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The Straits of Hormuz seem to be warming - due to Geoplolitical Games and Brinkmanship - Printable Version

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The Straits of Hormuz seem to be warming - due to Geoplolitical Games and Brinkmanship - Ed Jewett - 24-02-2012

Armageddon Approaches

February 21, 2012 204 Comments

Dr. Lasha Darkmoon


[Image: LD1.png]
"An Israeli attack on Iran would create a disaster." Zbigniew Brzezinski
"The entire lake will become a killing field…the Gulf will run red withAmerican blood." Military specialist Mark Gaffney.
Bombing Iran could be the final nail in the coffin of Americaa decaying and morally bankrupt superpower where torture has been normalized and where the President is now free to kill anyone he chooses, anywhere in the world, who he happens to suspect is a terrorist.
Right now, Iran appears to be the object of universal detestation, at least among those who control the mainstream media and who are anxious to persuade the easily duped masses that Iran is a major threat to civilization.

Iran is perfectly capable of shutting down the Strait of Hormuz if it wishes, doing immense damage to the US navy in the process. It possesses a vast array of anti-ship weapons called Sunburn missiles, which it has procured from Russia and China over the last decade. These are state-of-the-art weapons developed by the Russians as a low-cost challenge to the expensive, tech-heavy weaponry of the US. Specifically, they are designed to sink ships, including America's titanic aircraft carriers.
The imminent conflict, which now belongs in the high probabilityspectrum, is a conflict into which Russia and China cannot fail to be drawn. Their interests are inextricably linked with those of Iran. You could say that Iran is their semi-independent protectorate and ally.
If Iran were attacked and if Russia and China stood by and did nothing, they would lose face forever. They would be signaling to the world that they are weaklings, only too ready to cower at the feet of the American superbully. Indeed, they would then be next on America's hit list.
Russia has a new 100-ton monster of a ballistic missile in the pipeline. It is aptly named Satan. And it will be used to devastating effect against America if America gets too big for its boots and gets overly aggressive.
Chinese Major General Zhang Zhaozhong recently stated that if America or Israel attacked Iran, "China will not hesitate to protect Iraneven with a third world war."
* * *
A few points need to be clarified.
The US Navy is an efficient and professional organization, at the cutting edge of modern warfare, but the Strait of Hormuz is not the kind of environment in which the American navy would be invulnerable.
The Iranians can be expected to have a field day in the narrow confines of the Persian Gulf, virtually drawing American ships into a series of ambushes.
If one samples the technical literature on various military websites, one finds there is a lively debate going on about American ship defense systems. Nobody claims that any such system offers full protection against ship missile strikes. Right now, most ships remain vulnerable to such strikes, including America's leviathan aircraft carriers.
[Image: LD2.jpg]
These impressive Nimitz-class aircraft carriers each come with a full complement of 78 supporting ships, 70 or more assorted aircraft, and up to 6000 marines on board. In a 2004 article, military specialist Mark Gaffney, author of Dimona: The Third Temple? (1989), opines: "The US Navy's largest ships, the massive carriers, have now become floating death traps….In the Gulf's shallow and confined waters evasive maneuvers will be difficult, at best, and escape impossible….The Gulf will run red with American blood."
As for oil tankers, these are even more vulnerable than aircraft carriers. If attacked, these will sink easily, clogging up vital sea lanes and doing immense environmental damage to the entire Persian Gulf region.
It is of interest to note that the US is busy working on a new generation of laser defense to counter the sophisticated anti-ship missiles possessed by Iran. However, these are still in process of development. This gives Iran a relative advantage if it is attacked now rather than later. Ironically, the longer America and Israel delay in attacking Iran, the better their chances of successfully countering the retaliatory measures they can expect from Iran.
Both America and Israel are unfortunately just not ready to wage the type of warfare they prefer to wage and at which they so excel: shooting fish in a barrel.
Unlike Iraq, which the warmonger neoconservatives told us would be a "cakewalk"easily conquered in six weeksIran is unlikely to offer its American and Israeli antagonists easy opportunities to indulge in their fish-in-a-barrel fantasies.
Our courageous remote control warriors, hunched over their keyboards far from the din of battle, may be able to rain down death and destruction on innocent civilians in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia, meanwhile salving their consciences by calling their victims "terrorists", but there is nothing they can do with their drones to stop Iran's deadly missiles from blowing up American aircraft carriers or sinking oil tankers in the Persian Gulf.
* * *
The Sunburn is perhaps the most lethal anti-ship missile in the world (see alsohere), designed to fly as low as nine feet above groundwater level and at more than 1,500 miles per hour. The missile uses a jerky pop-up maneuver for its terminal approach. This enables it in effect to dodge, or jump out of the way, of the Phalanx and other anti-missile defense systems: in short, to hit its target bang-on without being intercepted en route.
Given their low cost, these ship missiles are perfectly suited for close quarter naval conflict in the pond like environment of the Persian Gulf.
The Sunburn is versatile and easy to use. It can be fired from practically any platform, including the back of a flatbed truck. It has a 100-mile range, which is all that is necessary in the narrow Persian Gulf, with its 40-mile width round the Strait of Hormuz.
Fired from shore, the Sunburn will punch a room-sized holethrough any ship in the Strait of Hormuz in a fraction of a second.
These missiles therefore present a serious threat to the US Navy. Their power to inflict horrendous damage on hostile intruders simply cannot be exaggerated.
Developed by the Russians, and made fully available to China and Iran, the SS-N-22 Sunburn, a supersonic anti-ship missile, has been described as "the most lethal missile in the world today." (See also here for other anti-ship missiles designed, built, or operated by Iran. See here for a discussion of anti-ship missiles and US capability to defend against them.)
Compared to the Exocet, the Sunburn is a much larger and faster missile. It possesses a far greater range. Its guidance system is spot-on. The Sunburn can deliver a 200-kiloton nuclear payload (a 750-pound conventional warhead) within a range of 100 miles, more than twice the range of the Exocet. It seems the missile was specifically designed to defeat the US Aegis radar defense system.
The Sunburn's astonishing accuracy was demonstrated recently in a live test staged at sea by the Chinese and observed by US spy planes. Not only did the Sunburn missile destroy the dummy target ship, it scored a perfect bull's eye. It succeeded in hitting the crosshairs of a large "X" mounted on the ship's bridge.
Unlike America's drones, the Sunburn is not in the business of creating "collateral damage." It does not kill innocent civilians by the score. It kills only the enemy.
In a 2004 article, Mark Gaffney writes:
US ships in the Gulf will already have come within range of the Sunburn missiles and the even more advanced SS-NX-26 Yakhont missiles, also Russian-made (speed: Mach 2.9; range: 180 miles) deployed by the Iranians along the Gulf's northern shore. Every US ship will be exposed and vulnerable. When the Iranians spring the trap, the entire lake will become a killing field.

The Sunburn's payload hit, with its 750-pound conventional warhead, is apparently insufficient to sink an aircraft carrier, but it is enough to sink most other ships and their crews. So it is generally opined in the technical literature.
No conclusive studies, however, have been carried out to determine the effect of a swarm of missiles attacking an aircraft carrier simultaneously. Perhaps there is no need for such a study. Common sense will tell you that a swarm of killer bees is much more dangerous than a single bee. One bee you can easily swat; a swarm of bees you cannot.
An astute observer of the military situation has offered this comment:
Aegis and RAM systems do not stop Sunburn missiles. Those systems were designed to stop subsonic not supersonic anti-ship cruise missiles. Even then they were unsuccessful in stopping an Iraqi (subsonic) Exocet when it struck the American warship Stark during the Iran-Iraq war.
Supersonic anti-ship cruise missiles travel faster than a rifle bullet and it would take no more than three of them to sink an aircraft carrier. In fact, any surface ship is a floating coffin.
If anyone out there knows of a technology that can stop a rifle bullet in full flight, please let me know what it is.

