full-scale war between the US and Iran (1 Viewer)

[steve albino]

Extracts from: Battle Plans for Iran - February 3, 2006 - Mike Whitney / OpEdNews.org
http://www.opednews.com/articles/opedne_mike_whi_060131_battle_plans_for_ira.htm

The administration has no expectation of securing the votes needed for sanctions or punitive action. It's all for show. The trip to the Security Council is simply a ploy to provide the cover of international legitimacy to another act of unprovoked aggression. The case has gone as far as it will go, excluding the requisite “touched up” satellite photos and spurious allegations of unreliable dissidents.

We should now be focused on how Washington intends to carry out its war plans, since war is inevitable.

Those who doubt that the Bush-Cheney-Rumsfeld team will attack Iran, while so conspicuously overextended in Iraq, are ignoring the subtleties of the administration’s Middle East strategy.

Bush has no intention of occupying Iran. Rather, the goal is to destroy major weapons-sites, destabilize the regime, and occupy a sliver of land on the Iraqi border that contains 90% of Iran’s oil wealth. Ultimately, Washington will aim to replace the Mullahs with American-friendly clients who can police their own people and fabricate the appearance of representative government. But, that will have to wait. For now, the administration must prevent the incipient Iran bourse (oil-exchange) from opening in March and precipitating a global sell-off of the debt-ridden dollar.

There have many fine articles written about the proposed “euro-based” bourse and the devastating effects it will have on the greenback. The best of these are Petrodollar Warfare: Oil, Iraq and the Future of the Dollar by William R. Clark, and The Proposed Oil Bourse by Krassimir Petrov, Ph.D.

The bottom line on the bourse is this; the dollar is underwritten by a national debt that now exceeds $8 trillion dollars and trade deficits that surpass $600 billion per year. That means that the greenback is the greatest swindle in the history of mankind. It’s utterly worthless.

The only thing that keeps the dollar afloat is that oil is traded exclusively in greenbacks rather than some other currency. If Iran is able to smash that monopoly by trading in petro-euros, then the world’s central banks will dump the greenback overnight, sending markets crashing and the US economy into a downward spiral.

The Bush administration has no intention of allowing that to take place. In fact, as the tax-cuts and the budget deficits indicate, the Bush cabal fully intends to perpetuate the system that trades worthless dollars for valuable commodities, labor, and resources. As long as the oil market is married to the dollar, this system of global indentured servitude will continue.
Battle Plans

The Bush administration’s attention has shifted to a small province in southwestern Iran that is unknown to most Americans. Never the less, Khuzestan will become the next front in the war on terror and the lynchpin for prevailing in the global resource war.

If the Bush administration can sweep into the region (under the pretext of disarming Iran’s nuclear programs) and put Iran’s prodigious oil wealth under US control, the dream of monopolizing Middle East oil will have been achieved.

Not surprisingly, this was Saddam Hussein’s strategy in 1980 when he initiated hostilities against Iran in a war that would last for eight years. Saddam was an American client at the time, so it is likely that he got the green light for the invasion from the Reagan White House. Many of Reagan’s high-ranking officials currently serve in the Bush administration; notably Rumsfeld and Cheney.

Khuzestan represents 90% of Iran’s oil production. The control over these massive fields will force the oil-dependent nations of China, Japan and India to continue to stockpile greenbacks despite the currency’s dubious value. The annexing of Khuzestan will prevent Iran’s bourse from opening, thereby guaranteeing that the dollar will maintain its dominant position as the world’s reserve currency. As long as the dollar reigns supreme and western elites have their hands on the Middle East oil-spigot, the current system of exploitation through debt will continue into perpetuity.

Invading Khuzestan

In a recent article by Zolton Grossman, “Khuzestan: the First Front in the War on Iran?”, Grossman cites the Beirut Daily Star which predicts that the "first step taken by an invading force would be to occupy Iran's oil-rich Khuzestan Province, securing the sensitive Straits of Hormuz and cutting off the Iranian military's oil supply, forcing it to depend on its limited stocks."

This strategy has been called the “Khuzestan Gambit”, and we can expect that some variant of this plan will be executed following the aerial bombardment of Iranian military installations and weapons sites.

