-Najjar said.

"It can be used against cruise missiles... It is an anti-aircraft low-altitude weapon which is mounted on warships," he said.

Iran unveiled a new domestically produced attack chopper, the Shahed (Witness) 285, capable of taking part in sea and air combat operations.

DB/JG/DT

[bigron]

Iran Signs Major Gas Deal With China; Is Europe Next?

By Bruce Pannier, RFE/RL

http://www.uruknet.info/?p=m54904&hd=&size=1&l=e

June 6, 2009

Iran has found its long-sought-after partner to help develop part of the world's largest natural-gas field, even as the possibility of linking it to a future pipeline to Europe seemed to rise.

China came out the big winner on June 3 when representatives from the China National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC) and the National Iranian Oil Company (NIOC) met in the Chinese capital and signed a $4.7 billion contract for developing Phase 11 of the South Pars gas field.



South Pars, shared between Iran and Qatar, has estimated gas reserves of some 14 trillion cubic meters, enough to supply Europe's gas needs for about a quarter of a century.

The CNPC's gain is the French energy company Total's loss. In 2004, Total signed a memorandum of understanding with NIOC to develop Phase 11, one of 24 sections that make up the Iranian part of South Pars, and among those with the highest potential.

However, according to Iranian officials, the French company delayed signing the final agreements for too long, despite warnings from Tehran that time was running out. Total said just a few months ago it would not be ready to sign such a contract for some time yet.

Total, in an official statement released on June 3, said it still wants to be part of the deal, but that does not appear to be an option. However, the Iranian government is offering the French company an opportunity to participate in the development of other sections of South Pars and in the production of liquefied natural gas.

NIOC managing director Seifollah Jashnsaz, who was in Beijing for the signing, told reporters he hoped daily production at the site would reach some 50 million cubic meters (some 18 billion cubic meters annually).

The deal is a boon for China because the country's continued economic growth hinges on access to energy resources. Iran profits not only from the Chinese investment but also from a high-profile agreement that demonstrates Tehran can attract partners to major projects, despite international sanctions.

Nabucco Hopes

Meanwhile, in comments that highlight Iran's potential as an energy exporter, U.S. special energy envoy Richard Morningstar on June 4 left the door open for Iran to participate in the Nabucco pipeline project if relations between Washington and Tehran were normalized.



Nabucco is set to extend from Austria to Turkey's eastern borders.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nabucco_Pipeline


However, Morningstar explained clearly that including Iran in the project -- an EU-led initiative that Brussels hopes can pipe Caspian and/or Middle East gas from the South Caucasus, across Turkey, and into Europe -- without first resolving the issue of Iran's nuclear-development program could "have a negative effect."

This comes at a time when the new U.S. administration is calling for renewed dialogue with Iran.

Morningstar was speaking in Turkey, which plays a key role in the Nabucco project. Technically, the project description on Nabucco's website describes the pipeline as "starting at the Georgian/Turkish and/or Iranian/Turkish border."

While Nabucco's route is fairly certain, its sources of gas are not. Nabucco plans to bring some 31 billion cubic meters (bcm) of gas annually and hopes to include gas from the Caspian Basin and Middle East in the pipeline.

But so far, Azerbaijan and Egypt seem to be the only committed suppliers -- providing only enough gas for the first phase of the project (8 bcm annually).

None of the Central Asian states have made any specific pledges to supply gas for Nabucco. Iraq appears to be interested but that gas is in Iraq's Kurdish region and the regional government there and central government in Baghdad are not in agreement on all the details of gas sales.

Iran, with the second-largest gas reserves in the world, could fill Nabucco by itself. Nabucco's website indicates the pipeline's shareholders envision a day such as the one Morningstar spoke of, when better relations between Iran and the United States remove the obstacles to Iran's participation in energy-resource development and exports.


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Copyright (c) 2009 RFE/RL, Inc. Reprinted with the permission of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, 1201 Connecticut Ave., N.W. Washington DC 20036. www.rferl.org
... Payvand News - 06/06/09 ... --

 

[skyfind]

Iran continuing with IAEA and nuclear plans
Sat, 06 Jun 2009 01:41:25 GMT

http://www.presstv.com/detail.aspx?id=97178&sectionid=351020104

Iran's ambassador to the IAEA, Ali-Asghar Soltaniyeh says Iran continues to cooperate with the nuclear watchdog, while at the same time it continues nuclear fuel enrichment activities.

"After six years of intrusive and robust inspection and in fact over 24 reports by now, the director general has once again reported to the whole world that there is no evidence of diversion of nuclear material or nuclear activities to prohibited purposes," Soltaniyeh told Press TV on Friday.

The IAEA report, a copy of which was obtained by Press TV, confirmed on Friday that Iran continues to enrich uranium to a level of "less than 5 percent," adding that "Iran has not suspended its enrichment related activities or its work on heavy water related projects as required by the Security Council."

The Iranian official regretted, "The negative part of the report, if you may call it, is the announcement of the agency that contrary to the resolution of the United Nation's Security Council, Iran has not suspended its enrichment and is not implementing the Additional Protocol."