"You don't have to be Hannibal preparing for the Battle of Cannae," military observer Russ Winter writes, "to see that the Strait is a potential "shooting gallery".
The Strait of Hormuz is in fact an ideal ambush location for large and cumbersome ships that offer such easy targets you would have to be blind to miss them.
[Image: ld3.jpg]
Without a doubt, the Iranians have marked out every firing spot along the Persian Gulf coast. Locating these hiding holes with low-flying attack helicopters will not be easy. Helicopters can be shot down.
Equally impressive is Iran's missile range: 1500 miles and growing. Hostile Bahrain and Qatar can easily be hit by the longer-range versions of the Sunburn or Onyx. So can the Saudi oilfields.
Indeed Israel itself, though further away, could suddenly find itself under a shower of deadly missiles, not only from distant Iran, but from Hezbollah just across the Lebanese border.
"This is going to be the Big One," says Justin Raimondo, "a war that will make the invasion of Iraq look like adress rehearsal for Armageddon."
* * *
It is commonly acknowledged that Israel cannot go it alone in fighting Iran. To wage a successful war against Iran, Israel needs American help. Israel would naturally prefer America to do its dirty work for it.
Should Israel act alone, it would face the extraordinary problem of needing to refuel its bombers en route to targets about 1,000 miles away and refueling them again on the way back.
It has been suggested that the United States should provide Israel with three KC-135 refueling tankers. Some of these Israeli supporters in America claim they do not themselves advocate an Israeli attack on Iran, but they are kindly disposed to Israel and wish to see it supplied with tankers that would "extend the effective range of Israeli aircraft" and "improve Israeli credibility." (See here)
Israel has of course achieved a modest success in destroying the nuclear facilities of two other relatively primitive countries in the region: Iraq and Syria. These two past Israeli successes are not overly impressive. As achievements, they are small beer. That is, compared to the massive challenges Israel would have to face in Iran.
When Israel destroyed Iraq's Osirak nuclear reactor in June 1981, it was one ground-level building it destroyed. That simple operation required 14 Israeli aircraft. Israel's other success, demolishing a partially constructed Syrian facility in September 2007, involved targeting a rudimentary warehouse-like structure built on a single flooran exceptionally easy ground-level target.
The potential targets in Iran are not only far more numerous: they are widely dispersed and buried deep underground. Many of them are probably secret facilities whose very existence is unknown.
There is the fuel-enrichment plant at Natanz, a collection of below-ground facilities used to produce enriched uranium. Then there is the newer Fordow fuel-enrichment plant near Qom, built into the side of a mountain and buried deep underground under several layers of reinforced concrete. It is generally acknowledged that to crack open Fordow, and destroy its alleged nuclear weaponry, would be a task beyond Israel's modest capacity. At a pinch, America could do it, maybe; but certainly not Israel acting on its own.
There are two other Iranian nuclear sites Israel would need to attack: the heavy-water reactor at Arak and the yellowcake-conversion plant at Isfahan.
There are three possible routes to Iran: north over Turkey, south over Saudi Arabia, or a central route across Jordan and Iraq. The US, having officially withdrawn from Iraq in December, is no longer under obligation to defend Iraqi skies from Israeli planes. The Iraqis themselves are of course unable to do so. (See here.)
The recent Robb-Wald Report tells us that Israel has enough GBU-28 bunker-busting bombs to "severely damage, though likely not completely destroy, Iran's known underground nuclear sites in a single well-executed operation."
Perhaps even this is no more than wishful thinking. Note the loaded phrase: "known underground nuclear sites." Best not to mention the unknown ones.
[Image: ld4.jpg]
To achieve victory in Iran, Israel would be stretched to the limit. It would have to deploy several B-2 stealth and B-52 bombers, fighter-bombers and helicopters, along with ship-launched cruise missiles. It would not only need to take out Iran's underground nuclear facilitiesan impossible taskbut it would have to destroy Iran's communications systems, air defense and missile sites, Revolutionary Guard Corps living quarters, munitions storage depots, airfields, and ship and port facilitiesnot to mention missile boats, minelayers and midget submarines.
Given that Israel, for all its vaunted might, was unable to defeat valiant little Hezbollah in 20o6, the chances of it stealing an easy victory from Iran would seem to belong in the realms of fantasy.
Not all Americans are in favor of aiding and abetting Israel in yet another rampage of wanton destructionnot after the crimes of Gaza which have left an indelible stain on Israel's already dubious reputation.
Destroying Iran's infrastructure may make sense to some callous Americans, but to many others it would seem a cruel and vicious enterprise. To poison a population of 74 million people, most of them women and children, with tons of depleted uranium, while putting thousands of other innocents into wheelchairs, is not an achievement likely to bring honor or prestige to Israel.
Not all of us have forgotten the lessons of history. We are cognizant of the fact that Iran has not started a war for 30o years. That it simply wishes to be left alone. And that it is Israel, rather than Iran, that seems to suffer from a serious pathological problema "collective madness"with more than enough blood on its hands.
Speaking on behalf of Israel's countless critics, one political pundit writes:
The US cannot eradicate the Iran regime. It cannot bring Iran under its control, that is, not without creating a disaster for itself and the entire world….Doing that entails huge costs and risks to the US, all the countries in that region, and the many other countries that would be affected by it, including Russia, China, India, Pakistan and Afghanistan….Right now, Obama must stop Israel from attacking Iran.(Emphasis in original). He must do so in the strongest ways available to him, like denying airspace to Israel for refueling its bombers. … The US [should] prevent Israel…from flying over Iraq and refueling.

Sound advice, it seems to me. Why support Israel? Cui bono? Iran has much more to offer America than Israel does.
Iran has oil in abundance, Israel has none. Iran does not hold America's political class to ransom. Iran does not try to browbeat successive American administrations into putting Iranian interests before American ones. Iran's dual citizens do not spy on America or sell American military secrets to Russia and Chinathere are no Iranian Rosenbergs or Jonathan Pollards. Iran does not coerce Americans into fighting and dying for it in foreign wars. Iran does not expect $3 billion a year in handouts, and even more in loan guarantees that never get repaid.
Iran would be a far greater asset to America than Israel could ever be. Israel is a liability and a burden.
More fool America for cuddling up to a "friend" who has stabbed it in the back in the pastthe Lavon affair, the USS Liberty incident, the Jonathan Pollard betrayaland is more than likely to stab it in the back again at some time in the foreseeable future.
Dump Israel. That's my advice. Before Israel sets the world on fire, taking America with it.
* * *
Obama has in recent months begun to make it clear to Israel that the United States would not get involved in a war started by Benjamin Netanyahu without preliminary US approval.
Indeed, on January 20, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Martin Dempsey, informed Netanyahu that the US would not defend Israel if it launched an attack on Iran that had not been coordinated in advance with the US.
In May 2008, Netanyahu's predecessor, Ehud Olmert, had requested the approval of George W Bush for an air attack on Iran. To his credit, Bush had refused to countenance any such move.
Netanyahu has since defied the US administration by refusing to assure Washington that he would consult them before making a decision to attack Iran.
Other US officials have apparently made it clear to Netanyahu that the US, unless fully consulted, would refuse to come to Israel's aid in the event of Israel declaring war on Iran unilaterally.
If Israel did that, it would be on its own.
It would be a mistake for Israel to assume that America is under obligation to protect it from the consequences of its own folly. (For more details, see here.)
Writing in the Huffington Post, political commentator MJ Rosenberg advances the audacious theory that Israel has no wish to go to war right now, but is more interested in flexing its muscles and playing cat-and-mouse games with America. It wants to show everyone that Israel is now the Cat and America the Mouse: "Netanyahu and his camp followers do not really want a war now. They just want it understood that they can dictate whether there is one or not. And when. In other words, they want to show who is boss."
It's time for a showdown.
The capital of America needs to be moved back to Washington. Tel Aviv is too far away.
* * *
When Zbigniew Brzezinski says, "An Israeli attack on Iran would create a disaster", he must be taken seriously.
An old hand, and an expert on Russia, Brzezinski is the acclaimed author of The Grand Chessboard: American Primacy and Its Geostrategic Imperatives. One cannot help wondering what Brzezinski thinks of the controversial statement made by Leonid Ivashov, former member of the Russian Joint Chiefs of Staff, which aired on Russia Today TV on February 1, 2012:
Russia does not want any military operations to be waged against Iran or Syria. These two countries are allies, and both are considered guaranteed partners of Russia. A strike against Syria or Iran is an indirect strike against Russia and its interests.

Later he adds, significantly, striking a chord with people like me who believe that America is now a crypto-fascist state masquerading as a democracy:
Everybody should acknowledge that Fascism is making great strides on our planet. What they did in Libya is nearly identical to what Hitler and his armies did against Poland and then Russia. Today, therefore, Russia is defending the entire world from Fascism.