If Iran retaliates, then there is every reason to believe that either the United States or Israel will respond with low-yield, bunker-busting nuclear weapons. In fact, the Pentagon may want to demonstrate its eagerness to use nuclear weapons do deter future adversaries and to maintain current levels of troop deployments without a draft.

 

[Latex lizzie]

you reap what you sow....

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Ajax
Operation Ajax
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Soldiers surround the Parliament building in Tehran on August 19, 1953.
Operation Ajax (1953) (officially TP-AJAX) was an Anglo-American covert operation to overthrow the elected government ([1][2][3][4]) of Iran and Prime Minister Mohammed Mossadegh and restore the exiled Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi to the throne as a dictator.

Rationale for the intervention included Mossadegh's socialist rhetoric and his nationalization, without compensation, of the oil industry which was previously operated by the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company (which later changed its name to The British Petroleum Company) under contracts disputed by the nationalists as unfair. A particular point of contention was the refusal of the Anglo-Iranian Oil company to allow an audit of the accounts to determine whether the Iranian government received the royalties it was due. Intransigence on the part of the Anglo-Iranian Oil company led the nationalist government to escalate its demands, requiring an equal share in the oil revenues. The final crisis was precipitated when the Anglo-Iranian oil company ceased operations rather than accepting the nationalists' demands.

The newly state-owned oil companies saw a dramatic drop in productivity and, consequently, exports; this resulted in the Abadan Crisis, a situation that was further aggravated by its export markets being closed. Even so royalties to the Iranian government were significantly higher than before nationalization. Without its own distribution network it was denied access to markets by an international blockade intended to coerce Mossadegh into reprivatization. In addition, the appropriation of the companies resulted in Western allegations that Mossadegh was a Communist and suspicions that Iran was in danger of falling under the influences of the neighboring Soviet Union. But Mossadegh refused to back down under international pressure.

For the U.S., an important factor to consider was Iran's border with the Soviet Union. A pro-American Iran under the Shah would give the U.S. a double strategic advantage in the ensuing Cold War, as a NATO alliance was already in effect with the government of Turkey, also bordering the USSR.

In planning the operation, the CIA organized a guerrilla force in case the communist Tudeh Party seized power as a result of the chaos created by Operation Ajax. According to formerly "Top Secret" documents released by the National Security Archive, Undersecretary of State Walter Bedell Smith reported that the CIA had reached an agreement with Qashqai tribal leaders in southern Iran to establish a clandestine safe haven from which U.S.-funded guerrillas and intelligence agents could operate.

Operation Ajax was the first time the Central Intelligence Agency orchestrated a plot to overthrow a democratically-elected government. The success of this operation, and its relatively low cost, encouraged the CIA to successfully carry out a similar operation in Guatemala a year later.

Widespread dissatisfaction with the oppressive regime of the reinstalled Shah led to the 1979 Islamic Revolution in Iran and the occupation of the U.S. embassy. The role that the U.S. embassy had played in the 1953 coup led the revolutionary guards to suspect that it might be used to play a similar role in suppressing the revolution.

The leader of Operation Ajax was Kermit Roosevelt, Jr., a senior CIA agent, and grandson of the former President of the United States Theodore Roosevelt. While formal leadership was vested in Kim Roosevelt the project was designed and executed by Donald Wilber, a career contract CIA agent and acclaimed author of books on Iran, Afghanistan and Ceylon.

As a condition of restoring the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company the U.S. was able to dictate that the AIOC's oil monopoly should lapse. Five major U.S. oil companies, plus Royal Dutch Shell and French Compagnie Française des Pétroles were given licences to operate in the country alongside AIOC.

 

[Latex lizzie]

In a cover article for the New Statesman, John Pilger describes the headlong rush by the United States, aided by Britain, to attack Iran. Like the attack on Iraq, there is a secret agenda. : Pilger : 10 Feb 2006
THE NEXT WAR - CROSSING THE RUBICON

http://pilger.carlton.com/print

Has Tony Blair, the minuscule Caesar, finally crossed his Rubicon? Having subverted the laws of the civilised world and brought carnage to a defenceless people and bloodshed to his own, having lied and lied and used the death of a hundredth British soldier in Iraq to indulge his profane self-pity, is he about to collude in one more crime before he goes?