He mentioned that Iran has said many times that it cannot give up its nuclear activities which were for peaceful purposes, including enrichment.

"Regarding the Additional Protocol it is very clear that there is no justification for implementing it when the issue has already been clarified that the additional protocol is not a legally binding instrument and many countries have not applied it. However the agency is applying the comprehensive safeguard," Soltaniyeh clarified.

The IAEA has called on Iran to continue cooperation with the nuclear inspectors. The report also wants Tehran to clarify what it describes as "outstanding issues."

Moreover, the agency says that it is not in a position to assure with certainty the absence of undeclared nuclear materials and activities in the country.

Iran says that it will continue its cooperation with the nuclear watchdog under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, the NPT. However, Iran insists it will not suspend its nuclear fuel enrichment activities.

RZS/SME/HAR

[skyfind]

New nuclear report on Iran angers Israel
Sun, 07 Jun 2009 15:42:55 GMT

http://www.presstv.ir/detail.aspx?id=97354&sectionid=351020104

Israel's Foreign Ministry says the UN nuclear watchdog cannot be trusted to monitor the Iranian program and the international community should act independently to stop Iran.

"These findings demonstrate that the international community, no more than Israel, cannot place its trust in the IAEA monitoring in Iran," the ministry said in a statement Sunday after the UN agency released its latest report on Iran.

The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) said Friday that the country was proceeding with its nuclear activities as the agency continues to verify the "non-diversion" of the controversial program.

Iran says its program is aimed at the civilian applications of the technology. Israel, however, has accused the country of developing a nuclear weapon over the past few years.

Officials in Tel Aviv have long strived to portray Iran as a regime hell-bent on a nuclear war and have attempted to rally support for tough measures, including the use of military force, to stop the country's program.

"What is needed from the international community is immediate and determined action to ensure that Iran will not be able to produce nuclear weapons," the Israeli ministry said.

"The weakness currently displayed by the international community allows a country like North Korea to pursue a policy of defiance, and Iran is an attentive student of this policy."

The statement, however, failed to notice that North Korea has withdrawn from the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) with weaponization intentions and has declared that it possesses nuclear arsenal.

This is while Iran and NPT signatory says that nuclear arms have no place in its defense paradigm.

The IAEA report confirmed that Iran continues to enrich uranium to a level "less than 5 percent".

Uranium, the fuel for a nuclear power plant such as those being constructed in Iran, can also serve in military purposes if enriched to high levels of above 90 percent.

The UN body, meanwhile, said that unless Iran committed itself to further cooperation, the agency would not be able to resolve "outstanding issues" regarding the program and to "exclude the possibility of military dimensions."

Iran says a broader cooperation would expose sensitive information related to its conventional military and missile related activities

MD/MMN

[skyfind]

Clinton won't rule out attack by Israel on Iran
By Tim Reid in Washington
Monday June 08 2009

http://www.independent.ie/world-news/clinton-wont-rule-out-attack--by-israel-on-iran-1765444.html

HILLARY Clinton refused to rule out a pre-emptive Israeli military strike on Iran yesterday. It was the first time a senior member of the Obama administration had openly discussed such a possibility.

The US Secretary of State, speaking a few days before elections in Iran that will determine the fate of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, also warned that the country would face retaliation if it launched a nuclear attack on Israel.

As US President Barack Obama extends "an open hand", seeking direct talks with Tehran in his attempt to halt its nuclear programme, Mrs Clinton appeared ready to unnerve the Iranian leadership with talk of a pre-emptive strike "the way that we did attack Iraq".

Enemies

She said she was trying to put herself in the shoes of the Iranian leadership, but added that Tehran "might have some other enemies that would do that [deliver a pre-emptive strike] to them".

It was a clear reference to Israel, where Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has talked about the possibility of military action to halt Iran's nuclear programme -- something he views as an existential threat to the Jewish state.

Mrs Clinton, interviewed on the ABC programme 'This Week' a year after she conceded to Mr Obama in the Democratic primary race, said it was US policy that a nuclear attack by Iran on Israel would be seen as an attack on the US.

"I don't think there is any doubt in anyone's mind that were Israel to suffer a nuclear attack by Iran, there would be retaliation," she said, though she did not spell out who would retaliate.

She was responding to a question about her statement as a presidential candidate last year, when she said Iran would "incur massive retaliation from the United States" if it attacked Israel.

Yesterday she said: "Part of what we have to make clear to the Iranians is that their pursuit of nuclear weapons will actually trigger greater insecurity." She noted that Arab states were "deeply concerned about Iran having nuclear weapons".

She added: "So, does Iran want to face a battery of nuclear weapons countries?" (© The Times, London)

- Tim Reid in Washington

[bigron]

N-challenge: A new red line for Iran 

07/06/2009 10:45:00 PM GMT
http://aljazeera.com/news/articles/39/Nchallenge_A_new_red_line_for_Iran.html

 
 Obama cannot restore Iran’s nuclear innocence. Its challenge is to prevent the birth of the next nuclear-weapons state.