No need to ask who the New Fascists are.
Just turn on your television sets and you will see their smiling faces, telling you how much they love and cherish youas long as you vote for themand as long as you die for them in foreign wars for the aggrandizement of Israel.
* * *
It certainly needs to be asked: How much longer will America continue to fight Israel's wars? What hold does Israel have over America? Is America prepared to sustain immense damage to its vital interests on behalf of an unstable and insolent ally that remains, if numerous polls are to be believed, the world's most hated nation?
There are some indications that not all American operatives, especially in the armed forces and the CIA, are overly impressed with Israel's increasingly irresponsible behavior. A significant rift in the friendship appears to be developing, a rift that will hopefully grow in time as America finally comes to its senses.
Relations could once again reach rockbottom, as when former US Secretary of State James Baker uttered his infamous remark about Israel's Jewish American supporters: "Fuck the Jews, they don't even vote for us."
Former Centcom chief and retired Gen. Joe Hoar recently complained of a certain shady Israeli operation involving the terrorist group Jundullah, in which Mossad thugs had the impudence to masquerade as CIA agents: "Israel isplaying with fire. It gets us involved in their covert war, whether we want to be involved or not."
[Image: ld5.png]Israel's Covert War against Iran

The tension between longsuffering Iran and an insufferable Israel, goading it to frenzy, is now at fever pitch.
Here is part of an interview between journalist Eleanor Hall and Iran specialist Geneive Abdo who is director of the Iran program at the National Security Network in Washington. I have compressed drastically in the interests of economy, but the full version can be read here:
ELEANOR HALL: Iran's leadership says it's sheer lies that it's behind the [recent] attacks [on Iranian embassies in India and elsewhere] and that the Israelis have planted the bombs themselves to discredit Iran?
GENEIVE ABDO: Well I think that's entirely possible. I mean, if you consider what the Israelis did for many years in Lebanon and other parts of the Middle East, that theory is not so farfetched.
ELEANOR HALL: How incendiary is the relationship between Iran and Israel right now? Are we looking at an Israeli strike on Iranian nuclear facilities…?
GENEIVE ABDO: I think it's certainly a decision Israel is taking very seriously.
ELEANOR HALL: So how dangerous do you think the situation is right now?
GENEIVE ABDO: I think it's very dangerous. Far more dangerous than any escalation tension we've seen in 30 years.
ELEANOR HALL: So, how dangerous could it become if the Israelis do strike?
GENEIVE ABDO: It's an extremely dangerous situation. The Iranians will not take this lightly, and they will use all the resources at their disposal to attack. They will cause chaos in the region, because their whole survival is on the line….You know, they could launch attacks on Latin America. They've even said that they would launch attacks on American soil. They will send missiles to Tel Aviv….If you consider what the Israelis have done in Lebanon…I don't think that gives us much hope…

If Israel decides to launch an all-out attack on Iran, we can be sure of one thing: the towers of Tel Aviv will come toppling down. Not necessarily now, but one day in the distant future, when it is decided that vengeance is a dish best served cold.
The nuclear complex at Dimona could well be destroyedif not now, later on, in the fullness of timemaking Israel an uninhabitable wasteland.
Given its miniscule size, Israel could be destroyed in a single day, if not by Iran, then almost certainly by Russia or China.
Only a week ago, Alireza Forghani, head of the Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei's strategic team, was quoted as saying: "It would only take nine minutes to wipe out Israel."
No one seriously expects to see the annihilation of Israel right now, but Israel will have to take the consequences of its actions one day.
Israel will reap what it sows as Armageddon approaches.
The clock is ticking…
_______________________________________________________________________
Dr Lasha Darkmoon (email her) is an academic with higher degrees in Classics. She is also a poet and translator. Her articles can be sampledhere, her poems here.

The Straits of Hormuz seem to be warming - due to Geoplolitical Games and Brinkmanship - Peter Lemkin - 11-03-2012

Israel's Assassins And Tehran's Killers

 By Truthout
The Public Record
Mar 4th, 2012


This report was written by veteran intelligence reporter Richard Sale and originally published on Truthout.

They are dying one by one.

They are Iran's nuclear scientists, and they are being murdered. Since 2007, five Iranian nuclear scientists have been killed in Iranian territory, many victims dying from magnetic bombs that terrorists had attached to the exterior of their cars.

The latest attack took place on January 11, 2012, when Mostafa Ahamdi Roshan, deputy director in the Natanz uranium enrichment facility, died without warning in a blast in Tehran shortly after two assailants on a motorcycle placed a bomb on his car.

According to news reports, confirmed by Truthout, the United States denied that it was to blame for the killing of the 32-year-old Roshan after Tehran said Washington and Israel were responsible for the attack. "I want to categorically deny any United States involvement in any kind of act of violence inside Iran," US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton told reporters when asked about Iranian allegations over the attack.

National Security Council spokesman Tommy Vietor added, "The United States had absolutely nothing to do with this. We strongly condemn all acts of violence, including acts of violence like this."

Former and serving US intelligence officials said that President Barack Obama reacted angrily to the latest killing because, since his election, he had tried to prevent any acceleration in the covert US-Israeli war directed at Iranian nuclear facilities.

The Israeli program, which has been in place for almost a decade, involves not only targeted killings of key Iranian assets, but also disrupting and sabotaging the Iran nuclear technology by infecting Iran's enrichment computers with a US-Israel virus that heavily damaged them and by sabotaging Iran's purchasing network abroad, these sources said.

US opposition to the program initially intensified as President Obama made overtures aimed at thawing decades-old tension between the two countries. Part of his strategy was driven by America's desire to use Iran's roads into Afghanistan to help resupply US-NATO forces there.

But in spite of Obama's desire to relax tensions, Israel continues to carry out killings using its proxies, including an armed group of Iranian dissidents, a group that has high-level political backers in the United States despite being a terrorist organization.

Former senior CIA officials said that Israeli terrorists were members of the Mujahideen-e-Khalq (MEK), who are paid by Israel to do targeted killings of Iranian nationals.

"The MEK is being used as the assassination arm of Israel's Mossad intelligence service," said Vince Cannistraro, former CIA chief of counterterrrorism. He said that the MEK is in charge of executing "the motor attacks on Iranian targets chosen by Israel. They go to Israel for training, and Israel pays them."

The MEK has a shadowy and unsavory history. Founded in the 1970s, the group was stridently anti-shah and allied itself with the dictatorship of Iraq's Saddam Hussein from which it received most of its supplies. Performing security for Saddam, the MEK assisted him in the slaughter of his domestic opponents and the massacre of Iraqi Shias and Kurds in the 1991 uprising.

As the military wing of the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI), the MEK targeted Iranian officials and government facilities in Iran and abroad. The group also attacked and killed Americans in the 1970s. According to one former senior CIA official, the MEK is particularly violent. In France, they did killings in Paris, including six or seven US Army sergeants. He added that the French "were terrified of them."

Its most spectacular act of terror was the 1991 near-simultaneous attack on 13 countries around the world.

In 2003, the United States listed the NCRI as a terrorist organization and closed its Washington office. US forces in Iraq captured the MEK's weapons and turned the MEK over for investigation of terrorist acts. Since then, the group has been peeling off Iranian nuclear scientists one by one.

When I asked Paul Pillar, a 28-year CIA veteran, whether Israel was killing secondary or tertiary scientists instead of its major ones, he replied, "Israel kills any Iranians it can."

The range of damage caused by the MEK is not confined to merely killing individuals. On October 12, just before Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was to arrive in Lebanon, a huge blast destroyed an underground site near the town of Khorramabad in western Iran that housed most of Iran's Shehab-3 medium-range missiles capable of reaching Israel and Iraq. A far right-wing Israeli web site, Debka, reported that Iran has suffered a blow" to its nuclear program. The blast killed 18 and wounded several more. The MEK was strongly suspected as the killers, but "There is no conclusive evidence yet," said Cannistraro. But one former senior US intelligence official said, "Israel did it using the MEK and Kurdish fighters."

Early History

Mossad has a long history of killing opponents. At first, Israel viewed Palestinians as the chief threat, killing off several Black September assassins involved in the 1972 Munich massacres. In 1986, right-wingers in Israel plotted to kill Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat and replace him with someone who would be unacceptable to the West. Mossad's motives were not simply revenge, but a desire to ruin any chance of a Middle East peace. Israel's moderates pointed out that Arafat was the legitimate leader of the Palestinians, and that, while the best of a bad lot, he was an educated man and courageous. The debate finally decided against killing him.