Perhaps he is seriously unstable now, as some have suggested. Power does bring a certain madness to its prodigious abusers, especially those of shallow disposition. In The March of Folly: from Troy to Vietnam, the great American historian Barbara Tuchman described Lyndon B Johnson, the president whose insane policies took him across his Rubicon in Vietnam. "He lacked [John] Kennedy's ambivalence, born of a certain historical sense and at least some capacity for reflective thinking," she wrote. "Forceful and domineering, a man infatuated with himself, Johnson was affected in his conduct of Vietnam policy by three elements in his character: an ego that was insatiable and never secure; a bottomless capacity to use and impose the powers of his office without inhibition; a profound aversion, once fixed upon a course of action, to any contradictions."

That, demonstrably, is Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld and the rest of the cabal that has seized power in Washington. But there is a logic to their idiocy - the goal of dominance. It also describes Blair, for whom the only logic is vainglorious. And now he is threatening to take Britain into the nightmare on offer in Iran. His Washington mentors are unlikely to ask for British troops, not yet. At first, they will prefer to bomb from a safe height, as Bill Clinton did in his destruction of Yugoslavia. They are aware that, like the Serbs, the Iranians are a serious people with a history of defending themselves and who are not stricken by the effects of a long siege, as the Iraqis were in 2003. When the Iranian defence minister promises "a crushing response", you sense he means it.

Listen to Blair in the House of Commons: "It's important we send a signa] of strength" against a regime that has "forsaken diplomacy" and is "exporting terrorism" and "flouting its international obligations". Coming from one who has exported terrorism to Iran's neighbour, scandalously reneged on Britain's most sacred international obligations and forsaken diplomacy for brute force, these are Alice-through-the-looking-glass words.

my hero.

 

[steve albino]

US prepares military blitz against Iran's nuclear sites
By Philip Sherwell in Washington
Telegraph
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/mai...12.xml&sSheet=/news/2006/02/12/ixnewstop.html
(Filed: 12/02/2006)

'10,000 would die' in A-plant attack on Iran


Strategists at the Pentagon are drawing up plans for devastating bombing raids backed by submarine-launched ballistic missile attacks against Iran's nuclear sites as a "last resort" to block Teheran's efforts to develop an atomic bomb.
Central Command and Strategic Command planners are identifying targets, assessing weapon-loads and working on logistics for an operation, the Sunday Telegraph has learnt.

They are reporting to the office of Donald Rumsfeld, the defence secretary, as America updates plans for action if the diplomatic offensive fails to thwart the Islamic republic's nuclear bomb ambitions. Teheran claims that it is developing only a civilian energy programme.
"This is more than just the standard military contingency assessment," said a senior Pentagon adviser. "This has taken on much greater urgency in recent months."
The prospect of military action could put Washington at odds with Britain which fears that an attack would spark violence across the Middle East, reprisals in the West and may not cripple Teheran's nuclear programme. But the steady flow of disclosures about Iran's secret nuclear operations and the virulent anti-Israeli threats of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has prompted the fresh assessment of military options by Washington. The most likely strategy would involve aerial bombardment by long-distance B2 bombers, each armed with up to 40,000lb of precision weapons, including the latest bunker-busting devices. They would fly from bases in Missouri with mid-air refuelling.
The Bush administration has recently announced plans to add conventional ballistic missiles to the armoury of its nuclear Trident submarines within the next two years. If ready in time, they would also form part of the plan of attack.
Teheran has dispersed its nuclear plants, burying some deep underground, and has recently increased its air defences, but Pentagon planners believe that the raids could seriously set back Iran's nuclear programme.

 

[steve albino]

Last update - 09:13 26/02/2006 Iranian advisor: We'll strike Dimona in response to U.S. attack By Yossi Melman, Haaretz Correspondent If the United States launches an attack on Iran, the Islamic republic will retaliate with a military strike on Israel's main nuclear facility, an advisor to Iran's Revolutionary Guard said. The advisor, Dr. Abasi, said Tehran would respond to an American attack with strikes on the Dimona nuclear reactor and other strategic Israeli sites such as the port city of Haifa and the Zakhariya area. Haifa is also home to a large concentration of chemical factories and oil refineries. Zakhariya, located in the Jerusalem hills is - according to foreign reports - home to Israel's Jericho missile base. Both Israeli and international media have published commercial satellite images of the Zakhariya and Dimona sites. Abasi, a senior lecturer at Tehran University, was quoted in the Roz internet news site, identified with reform circles in Iran. Iranian affairs experts believe Abasi's statements are part of propaganda battle being wages by all sides - including Israel and Iran - in the lead up to next months United Nations Security Council debate on Iran's nuclear program. At this stage, the possibility that sanctions will be leveled at Iran are extremely low. http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/687022.html

 

[Latex lizzie]

so if the possiblity of sanctions is low? straight to war we go..