By Graham Allison

The Iranian nuclear challenge was transformed on President George W. Bush’s watch. Events in Iran have advanced faster than the policy community’s thinking about the problem. The brute fact is that Iran has crossed a threshold that is painful to acknowledge but impossible to ignore: It has lost its nuclear virginity.

Over the past eight years, the United States has insisted that Iran would never be allowed to develop the capability to enrich uranium, as that could be used to build a nuclear bomb. Three unanimous UN Security Council resolutions demanded that Iran “suspend all enrichment-related activities.” That was a worthy aim. Technically, mastery of enrichment is the brightest red line short of nuclear weapons. Israelis have called it the “point of no return.”

Bush chose the right operational objective when he declared, “We cannot allow the Iranians to have the capacity to enrich.” Sadly, the strategy he pursued to prevent Iran from crossing that red line failed. One can debate whether a different strategy would have produced a different outcome. At this point, however, we must recognize the irreversible bottom line: Iran has demonstrably mastered the capability to manufacture and operate centrifuges to enrich uranium. The February report of the International Atomic Energy Agency documents the details: Iran is operating 4,000 centrifuges and has already produced more than a ton of low-enriched uranium — an amount sufficient, after further enrichment, to make its first nuclear bomb.

The policy consequences of Iran having gotten this far down the road to a nuclear bomb are profound. These new facts require a fundamental reassessment not only of how we engage Iran but also of what we can realistically hope to achieve.

First, the long-held American objective to prevent Iran from acquiring the technical know-how to enrich uranium has been overtaken by events. While it was an appropriate goal at the time, Iran has acquired this capability. Its knowledge of how to enrich uranium cannot be erased. There is no realistic future in which Iran will not be “nuclear enrichment capable,” that is, have the know-how to replicate its current enrichment facility at Natanz — either overtly or covertly.

Second, the predominant focus of U.S. and international policy on Iran’s observable nuclear enrichment facility at Natanz is largely misplaced. Preoccupation with the “known” to the neglect of the “known unknown” is common in policy-making. But at this point, it has become a caricature of the story of the drunk looking for his car keys under the lamppost, even though he knows he dropped them a hundred yards away, because that is where the light is. If Iran detonates a nuclear bomb in the next four years, the likelihood that the highly enriched uranium for that bomb will have been produced at Natanz is less than 10 percent. Thus, erasing Natanz today, either by Israel’s threatened military attack or through negotiations, addresses the smaller part of the threat.

Further, and third, the source of the highly enriched uranium for Iran’s bomb — if Iran makes and tests a bomb during Obama’s first term — will be a covert enrichment plant that we have not discovered. By definition, we don’t know the location or status of secret, undiscovered facilities. But as an American intelligence officer quipped, if Iran’s nuclear project manager has put all his eggs in the one basket that is under the spotlight of international inspection, he should be fired. The bottom line for American policy is that the menu of feasible options has shrunk. Every option available at this point requires living with an Iran that knows how to enrich uranium. Continued denial of this truth is self-delusion.

The central policy question becomes: What combination of arrangements, inside and outside Iran, has the best chance of persuading it to stop short of a nuclear bomb? More important than how many centrifuges Iran continues operating at Natanz is how transparent it will be about all of its nuclear activities, including the manufacture of centrifuges. Maximizing the likelihood that covert enrichment will be discovered is the best way to minimize the likelihood that it will be pursued. The best hope for defining a meaningful red line is to enshrine the Iranian supreme leader’s affirmations that Iran will never acquire nuclear weapons in a solemn international agreement that commits Russia and China to join the United States in specific, devastating penalties for violation of that pledge.

The Obama administration cannot restore Iran’s nuclear innocence. Its challenge is to prevent the birth of the next nuclear-weapons state.

— Graham Allison is director of the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School of Government and the author of “Nuclear Terrorism: The Ultimate Preventable Catastrophe.”



-- Arab News

 

[bigron]

Iran Constructs Iraq's Largest Tunnel

Fars News Agency

http://www.uruknet.info/?p=m54938&hd=&size=1&l=e

June 7, 2009

TEHRAN (FNA)- An Iranian company has constructed Iraq's largest tunnel in Sulaymaniyah province, Kurdistan region, a senior Iraqi official announced on Sunday.

"A well-known Iranian company has constructed a 2700 meter-long tunnel in (the northern province of) Sulaymaniyah, which is the largest tunnel in the country," Sulaymaniyah Governor Dana Ahmad Majid told FNA on Sunday.

He underlined that the tunnel passes Ezmer Mountains and links Sulaymaniyah city to 200 villages and other districts.

Ahmad Majid, however, declined to reveal further details about the company's name and costs and duration of the project.

Meantime, Head of Iran's Consulate in Sulaymaniyah Ali Reza Mosaferi in an interview with FNA described Iran's economic relations with Iraqi Kurdistan region as progressive, saying that the two sides' trade volume in 2008 reached $2.8 billion.

He expressed the hope that the bilateral trade ties between Iran and Iraq would further grow given formation of economic committees and increasing visits by the two countries' officials.

Mosaferi further announced that currently over 90 Iranian companies are doing business in Iraq's Kurdistan region.