In the early 1980s, the chief threat to Israel's existence was no longer Arafat, but Arab scientists. On June 7, 1981, in "Operation Sphinx," Israel's fighter planes destroyed the Iraq nuclear complex, Tamuze 17, at Osirak. Israel, then set out to eliminate Arab scientists that could be seen as a threat to Israel's future security. "Israel has been killing Iranian or even Arab nuclear scientists for some time," said a veteran CIA station chief.

A former senior Department of Defense (DoD) official said, "Israel killed Arab scientists without compunction."

An incident recounted by former Mossad defector Victor Ostrovsky in his book, "By Way of Deception," (verified by my interview with him) told how Mossad targeted an Arab nuclear scientist, an Egyptian from Cairo, who assisted Iraq's nuclear program after Osirak.

Mossad and Aman, Israel's military intelligence group, did the planning, but it was Mossad that did the killing. Mossad's chain of reasoning was Byzantine. Mossad officially believes that it kills only people who have Israeli blood on their hands, but the Egyptian had to be killed because he would have had the blood of Israel's children on his hands if he had completed his nuclear project. So why wait?

The scientist was passionate about his work, having said he would pursue this program of building an Arab nuclear weapon even if it cost him his life. When he arrived for a stay in Paris, Mossad approached the scientist directly and tried to recruit him. They got a volley of abuse instead. Then, Mossad sent in a hooker. After the scientist had sex and had gone to sleep, two Mossad agents with a passkey got in and slit his throat.

His blood-soaked body was found by a chambermaid. Nothing had been stolen, no money, no documents. When the hooker heard about the matter, she was shocked. After all, she knew the man had been alive when she'd left him. To protect herself, she went to the French police and reported that when she had arrived, the scientist was angry because someone had approached him offering him money for information. After talking to the police, the hooker told her story to a colleague, who unknowingly passed it to a sayanim, a Mossad volunteer. Such people were all over Paris.

A few weeks later in July of 1982, the hooker was working on the Left Bank when a Mercedes pulled up and the driver asked her to come to his side of the car. As she leaned in to talk, another Mercedes came speeding up and the first driver suddenly pushed the hooker into the oncoming car. She was killed instantly.

Both victims were handled by Mossad in different ways. The hooker's killing was classified as an "operational emergency." The decision to kill her was made quickly and emanated from an ultra-secret internal system involving a formal "execution list," that required the personal approval of the Israeli prime minister. The number of names on that list varied considerably. The request for a killing was made by Mossad to the prime minister. (Israeli targets are different from Jewish targets). The prime minister must sign the order, read the execution list and initial each name on it.

No state has any ethics, only its own interests, said a British diplomat, but Israel is just as remorseless a killer as any of its self-designated enemies. Israel's training of the secret police of terrorist countries often gets it into trouble and compromises its stance as the region's Western democracy. For example, until the fall of Iran's shah, Israel trained the Third Department of SAVAK, the shah's dreaded secret police. It sold weapons and intelligence to Serbian dictator Sloban Milosevic. When Israel wanted to obtain the head of an Exocet shipping missile, it agreed to train Chile's secret police to kill its enemies. Mossad likes to keep its techniques to itself, but it trained Chile's assassins and got its missile. In September 1976, I was three blocks away when I heard the blast along Embassy Row in Washington and found a gutted automobile and ambulances when I arrived. The victims were Orlando Letelier, 44, a former Chilean cabinet minister, and his American aide, Ronnie Moffit, 25. Israel wasn't directly responsible but indirectly it was.

The Rationale

As terrorist/intelligence correspondent for UPI, I wrote a story in January 2003 about how the Bush administration had given permission to Israel to assassinate on US soil. Following phone calls and a trip to Washington, I met with a former Israeli Defense Force member with ties to Israeli intelligence, Gal Luft. We talked a great deal about Israel's assassinations, and Luft soon produced a masterful piece on it, "The Logic of Israel's Targeted Killing," for The Middle East Quarterly.

In it, Luft said that Israelis "dislike the term assassination policy.'" He said that they would rather use another term, "extrajudicial punishment," "selective targeting" or "long-range hot pursuit," to describe this particular pillar of their counterterrorism doctrine. He then noted that, since the 1970s, "dozens of terrorists have been assassinated by Israel's security forces, and in the two years of the Aqsa intifada, there have been at least 80 additional cases of Israel gunning down or blowing up Palestinian militants involved in the planning and execution of terror attacks."

Luft acknowledged that many thought the killings illegal or operationally senseless because "assassinating Palestinian militants only brings harsh retaliatory action, resulting in even more Israeli casualties." He conceded that it "infringes on the sovereignty of foreign political entities and because it gives the security services discretion to decide on the killing of certain individuals without due process." But he concluded thus: "the policy does have shortcomings. What is less apparent is the profound cumulative effect of targeted killing on terrorist organizations. Constant elimination of their leaders leaves terrorist organizations in a state of confusion and disarray. Those next in line for succession take a long time to step into their predecessors' shoes. They know that by choosing to take the lead, they add their names to Israel's target list, where life is Hobbesian."

Pillar recently mounted a brilliant counterargument to Luft in The National Interest, entitled "Deeper into Terrorism." He said, "With or without confirmation of details of this story, the assassinations are terrorism. (The official US government definition of terrorism for reporting and statistic-keeping purposes is premeditated, politically motivated violence perpetrated against non-combatant targets by sub-national groups or clandestine agents.')"

Noting that assassination is immoral, he added, "Terrorism denies the high ground to anyone who uses it, including the use of it in disagreements with Iran. It also hastens the slide through mutually reinforcing hostility into what may be a far more destructive form of violence (i.e., a war). Although the United States has not been involved in the assassinations, the nature of its relationship with Israel, both real and perceived (President Obama commented the other day about staying in lockstep' with Israel on Iran), means that Israel's actions suck the United States farther down the slide."

Specialization

Assassinations used to be quick, sloppy, haphazard and often relied on luck. This has changed. Targeted killing today is much more sophisticated and requires a lot of preparation and training by different teams. There are those who plan an attack, but do not carry it out. The planning groups do research; rely on field reports, files, communications traffic. They observe the victims' movements, their locales, the places they frequent, traffic patterns. They study logistics, escape routes, access. They provide cover stories, fake passports and false identities. They figure out where the target is likely to stay.

There can be complications. In the 1970s, a Mossad team mistakenly shot a Norwegian waiter, thinking he was Ali Hassan Salemheh, the mastermind of the Munich massacre. Phony identities and false passports can backfire. Six suspected Mossad agents were expelled by Dubai when it was found they were using forged Irish passports. Ireland replied by expelling an Israeli Embassy official.

The Logic of Events

Repeated insults to Iranian sovereignty meant that Tehran would one day begin to stage reprisals for Mossad killings in countries with an Israeli presence. Countries with weak security would be Iran's battlefields of choice for hitting back at Israel.

This finally happened. On February 13, one of Iran's proxies, Hezbollah, launched attacks in New Delhi, Georgia and a site in Bangkok. The attack on Israel's Embassy in New Delhi was well-planned and well-executed. It was possible only by painstaking collection of information regarding the movements and activities of Israeli diplomats, and a capability for undetected clandestine activity in Indian territory for the procurement of explosive material and the fabrication of the improvised explosive device (IED), according to a friend of this reporter, Bahukumbi Raman, a former senior official in India's CIA. In an email with multiple recipients, Raman said the attack coincided with the fourth anniversary of the assassination of a senior leader of the Hezbollah in Damascus and the first anniversary of the death of two Iranian nuclear scientists in Teheran caused by a similar sticky bomb explosion.

Talya Yehoshua-Kioren, wife of the Defense Ministry representative in India, and three others were injured by a sticky bomb planted on her SUV. At almost exactly the same time, a similar device was safely defused in the Georgian capital of Tbilisi due to the detection and neutralization of the IED before it could explode.

Two theories immediately sprang to life. One was that Israel had faked the attacks itself; the other, that the Hezbollah proxies of Iran were the culprits. According to Pillar the second surmise was the correct one. "The wife of an Israeli Embassy official is a high value target," he told me.

One serving intelligence official said, "The Iranian leadership has worked to reduce its own terrorist arm. Picking New Delhi or Georgia demonstrates Iran's increasing desperation in the face of so many verbal attacks."

A right-wing Israeli site, Debka, said, "… Iran and Hezbollah are clearly determined to keep on trying until they achieve their objective of killing targeted Israelis."