 

[TenRabbits]

limited "tactical" attacks never seem to work.

Actually that's not quite true.. I think it's just that they tend to be quietly done and not really talked about.

The UK conducted a successful war (if that's not an oxymoron) in Oman for 5 years in the seventies.. no-one seems to really know about it, but then it was at the same time as Vietnam. Two similar wars - two different styles and extremely different outcomes.

Interesting thread - I personally think war against Iran is extremely unlikely, mainly because Iraq is going so badly. Generally when a country is fighting a long war of attrition, the people of that country are far less likely to be happy with other conflicts. That's why the US is trying to keep such a journalistic clampdown on Iraq.

 

[steve albino]

Washington said to be looking at deadline for Iran

By Carol Giacomo, Diplomatic Correspondent Sun Mar 5, 9:27 AM ET


WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The United States, ahead of a key meeting on Iran on Monday, is discussing a 30 to 60-day deadline for Tehran to halt its nuclear program and cooperate with international inspectors or face intensified pressure in the UN Security Council, according to a U.S. official. Monday's meeting of the 35-nation
International Atomic Energy Agency governing board is expected to take stock of Iran's continued defiance of U.S. and European demands to end sensitive weapons-related uranium enrichment activity and then hand the case over to the security council.
The United States wants the council -- which has enforcement powers -- to issue a statement insisting Iran cease its nuclear activities and then giving Tehran "a time period to respond -- say 30 to 60 days -- after which the council would consider what to do" about applying further pressure, said the U.S. official, who spoke on condition of anonymity.
The Iran issue has had many twists and turns since Tehran's previously secret nuclear work was discovered in 2002 and debate among key countries, including Russia and China, on how to proceed remains intense, officials and diplomats said.
Iran on Sunday again threatened to begin large-scale nuclear enrichment if the case is taken up by the security council.
The United States and key allies led by the European Union three of Britain, France and Germany are convinced Iran is trying to produce a nuclear weapon but Tehran insists it is only interested in civilian nuclear energy.
The IAEA is expected to weigh a report on Monday by the IAEA chief saying Iran has ignored a February 4 resolution urging it to shelve uranium-enrichment work to ease the crisis.
Instead, Iran is vacuum-testing 20 centrifuges, which convert uranium into fuel for power plants or, if highly purified, bombs. It also plans to install 3,000 centrifuges later this year in a push to "industrial scale" enrichment.
The Vienna-based IAEA board voted on February 4 to report Iran to the security council, but on condition the foremost world body on issues of war and peace would not flex its muscle at least until after Monday's session.
U.S. officials said there had been talk of the IAEA taking up a resolution to reinforce what the board did in February and also talk of a resolution that would weaken the board's previous resolutions on Iran.
"We hope they don't go down either of those paths," one U.S. official told Reuters,
Another U.S. official said: "Our approach next week is that the board is not really going to take (any specific) action" and then the security council "will take up the Iran issue."
Just when the security council might do this is unclear. The U.S.-EU3 goal is to move quickly but the timing will depend in part on Russia because of its leading role in trying to find a compromise with Tehran, one American official said.
Russian Foreign minister Sergei Lavrov is to meet in Washington on Monday with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.


http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20060305/ts_nm/nuclear_iran_usa_dc

 

[steve albino]

WASHINGTON (Reuters) <br>

By Carol Giacomo, Diplomatic Correspondent 1 hour, 51 minutes ago

- The United States on Sunday warned that Iran faced "painful consequences" if it continued sensitive nuclear activities and said the problem would become increasingly difficult to resolve if the international community did not confront it.
Ahead of what could be a crucial international meeting on Iran on Monday, U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations John Bolton reaffirmed that the United States will use "all tools at our disposal" to thwart Iran's nuclear program and is already "beefing up defensive measures" to do so.