The fear is that the vicious circle of Iran-Israeli reprisals will prove destabilizing to the world order. Several sources, including former US diplomats, told me that seeing your enemy as the seat of all evil in the world, being obsessed with the special wickedness of your opponent, blinds people to the logic of events. Seeing a foreign policy predicament as a melodrama with good versus bad freezes history into insoluble dilemmas where any common ground or parallel interests are irrelevant. Assassinations can change history, but they don't necessarily achieve the long-term objectives of the agencies that employ them, said a former DoD official.

The basis of Israel's lavish financing of the MEK is to try to delay any Iranian progress towards a nuclear weapon, even if Iran has not decided to make one, but the fear that Iran might have a weapon calls up a vision of Iran as "a regional marauder that would recklessly throw its weight around the Middle East in damaging ways, according to Pillar. And he pointed out that there is already such a state in the Middle East. It is Israel.

In The National Interest, he said, "This state invades neighboring countries, ruthlessly inflicting destruction on civilian populations, and seizes and colonizes territory through military force. It also uses terrorist group proxies as well as its own agents to conduct assassinations in other countries in the region." Pillar still holds these views.

In a 2009 article for Middle East Times, this reporter interviewed Pat Clawson, director of research at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, about Israel's assassinations. He said, "That's what the Israelis would do, what we would expect them to do. They would kill Iranian scientists."

Asked about the mounting administration disapproval, Clawson said of the killings, "It would be implausible to call off all covert ops." He added, "If the US pressures Israel, then the Israelis will simply stop talking to us about it."

Pillar pointed out that unlike Iran, Israel has never signed the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty or admitted an international inspector to any of its nuclear facilities and, in fact, Israel "has kept its nuclear program completely out of reach of any international scrutiny or arms control regime and does not even acknowledge the program's existence. It is so intent on maintaining its regional nuclear weapons monopoly."

He added, "The United States needs to distance itself as much as possible from this ugliness, for the sake of adhering to its own principles as well as trying to avoid sliding any further toward catastrophe." Pillar confirmed these views in an interview.

A former senior US military official summed it up, "Israel is out of step with American policy."

Richard Sale was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, with his entry given a National Press Club Award for "excellence in diplomatic reporting" in 1989. He has been reporting on intelligence since 1977. Sale's book, "Clinton's Secret Wars," was selected by the History and Military Book Clubs and Book of the Month Club.

The Straits of Hormuz seem to be warming - due to Geoplolitical Games and Brinkmanship - Keith Millea - 11-03-2012

Quote:Repeated insults to Iranian sovereignty meant that Tehran would one day begin to stage reprisals for Mossad killings in countries with an Israeli presence. Countries with weak security would be Iran's battlefields of choice for hitting back at Israel.

This finally happened. On February 13, one of Iran's proxies, Hezbollah, launched attacks in New Delhi, Georgia and a site in Bangkok. The attack on Israel's Embassy in New Delhi was well-planned and well-executed. It was possible only by painstaking collection of information regarding the movements and activities of Israeli diplomats, and a capability for undetected clandestine activity in Indian territory for the procurement of explosive material and the fabrication of the improvised explosive device (IED), according to a friend of this reporter, Bahukumbi Raman, a former senior official in India's CIA. In an email with multiple recipients, Raman said the attack coincided with the fourth anniversary of the assassination of a senior leader of the Hezbollah in Damascus and the first anniversary of the death of two Iranian nuclear scientists in Teheran caused by a similar sticky bomb explosion.

Sorry,but there is no evidence yet that Hezbollah was the culprit in these bombings.It could just as easily have been a Mossad false flag operation.It is very suspicious to me that an assassination squad would fuck up so bad,as to place the magnetic bomb on the rear of the car(duh!).Doesn't make sense to me,but we need to let evidence and facts come to light before anyone should start pointing fingers.

The Straits of Hormuz seem to be warming - due to Geoplolitical Games and Brinkmanship - Peter Lemkin - 25-03-2012

US WAR ON IRAN: "THE WORST MISTAKE IN AMERICAN HISTORY":
The Road to Disaster

by Fidel Castro Ruz

Global Research, March 23, 2012
Cuba Debate - 2012-03-21


Fidel Castro s latest reflections hints to the danger of a looming US Iran war. Fidel Castro warns that a war with Iran war would be the worst mistake in US history.


This Reflection could be written today, tomorrow or any other day without the risk of being mistaken. Our species faces new problems. When 20 years ago I stated at the United Nations Conference on the Environment and Development in Rio de Janeiro that a species was in danger of extinction, I had fewer reasons than today for warning about a danger that I was seeing perhaps 100 years away. At that time, a handful of leaders of the most powerful countries were in charge of the world. They applauded my words as a matter of mere courtesy and placidly continued to dig for the burial of our species.

It seemed that on our planet, common sense and order reigned. For a while, economic development, backed by technology and science appeared to be the Alpha and Omega of human society.

Today, everything is much clearer. Profound truths have been surfacing. Almost 200 States, supposedly independent, constitute the political organization which in theory has the job of governing the destiny of the world.
25, 000 nuclear weapons needed to defend the changing order ?

Approximately 25,000 nuclear weapons in the hands of allied or enemy forces ready to defend the changing World order, by interest or necessity, virtually reduce to zero the rights of billions of people.

I shall not commit the naïveté of assigning the blame to Russia or China for the development of that kind of weaponry, after the monstrous massacre at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, ordered by Truman in August 1945 after Roosevelt's death [April 1945].

Nor shall I fall prey to the error of denying the Holocaust that signified the deaths of millions of children and adults, men or women, mainly Jews, gypsies, Russians or other nationalities, who were victims of Nazism. For that reason the odious policy of those who deny the Palestinian people their right to exist is repugnant.

Does anyone by chance think that the United States will be capable of acting with the independence that will keep it from the inevitable disaster awaiting it?

In a few weeks, the 40 million dollars President Obama promised to collect for his electoral campaign will only serve to show that the currency of his country has lost its value, and that the US, with its unusual growing public debt drawing close to 20 quadrillion, is living on the money it prints up and not on the money it produces. The rest of the world pays for what they waste.

Nor does anyone believe that the Democratic candidate would be any better or worse than his Republican foes: whether they are called Mitt Romney or Rick Santorum. Light years separate these three characters from Abraham Lincoln or Martin Luther King.

It is really unheard-of to observe such a technologically powerful nation and a government so bereft of both ideas and moral values.

Iran has no nuclear weapons. It is being accused of producing enriched uranium that serves as fuel energy or components for medical uses. Whatever one can say, its possession or production is not equivalent to the production of nuclear weapons. Dozens of countries use enriched uranium as an energy source, but this cannot be used in the manufacture of a nuclear weapon without a prior complicated purification process.

However, Israel, with the aid and cooperation of the United States, has manufactured nuclear weaponry without informing or accounting for their actions to anybody. Not admitting their possession of these weapons, they have hundreds of them. To prevent the development of research in neighbouring Arab countries, they attacked and destroyed reactors in Iraq and Syria. They have also declared their objective of attacking and destroying the production centres for nuclear fuel in Iran.

International politics have been revolving around that crucial topic in that complex and dangerous part of the world, where most of the fuel that moves the world economy is produced and supplied.

The selective elimination of Iran's most eminent scientists by Israel and their NATO allies has become a practice that motivates hatred and feelings of revenge.

The Israeli government has openly stated its objective to attack the plant manufacturing Iran's enriched uranium, and the government of the United States has invested billions of dollars to manufacture a bomb for that purpose.

On March 16, 2012, Michel Chossudovsky and Finian Cunningham published an article revealing that "A top US Air Force General has described the largest conventional bomb the re-invented bunkers of 13.6 tons as fantastic' for a military attack on Iran.

"Such an eloquent comment on the massive killer-artefact took place in the same week that President Barack Obama appeared to warn against easy words' on the Persian Gulf War."

"…Herbert Carlisle, deputy chief of staff for US Air Force operations […] added that probably the bomb would be used in any attack on Iran ordered by Washington.

"The MOP, also referred to as The Mother of All Bombs', is designed to drill through 60 metres of concrete before it detonates its massive bomb. It is believed to be the largest conventional weapon, non-nuclear, in the US arsenal."

"The Pentagon is planning a process of wide destruction of Iran's infrastructure and massive civilian victims through the combined use of tactical nuclear bombs and monstrous conventional bombs with mushroom-shaped clouds, including the MOABs and the larger GBU-57A/B or Massive Ordnance Penetrator (MOP) that exceeds the MOAB in destructive capacity.

"The MOP is described as a powerful new bomb that aims straight at subterranean Iranian and North Korean nuclear facilities. The giant bomb longer than 11 persons shoulder to shoulder, or more than 6 metres from end to end'."


The Mother of all Bombs (MOAB)

I ask the reader to excuse me for this complicated military jargon.

As one can see, such calculations arise from the hypothesis that the Iranian combatants, numbering millions of men and women well-known for their religious zeal and their fighting traditions, surrender without firing a shot.

In recent days, the Iranians have seen how US soldiers occupying Afghanistan, in just three weeks, urinated on the corpses of killed Afghans, burned copies of the Koran and murdered more than 15 defenceless citizens.

Let us imagine US forces launching monstrous bombs on industrial institutions, capable of penetrating through 60 metres of concrete. Never has such an undertaking ever been conceived [and carried out].

Not one word more is needed to understand the gravity of such a policy. In that way, our species will be inexorably led towards disaster.

If we do not learn how to understand, we shall never learn how to survive.

As for me, I harbour not the slightest doubt that the United States is about to commit and lead the world towards the greatest mistake in its history.

Fidel Castro Ruz

March 21, 2012

The Straits of Hormuz seem to be warming - due to Geoplolitical Games and Brinkmanship - Magda Hassan - 31-03-2012

Did the US just break the secret Israeli-Azerbaijani alliance against Iran?

[url=http://rt.com/usa/news/israel-azerbaijan-iran-obama-897/][/url]31 March, 2012, 00:47


According to an alleged leak, Israel is secretly staging an airstrike on Iran in neighboring Azerbaijan.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been salivating over the thought of bombing Iranian nuclear facilities for some time now, and an anonymous senior US diplomat along with military intelligence officials alleged that "Israel has recently been granted access to airbases on Iran's northern border."
"The Israelis have bought an airfield and the airfield is called Azerbaijan," said a senior administration official.
The information which was disclosed in Foreign Policy magazine stated that the Israeli-Azerbaijani alliance is deeper than both parties want others to believe.
According to the article, in 2009 a memo released by WikiLeaks quoted Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev labeling the country's relationship with Israel as an iceberg where "nine-tenths of it is below the surface."
For years Israel and Azerbaijan have established an economic relationship. Israel buys oil from Azerbaijan and Azerbaijan purchases military equipment from Israel.
Despite the Israeli-Azerbaijani relationship, Azerbaijan officials have denied that such an attack would ever be launched from Azerbaijani soil.
"The Republic of Azerbaijan, like always in the past, will never permit any country to take advantage of its land, or air, against the Islamic Republic of Iran, which we consider our brother and friend country," said Azerbaijan's defense minister during a visit to Tehran.

Nevertheless the Israeli-Azerbaijani cooperation allegedly caused so much concern in the White House that unnamed officials were given permission to leak the information on possible airstrikes on Iran from the South-Caucasus country. The intention of the Obama administration was to make the plans public to disrupt any secret agreements between the two governments that would leave the US in the dark.

These plans would also grant Israel much needed airfields for a strike on Iran .

In a study lead by Retired Air Force Col. Sam Gardiner, for a think-tank affiliated with the Swedish Ministry of Defense played out the possible scenarios of an Israeli lead attack on Iran.
"It's not weight that's a problem," said Gardiner in the AFP article.
The problem is the number "of weapons that are mounted on each aircraft," Gardiner added.
In other words, the lighter the payload the more distance it can travel; the heavier the payload the distance will suffer.
He reiterated restricting the distance travel will increase firepower and will boost the likelihood of an effective strike.
That's where Azerbaijan steps into the picture.
Bases in the country would be supposedly used for landing and refueling after the strike has been implemented.
Israel has received mix messages from Washington about their plans to strike Iran.
In early March, President Obama meet with Netanyahu at this year's American Israel Public Affairs Committee. During a speech at the convention Obama told AIPAC, "I have a policy to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon. I will take no options off the table, and I mean what I say," Obama added.
"There should not be a shred of doubt by now: when the chips are down, I have Israel's back."
Apart from his statements the Obama Administration has been rather reserved on their stance to support Israel if they were to attack and many speculate this year's election is a major factor.
"I think this leak today is part of the administration's campaign against an Israeli attack," former US diplomat John Bolton said Thursday on Fox News.
"It's just unprecedented to reveal this kind of information about one of your own allies," Bolton said.
According to The Christian Science Monitor, Tehran has questioned Azerbaijan's involvement in the assassinations of key Iranian nuclear scientists, since the individuals blamed for the attacks were arrested in Azerbaijan.
According to reports, Israeli officials have yet to comment on the allegations.
"We're watching what Iran does closely," one of the US intelligence sources was quoted as saying in the Foreign Policy article.
"But we're now watching what Israel is doing in Azerbaijan. And we're not happy about it," the source concluded.
http://rt.com/usa/news/israel-azerbaijan-iran-obama-897/



The Straits of Hormuz seem to be warming - due to Geoplolitical Games and Brinkmanship - Jan Klimkowski - 31-03-2012

Quote:"I think this leak today is part of the administration's campaign against an Israeli attack," former US diplomat John Bolton said Thursday on Fox News.
"It's just unprecedented to reveal this kind of information about one of your own allies," Bolton said.

Ooh look - a neocon warmonger claiming "it's a conspiracy!"


:poke: :horn:

The Straits of Hormuz seem to be warming - due to Geoplolitical Games and Brinkmanship - Magda Hassan - 01-04-2012

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[TD]FABRICATING A "SMOKING GUN" TO ATTACK IRAN? Israeli Spies Disguised as Iranian Soldiers on Mission Inside Iran


By Julie Lévesque

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[TD="colspan: 2, align: left"]Global Research, March 27, 2012
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URL of this article: www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=29981
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A report published in The Sunday Times on March 25 suggests that "Israel is using a permanent base in Iraqi Kurdistan to launch cross-border intelligence missions in an attempt to find smoking gun' evidence that Iran is building a nuclear warhead." (Israeli spies scour Iran in nuclear hunt, The Sunday Times, March 25, 2012)
Western sources told the Times Israel was monitoring "radioactivity and magnitude of explosives tests" and that "special forces used Black Hawk helicopters to carry commandos disguised as members of the Iranian military and using Iranian military vehicles". The sources believe "Iranians are trying to hide evidence of warhead tests in preparation for a possible IAEA visit". (Cited in Report: Israeli soldiers scour Iran for nukes, Ynet, March 25, 2012)
The number of Israeli intelligence missions at the Parchin military base in Iran has increased in the past few months, according to the article. During that period, Tehran has been negotiating with the IAEA which had requested to visit Parchin. According to Iran's permanent representative to the IAEA, Ali Asghar Soltanieh, both parties had agreed in early February that the visit would take place in March. (Gareth Porter, Details of Talks with IAEA Belie Charge Iran Refused Cooperation, IPS, March 21, 2012)
The IAEA requested to visit Parchin in late January and late February, after having agreed to a visit in March. The IAEA thus requested to visit the military complex exactly at the same time Israel was intensifying its secret operations to allegedly search for a "smoking gun".
A few years ago it has been suggested that Israel was the source of fake intelligence, a stolen laptop, related to Iran's alleged nuclear program. The New York Times reported in 2005 on what was presented as "the strongest evidence" Iran was building nuclear weapons:
American intelligence officials called the leaders of the international atomic inspection agency to the top of a skyscraper overlooking the Danube in Vienna and unveiled the contents of what they said was a stolen Iranian laptop computer.
They presented them as the strongest evidence yet that, despite Iran's insistence that its nuclear program is peaceful, the country is trying to develop a compact warhead to fit atop its Shahab missile, which can reach Israel and other countries in the Middle East. (William J. Broad and David E. Sanger Relying on Computer, U.S. Seeks to Prove Iran's Nuclear Aims - New York Times, November 13, 2005)
In 2010, an investigative report suggested that those documents were fake:
The warhead shown in the schematics had the familiar "dunce cap" shape of the original North Korean No Dong missile, which Iran had acquired in the mid-1990s [...]
The laptop documents had depicted the wrong re-entry vehicle being redesigned [...]
The origin of the laptop documents may never be proven conclusively, but the accumulated evidence points to Israel as the source. As early as 1995, the head of the Israel Defense Forces' military intelligence research and assessment division, Yaakov Amidror, tried unsuccessfully to persuade his American counterparts that Iran was planning to "go nuclear." By 2003-2004, Mossad's reporting on the Iranian nuclear program was viewed by high-ranking CIA officials as an effort to pressure the Bush administration into considering military action against Iran's nuclear sites, according to Israeli sources cited by a pro-Israeli news service." (Gareth Porter, Exclusive Report: Evidence of Iran Nuclear Weapons Program May Be Fraudulent, Global Research, November 18, 2010).
The fact that Israeli intelligence officers were on a secret mission in Parchin, dressed up as Iranians and driving Iranian military vehicles, while the IAEA was pressuring Tehran to visit that precise location, raises serious questions. The stated goal of those secret missions is the search for a smoking gun. The smoking gun allegations regarding Iraq's weapons of mass destruction have proven that such evidence can be fabricated and used to launch so-called pre-emptive wars.