"The longer we wait to confront the threat Iran poses, the harder and more intractable it will become to solve," he warned.
Bolton reaffirmed that Washington does not see the security council moving quickly to impose sanctions on Iran. Veto-wielding members Russia and China have made clear their reluctance.
But he said many other governments have begun to speak publicly of sanctions, implying they may take action outside the security council.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20060305/ts_nm/nuclear_iran_usa_dc

 

[steve albino]

U.S. Dismisses Talk of Compromise on Iran

AP - 37 minutes ago WASHINGTON - Unless Iran executes a dramatic about-face and suspends all its nuclear activities, the U.N. Security Council will intervene "quite actively," a senior State Department official said Monday. The message to Iran is that it has "crossed the international red line" and engaged in unacceptable enrichment activity "and there must be a U.N. Security Council process to deal with that," Undersecretary of State Nicholas Burns said.


http://news.yahoo.com/fc/World/Iran



Iran faces diplomatic escalator

By Paul Reynolds
World Affairs correspondent, BBC News website
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/4777094.stm

Barring a last-minute surprise, the final hurdle before the United Nations Security Council takes up the issue of Iran's nuclear activities is likely to be removed this week. The council is expected to start discussing Iran later this month and the confrontation with Iran will therefore move to a higher level.
However, sanctions are still a long way off and might never come. Warnings and demands that Iran suspend its nuclear programme will, in any case, come first.
The prospect is for a long drawn-out series of manoeuvres and it remains to be seen if enough pressure can be brought to bear on Iran to get it to change its policy.
Iran argues that it is allowed to develop its own fuel enrichment cycle for civil nuclear power under the rules of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. The West fears that this expertise will be eventually used to build nuclear weapons.
This is the likely timetable:

• The 35-member board of the UN's nuclear agency the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) begins a meeting on Monday
• The Iran business will probably be reached on Tuesday or Wednesday
• The board - made up of the leading nuclear powers plus a geographical spread of other nations - will discuss a report on Iran by the IAEA's Director General, Mohamed ElBaradei.

Hawks

Hawks in the Bush administration are showing some frustration with this diplomatic approach. The US UN Ambassador John Bolton said that Washington would use "all tools at our disposal" to stop Iran. "The longer we wait to confront the threat Iran poses, the harder and more intractable it will become to solve," he told Aipac, a pro-Israel group in Washington.

British MP's who met Mr Bolton recently quoted him as saying that the US could "hit different points along the line. You only have to take out one part of the nuclear operation to take the whole thing down."
Iran refused to budge at a meeting with Britain, France and Germany - the EU3 - on Friday. A European official who attended the meeting said that chief Iranian negotiator Ali Larijani "simply did not have a huge amount to say, so we broke up with no conclusion and no agreement."
These are the demands being made on Iran by the IAEA in the February resolution:

• It should again suspend all enrichment and repossessing activities
• It should reconsider the construction of a heavy water reactor [this would give it access to plutonium, another route to a nuclear bomb]
• It should ratify and implement the "Additional Protocol", which means stricter inspections, already agreed with the IAEA
• It should in the meantime act in accordance with that Additional Protocol
• It should be more cooperative in giving the IAEA access to people, places and documents.

 

[steve albino]

Iran forces 'infiltrating Iraq'
Iranian revolutionary forces have been infiltrating Iraq, US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld has said.
"They [Iran] are currently putting people into Iraq to do things that are harmful to the future of Iraq," Mr Rumsfeld told a news conference.
"We know it, and it is something that they... will look back on as having been an error in judgement," he added.
His comments come amid an upsurge in sectarian violence in Iraq, touched off by the bombing of a sacred Shia shrine.
Weapons claim
Asked whether the alleged insertion of Iranian forces into Iraq was backed by the central government in Tehran, Mr Rumsfeld said: "Of course, the Qods force does not go milling around willy-nilly, one would think."
General Peter Pace, chairman of the US military's Joint Chiefs of Staff, said there had also been some improvised explosive devices (IEDs) and weapons that "we believe are traceable back to Iran".
A claim by Britain last October that Iran had provided the technology for bomb attacks on British troops in southern Iraq sparked a heated dispute.
IEDs employing shaped charges and infra-red triggering have killed at least 10 British soldiers in the south of Iraq since May last year, and were first seen in Lebanon where they are used by Hezbollah, which is supported by Iran and Syria.
Yet Iran has denied that it is in any way responsible for supplying the technology.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/4783688.stm

 

[steve albino]

Rice: Iran is major challenge to peace Agencies Thursday March 9, 2006 The US may face &quot;no greater&quot; challenge from any country than Iran, US secretary of state Condoleezza Rice said today. Ms Rice made the comments at a congressional hearing in Washington shortly after Iran's president vowed that there would be no retreat over its nuclear ambitions. Ms Rice, who is pushing the UN security council to start taking action against Iran that could lead to sanctions, also accused Tehran of meddling in Iraq. 4.30pm update Rice: Iran is major challenge to peace Agencies Thursday March 9, 2006 The US may face &quot;no greater&quot; challenge from any country than Iran, US secretary of state Condoleezza Rice said today. Ms Rice made the comments at a congressional hearing in Washington shortly after Iran's president vowed that there would be no retreat over its nuclear ambitions. Ms Rice, who is pushing the UN security council to start taking action against Iran that could lead to sanctions, also accused Tehran of meddling in Iraq. Article continues She said: &quot;We may face no greater challenge from a single country than from Iran, whose policies are directed at developing a Middle East that would be 180 degrees different than the Middle East we would like to see developed.&quot; Ms Rice attacked Iran's &quot;terrible human rights record&quot; and urged Congress to approve £43m in extra funds in a &quot;cultural outreach&quot; scheme to normal Iranian citizens. She said the US had no problem with Iran's citizens, but opposed the government. http://www.guardian.co.uk/iran/story/0,,1727316,00.html Spinning us to war in Iran by Antony Loewenstein During former US President Bill Clinton’s recent trip to Australia, he said the two greatest threats facing the 21st century were terrorism and global warming. The Age welcomed Clinton’s presence in Melbourne as the coming of an almost god-like figure. “While much of the world’s population struggles simply to survive”, it breathlessly offered, “large numbers of the rest of us are searching for heroes.” The fact that Clinton oversaw the bulk of sanctions against Iraq, and the death of over 500,000 men, women and children, was airbrushed out of existence. For the Age, Clinton wasn’t Bush or a Republican, and therefore a person worth respecting. As the quagmire in Iraq deepens, and Islamophobia becomes both politically correct and encouraged, the same blood-stained figures that led us into Saddam’s lair are now trying to achieve a similar result next-door. Perhaps somebody should inform John Howard. He told Southern Cross Radio on February 27 that Iraq is “inching towards a more stable future” and foreign troops were needed for the “stabilisation process.” In reality, the occupation is the main source of the ongoing insurgency. The fact that Howard is lying is dismissed as part of the political game. In the UK, there are currently moves to ensure politicians promise to never lie while in office. The chairman of the Committee on Standards in Public Life, Sir Alaistair Graham, says that the public demands politicians “tell it as it is and own up to mistakes.” Taking a country to war on a lie would hopefully classify as a “mistake.” We live in an environment where Muslims are portrayed as backward, looking for Western assistance and irrationally violent. Take this example from UK columnist Julie Burchill, writing in Haaretz on February 17: “Anyway, from now on I think I'll get just a few less accusations of racism when I point out that Muslims can be a bit, well, narrow-minded. Mind you, it's a long hard struggle trying to make bleeding-heart liberals see sense. Especially when you live in a country where a sizable part of the print and broadcasting media are such guilt-ridden cretins when it comes to Islam that if they saw Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein sexually sharing their own grandmother, they'd swear the poor old lady asked for it.” Perhaps Muslims need a good dose of Western invasion and occupation. And Iran is the next victim. A poll taken in the US in mid February suggested that people believe Iran will develop nuclear weapons but also use them against the United States. We are constantly told that Iran is a “threat”. Barry Cohen, federal Labor MP from 1969-1990 and a minister in the Hawke government, informed readers in the Australian on February 17 that Iran was led by fanatics and desired to destroy Israel with nuclear weapons. “The fanatics don’t care if they die”, he wrote, “On the contrary, many will welcome it. At the risk of being repetitive – we have a problem.” His solution wasn’t articulated, but he clearly believed that military strikes against Iran were both necessary and urgent. The Iranian people – a recent report said that untold thousands of civilians would die in a US attack – were clearly irrelevant. Larry Derfner, a senior journalist and columnist at the Jerusalem Post, offered another perspective. He believed that Iran was going to get nuclear weapons whether the West liked it or not. His answer, however, was for Israel to build “more and better nuclear weapons of its own.” This kind of “deterrence”, Derfner wrote, “works well.” He also encouraged the Jewish state to develop better chemical and biological weapons than Iran. The lunatics have most certainly taken over the asylum. Witness Republican Senator John McCain, who told US television last Sunday that, “The Iranian threat to the world is the biggest since the Cold War.” What he meant to say, of course, is that the Iranian threat is the biggest since the Iraqi threat, which is the biggest since the Taliban threat. http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=58&ItemID=9876