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The Straits of Hormuz seem to be warming - due to Geoplolitical Games and Brinkmanship - Ed Jewett - 09-04-2012

Günter Grass's Israel poem provokes outrage

Germany's most celebrated writer's lyrical warning of a looming Israeli aggression against Iran triggers international row [Image: G-nter-Grass-008.jpg]Günter Grass's poem What Must Be Said was first published in the Süddeutsche Zeitung. Photograph: Graeme Robertson

During his long literary career, Günter Grass has been many things. Author, playwright, sculptor and, unquestionably, Germany's most famous living writer. There is the 1999 Nobel prize and Grass's broader postwar role as the country's moral conscience albeit a claim badly undermined in 2006 when it emerged that the teenage Grass had served in the Waffen SS. But at the ripe old age of 84, Grass has triggered a furious row with a poem criticising Israel.
Entitled What Must Be Said and published on Wednesday in the Süddeutsche Zeitung, the lyric warns of a looming Israeli aggression against Iran. It argues that Germany should no longer deliver nuclear submarines to Israel that might carry "all-destroying warheads".
Grass also takes aim at Germany's reluctance to offend Israel reproaching himself for "my silence" on the subject, and acknowledging that he will inevitably face accusations of antisemitism.
He muses: "Why do I only speak out now/Aged and with my last drop of ink:/Israel's nuclear power is endangering/Our already fragile world peace?" He supplies his own apocalyptic answer: it must be said because "tomorrow might be too late".
Grass also calls for "unhindered and permanent monitoring of Israel's nuclear facility and Iran's nuclear facility through an international entity". Ultimately, he suggests, this would help everybody in this "delusional" region, including the Germans or "us", as he puts it.
Hardly surprising, then, that Grass's controversial late lyric has provoked indignation. The Israeli prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, led the attack on Thursday, asserting: "Günter Grass's shameful moral equivalence between Israel and Iran ... says little about Israel and much about Mr Grass." Netanyahu described Iran as "a regime that denied theHolocaust and threatens to annihilate Israel". He added: "It is Iran, not Israel, that is a threat to the peace and security of the world."
Netanyahu's attack then became more personal: "For six decades, Mr Grass hid the fact that he had been a member of the Waffen SS.
"So for him to cast the one and only Jewish state as the greatest threat to world peace and to oppose giving Israel the means to defend itself is perhaps not surprising."
The Israeli embassy in Berlin took the format of Grass's poem and flung it back at him: "What must be said is that it is a European tradition to accuse the Jews before the Passover festival of ritual murder." It concluded that Grass's ill-judged broadside sprung from Germany's own guilty conscience "part of the German people's efforts to come to terms with the past".
German politicians from both left and right have traditionally been supportive of Israel, for obvious historical reasons. Several have criticised Grass, describing his work as "abominable", "irritating" and "over the top". The bestselling Bild, a paper better known for its topless models, complained of "confused poesie". And writing in Die Welt, the Jewish writer Henryk Border dubbed Grass "the prototype of the educated antisemite". He added, for good measure, that Grass was "completely nuts".
All this forced Grass to offer his own pained reply. In an interview with North German Radio, the author complained on Thursday that the tone of the criticism "didn't just concentrate on the contents of the poem" but amounted to a scurrilous campaign to say that his reputation "had been damaged for all time". He added: "The old cliches are used. And to a certain extent they are damaging."
Some commentators, however, offered a more convincing critique: that Grass wasn't antisemitic, but simply didn't know what he was talking about. True, the Nobel prizewinner describes Iran's leader Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as a "bigmouth", or "Maulheld". But otherwise, critics say, he offers a less than convincing analysis of the situation in the Middle East failing to acknowledge, for example, Iran's regular threats to wipe Israel out. Instead Grass raises the unlikely spectre of Israel "annihilating" the Iranian people using a German verb, auslöschen, which comes dangerously close to evoking the Holocaust.
"The poem is more interesting to Grassologists than to stragetic analysts," the Israeli historian Tom Segev, who has met and interviewed Grass, told the Guardian. Segev called the lyric "rather pathetic".
He said it was "idiotic" to describe the writer as an antisemite, but said Grass would be better served expending his last ink on a different creative project. "He's a great writer. He's 84. I hope he uses his last drops to write a good book." He added that the writer appeared to have "some inner psychological need to be accused wrongly", adding: "He's almost wishing people to say he's an antisemite."
The most interesting commentary, arguably, came from the Süddeutsche Zeiting, which published the poem German title Was gesagt werden muss in a supplement. Grass had been writing poems since 1955 but his late ones weren't really poems at all, Thomas Steinfeld observed, and instead resembled pleas, complaints, or angry letters to the editor. Of one lugubrious chunk he writes witheringly: "The only lyrical things here are the arbitary line breaks." Undoubtedly, the poem's portentous tone doesn't help the reader; an opinion page piece might have served Grass better.
Interestingly, Steinfeld suggests that the award of the Nobel prize for literature in 1999 may have contributed to Grass's latest political intervention. The prize transformed Grass from a national figure "Germany's preceptor" to an unashamedly global one "a custodian of world politics". He argues that Grass is the only winner who feels the urge to comment on global affairs. Gabriel García Márquez has not become a literary-political representative of South America, he notes, nor has JM Coetzee become the voice of South Africa, or Derek Walcott that of the Caribbean. Nor has Grass, it might be added, written a poem on Greece, a crisis nearer to Germany's doorstep and wallet.
Grass last attracted this much attention back in 2006, when he revealed in his autobiography, Peeling the Onion, that he had briefly served as a 17-year-old in the Waffen SS at the end of the second world war. The admission in itself wasn't remarkable: many other teenagers of his generation were forced to join the SS as the war entered its chaotic final phase. What irritated was the fact that Grass had taken so long to admit this an inexplicable delay for someone who blamed others for their Nazi pasts and was seen to personify national atonement and self-criticism.
For some, this detail means that Grass forfeited the right to comment on the Jewish state. Ephraim Zuroff, director of the Nazi-hunting Simon Wisenthal Centre, described him as "totally compromised" and added: "The tin drum he is banging is not the one of moral conscience but of deep-seated prejudice against the Jewish people." This is one view.
In fact Grass's critical opinions on Israel have surfaced before. In an interview with Spiegel Online in 2001, he described the "appropriation" of Palestinian territory by Israeli settlers as a "criminal activity", adding: "That not only needs to be stopped it also needs to be reversed."
It is certainly true that Germany's relationship with Israel is a problematic one, with the Holocaust taught in schools and the issue of historical guilt never far beneath the surface.
According to Constanze Stelzenmuller, senior transatlantic fellow at the German Marshall Fund of the United States, it is hardly surprising that Germany has a moral obligation to the state of Israel, given the country's past. "The German government has been very clear about this," she said. Berlin has already supplied it with three Dolphin submarines, with two more being built, and a sixth in the pipeline.
But, Stelzenmuller says, Berlin has not been inhibited from criticising Israel, especially on the issue of Israeli settlements, last mentioned by Germany's defence minister two weeks ago. Of Grass, she said: "There's always been an anti-Zionist tendency in the European left, including in the German left. It isn't pretty. Many modern thinkers on the centre-left deplore this."
Amid the criticism, a few voices came forward to defend Grass the author, after all, of The Tin Drum, the great German novel of the second world war and the rise of Nazism. "It's got to be possible to speak openly without being denounced as an enemy of Israel," said Klaus Staeck, the president of the Berlin academy of art. He called the "reflexive condemnation" of Grass as an antisemite inappropriate, and insisted that Grass was merely expressing his concern about developments in the Middle East. "A lot of people share this worry," Staeck added.
Predictably, Iran warmly welcomed Grass's poem. Press TV, Iran's state-owned English-language satellite channel, hailed it as a literary sensation. "Never before in Germany's postwar history has a prominent intellectual attacked Israel in such a courageous way," it said. "Metaphorically speaking, the poet has launched a deadly lyrical strike against Israel."
The Press TV report also observed: "Israel is the only possessor of nuclear weapons in the Middle East and it has never allowed inspections of its nuclear facilities nor has it joined the Non-Proliferation Treaty based on its policy of nuclear ambiguity."
What Must Be Said by Günter Grass