 

[steve albino]

For fuck's sake, do these pricks ever fucking learn, here we fucking go again:
<br>
[FONT=arial,helvetica,sans-serif]Iran is only months from bomb technology, says Britain[/FONT] <br>

[FONT=Geneva,Arial,sans-serif] Simon Tisdall and Ian Traynor<br>
Friday March 10, 2006<br>
The Guardian <br>
[/FONT]The west's confrontation with Iran over its nuclear activities intensified yesterday after Britain claimed that Tehran could acquire the technological capability to build a bomb by the end of the year.<br>A day after the International Atomic Energy Agency referred the dispute to the United Nations security council, British officials also indicated that London would back Washington's efforts to impose a UN deadline of about 30 days for Iran's compliance with international demands.<br>



A senior Foreign Office official said that while it could take Iran several years to build a serviceable nuclear weapon, it might gain the technical knowhow within months. "By the end of the year is a ... realistic period," said the official. "It would be really damaging to regional security if Iran even acquired the technology to enable it to develop a nuclear weapon."
Until now, European diplomats have referred to a period of five to 10 years during which Iran might potentially build a bomb, while conceding that hard evidence is lacking. By publicly focusing on the level of Iran's technical capabilities, Britain may have shortened the timeframe for a peaceful resolution of the crisis.<br>

Jesus...
http://www.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,,1727671,00.html

 

[aoboa]

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20060314/ts_nm/iran_usa_sanctions_dc

"Frederick Jones, spokesman for the White House national security council, said the actions and policies of Iran that led to the continuation of sanctions included its "support on terrorism, meddling in the region, its abysmal human rights record and its pursuit of nuclear weapons."

Haha - Pot/Kettle???

 

[hugh]

So is this going to be the message put out from now on by Bush and co? That Iran are responsible for the chaos in Iraq?

It's pretty clever really isn't it? The worse things get in Iraq the stronger the argument to "do something" about Iran .....

 

[aoboa]

So is this going to be the message put out from now on by Bush and co? That Iran are responsible for the chaos in Iraq?

It's pretty clever really isn't it? The worse things get in Iraq the stronger the argument to "do something" about Iran .....

Thing is, I wouldn't be surprised at all if Iran were behind some of the chaos in Iraq. The more the US are tied up there the less military they have to play with against Iran.

 

[steve albino]

[FONT=Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif]Iran is being set up for “an unprovoked nuclear attack” [/FONT]
[FONT=Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif] by Soraya Sepahpour-Ulrich; The Iranian; March 30, 2006

[/FONT][FONT=Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif]Professing to be the greater civilization, the intellect is deliberately disassociated, sanity is interned so that greed may proceed and allow the savagery of the greater to prey upon the less. While mankind strives for nobility, there are some among us who contemplate such base decisions that would threaten the existence of another nation. Those same powers who would refute that man is born under one law, and so they bound him by another, targeting him with nuclear weapons. [/FONT][FONT=Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif]Alarmed at such baseness, Philip Giarldi, A former CIA officer, in an August 1, 2005 issue of The American Conservative warns that Dick Cheney has issued a request for using tactical nuclear weapons against Iran. More troubling is that the use of nuclear weapons is not conditional on Iran being involved in the act of terrorism against the United States. Otherwise stated, Iran is being set up for “an unprovoked nuclear attack”.[/FONT]
[FONT=Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif] [/FONT][FONT=Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif]Ms. Rice who is rather smug about having earned herself a major victory by getting everyone on board in referring Iran to the United Nations Security Council, can also invite these same nations to share this crime against humanity. Dr. Jorge Hirsch, professor of physics at UC, San Diego, in his remarkable video emphasizes the consequences of a US nuclear attack on Iran. Each bomb would deliver an incalculable number of corpses, the radiation fallout, both immediate and residual, unparallel in magnitude to the tragedy witnessed in Hiroshima and Nagasaki 60 years ago.[/FONT]
[FONT=Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif] [/FONT][FONT=Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif]Subsequently, as each country races to acquire an A-bomb to protect itself against an attack by a nuclear-armed aggressor, we watch the dwindling of our civilization. It is said that when a rich man declares war, the poor man dies. Today, with the mockery of the IAEA and the UN Security Council, and above all, with the United States issuance of nuclear tactical standby, it is not just a single nation that is at risk of demise, but man’s progress. The hideous claws of war have gripped Western political leaders and motivated by greed, they are committing cultural genocide/suicide. Apathy fuels this madness. [/FONT]
[FONT=Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif] [/FONT][FONT=Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif]In a democracy, leaders are transient – more or less. The people will be held accountable for the darkest hours in history. How tolerant can history be, and indeed should it be? The people should demand that the voice of reason and justice prevail. If Americans wish to be a law-abiding nation, then they must protest the use of tactical nuclear weapons on a non-nuclear armed NPT member signatory. [/FONT]
[FONT=Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif] [/FONT][FONT=Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif]The use of these weapons will be defined as war crime under the 1977 Additional Protocol I to the 1949 Geneva Conventions. An indiscriminate attack in which the attacker does not take measures to avoid hitting non-military objectives, that is, civilians and civilian objects. There is no doubt that the radiation from these nuclear weapons would kill civilians! [/FONT]
[FONT=Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif] [/FONT][FONT=Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif]U.S. citizens must determine their future. Will Americans be known as a nation that put out the lights of civilization by enabling its elected officials to commit heinous crimes and kill en masse in their name? Will we stand by and allow mushroom clouds be the legacy that this administration will leave our children, or will we realize that we should put a stop to genocide and call on this administration to recall its despicable policy of nuking innocence. [/FONT]
[FONT=Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif] [/FONT][FONT=Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif]Although the US has not ratified the Additional Protocol I, this provision is considered to be part of customary law and therefore binding upon all parties to a conflict.[/FONT]

 

[c0De_n1NjA]

Iran are cruising for a bruising.

 

[тхеодоре кацзынски]

Iran are cruising for a bruising.

as in cruise missile?

 

[steve albino]

Retired Colonel Says US War on Iran Is Already Underway

April 20, 2006
Amy Goodman & Col. Sam Gardiner / Democracy Now
Colonel Sam Gardiner, is a retired Air Force Colonel whose area of expertise includes helping to stage war games. According to Gardiner, the Pentagon "has been working on contingency studies for an Iran invasion since at least 2003." There are numerous reports that US agents are already on the ground inside Iraq. Gardiner's question: "Who authorized that?"
"The Issue is Not Whether the Military Option Would Be Used But Who Approved the Start of Operations Already"
— Col. Sam Gardiner

April 17th, 2006) — Retired Air Force Colonel Sam Gardiner says a military operation has already begun inside Iran. Gardiner says, "It's a very serious question about the constitutional framework under which we are now conducting military operations in Iran."

Both the New Yorker and the Washington Post have reported the US has drawn up plans for launching tactical nuclear strikes against Iran.

President Bush dismissed the reports as "wild speculation." But evidence continues to emerge the US is preparing for a possible attack. On his online column for the Washington Post, defense analyst Wiliam Arkin said the Pentagon has been working on contingency studies for an Iran invasion since at least 2003. Arkin said the studies were conducted under directives from Donald Rumsfeld and former Joint Chiefs of Staff chair General Richard Myers. British military planners have reportedly taken part in one Pentagon "war game" that included an invasion of Iran.

Colonel Sam Gardiner, is a retired Air Force Colonel whose area of expertise includes helping to stage these war games. In 2004, he conducted a war game organized by The Atlantic Monthly to gage how an American President might respond, militarily or otherwise, to Iran's rapid progress toward developing nuclear weapons. What was your conclusion?

Sam Gardiner, retired Air Force Colonel. He has taught strategy and military operations at the National War College, AirWar College and Naval War College.

RUSH TRANSCRIPT :

http://www.envirosagainstwar.org/know/read.php?itemid=4026