But why have I kept silent till now?
Because I thought my own origins,
Tarnished by a stain that can never be removed,
meant I could not expect Israel, a land
to which I am, and always will be, attached,
to accept this open declaration of the truth.
Why only now, grown old,
and with what ink remains, do I say:
Israel's atomic power endangers
an already fragile world peace?
Because what must be said
may be too late tomorrow;
and because burdened enough as Germans
we may be providing material for a crime
that is foreseeable, so that our complicity
wil not be expunged by any
of the usual excuses.
And granted: I've broken my silence
because I'm sick of the West's hypocrisy;
and I hope too that many may be freed
from their silence, may demand
that those responsible for the open danger we face renounce the use of force,
may insist that the governments of
both Iran and Israel allow an international authority
free and open inspection of
the nuclear potential and capability of both.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2012/apr/05/gunter-grass-israel-poem-iran

****

Another translation:

[TABLE="width: 861"]
[TR]
[TD]What Must Be Said
By Günter Grass

Why do I keep silent,
keep silent too long,
What is obvious and was practiced in strategic exercises
at the end of which our survival
Will be a mere footnote in history.

It is the stated alleged right to First Strike
Propped up by a Bigmouth
And steered through synthetically organized MSM applause
Which could eradicate the Iranian people
Because it is claimed that in their territory
There might be a nuclear weapon.

But why do I forbid myself
To name the other country by name
In which - albeit secretly for years -
A growing nuclear potential is available
But extrajudicially, as no probe is possible?

The general concealment of this very fact
To which my silence has been subordinated
Feels like a lie which incriminates me
And force which must be punished
Should it be disregarded.
The verdict of "anti-semitism" should be commonly known.

But now, since my country
Guilty of original sin without comparison
Time and time again stopped and made to answer for it
Again, even if strictly-business
With soothing words declared as reparations for our historic crimes
Another submarine is sent to Israel
Whose specialty it is
To steer all-destroying warheads
To a place where nuclear weapons are not proven at all
With fear-mongering equaling evidence thereof
I say
what must be said.

Why have I been silent this long?
Because my own ethnic background
Is soiled by history far beyond repair
I am therefore prohibited to speak this fact which must not be spoken
About the land of Israel with which I am connected
To spare them from the truth.

Why do I say it not
That I am aged and with the last of my ink:
The nuclear country of Israel endangers
The already brittle world peace?
Because it must be said
What it may be too late to say tomorrow
Because we as Germans who are burdened enough by history
Could become complicit to a crime
It is foreseeable that our complicity in this
Could not be redeemed by any of our usual excuses.

And I admit: I will be silent no more
Because I tire of the two-faced lies of the west,
And in hopes that many will free themselves from this silence
The cause of the recognizable danger must be called upon to desist from force
And we must simultaneously insist that permanent control
Of the Israeli nuclear potential along with the Iranian nuclear sites
Must be allowed by the governments of both countries.

Only this way, the Israelis and Palestinians,
And beyond that, all peoples
Who live in this region ruled by insanity
In close quarters as enemies
And last but not least to
Help us all.

****

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8kFs_-crK30&feature=player_embedded

Uploaded by Snordelhans on Apr 7, 2012
What must be said

Why have I been silent, silent for so long?,
Our generals have gamed it out,
Confident the west will survive.
We people have not even been considered.

What is this right to "preventive war"?
A war that could erase the Iranian people.
Dominated by it's neighbor, pulsing with righteousness
Smug in the fact that it is they, not Iran,
Who have the Bomb.

Why have I so far avoided to identify Israel by it's name?,
Israel and it's ever increasing nuclear arsenal,
Beyond reproach, Uncontrolled, uninspected.

We all know these things
Yet we all remain silent, fearful of being labeled:
anti-Semitic
hateful
worse

Considering Germany's past these labels stick
So we call is "business", "reparation" take your pick,
As we deliver yet another submarine.
As we provide to Israel the means to deliver annihilation.
I say what must be said.

Why did I stay silent until now?
Because I'm German, of course.
I'm tainted by a stain I cannot wash out
I'm silent because I want so badly to make it right
To put my sins in the past and leave them silently there.

Why did I wait to say it until now?
And write these words with the last of my ink?
Declaring that Israel threatens world peace?
Because it is true and it must be said,
Tomorrow will be too late.

We Germans now carry a new burden of sin on our shoulders
Through the weapons we have sold
We are helping to carry out this foreseeable tragedy
No excuse will remove our stain of complicity.

It must be said. I won't be silent
I've had enough of the hypocrisy;
Please shed the silence with me,
The consequences are all too predictable.
It's time to demand free and permanent control
of BOTH Israel's nuclear arsenal
AND Iran's nuclear facilities
enforced with international supervision.

It's the only way, in a land convulsed with insanity,
Israelis, Palestinians, everybody, will survive.
And we too, will survive.





[/TD]
[/TR]
[/TABLE]

The Straits of Hormuz seem to be warming - due to Geoplolitical Games and Brinkmanship - Ed Jewett - 10-04-2012

FRIDAY, APRIL 06, 2012

U.S. TRAINS IRANIAN TERRORISTS


[Image: hersh-iran.jpg]
Our Men in Iran?

The New Yorker
By Seymour M. Hersh

From the air, the terrain of the Department of Energy's Nevada National Security Site, with its arid high plains and remote mountain peaks, has the look of northwest Iran. The site, some sixty-five miles northwest of Las Vegas, was once used for nuclear testing, and now includes a counterintelligence training facility and a private airport capable of handling Boeing 737 aircraft. It's a restricted area, and inhospitablein certain sections, the curious are warned that the site's security personnel are authorized to use deadly force, if necessary, against intruders.

It was here that the Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) conducted training, beginning in 2005, for members of the Mujahideen-e-Khalq, a dissident Iranian opposition group known in the West as the M.E.K. The M.E.K. had its beginnings as a Marxist-Islamist student-led group and, in the nineteen-seventies, it was linked to the assassination of six American citizens. It was initially part of the broad-based revolution that led to the 1979 overthrow of the Shah of Iran. But, within a few years, the group was waging a bloody internal war with the ruling clerics, and, in 1997, it was listed as a foreign terrorist organization by the State Department. In 2002, the M.E.K. earned some international credibility by publicly revealingaccuratelythat Iran had begun enriching uranium at a secret underground location. Mohamed ElBaradei, who at the time was the director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, the United Nations' nuclear monitoring agency, told me later that he had been informed that the information was supplied by the Mossad. The M.E.K.'s ties with Western intelligence deepened after the fall of the Iraqi regime in 2003, and JSOC began operating inside Iran in an effort to substantiate the Bush Administration's fears that Iran was building the bomb at one or more secret underground locations. Funds were covertly passed to a number of dissident organizations, for intelligence collection and, ultimately, for anti-regime terrorist activities. Directly, or indirectly, the M.E.K. ended up with resources like arms and intelligence. Some American-supported covert operations continue in Iran today, according to past and present intelligence officials and military consultants.

Read full story here

posted by Bruce K. Gagnon | 12:12 PM | 0 comments

The Straits of Hormuz seem to be warming - due to Geoplolitical Games and Brinkmanship - Ed Jewett - 10-04-2012

SUNDAY, APRIL 8, 2012

CONFIRMED: Terrorist Organization Trained on US Soil by US Military



Series of mainstream admissions of US & Israeli state-sponsored terrorism.
by Tony Cartalucci

April 8, 2012 - Ynetnews reported in their article, "US operated deep in Iran, trained assassins," that, "the New Yorker reported over the weekend that the US trained members of the Iranian opposition group Mujahideen-e-Khalq. According to previous reports, Israel has been cooperating with the group, which allegedly carried out hits on Iranian nuclear scientists." Ynetnews also reported that US officials doubt Iran is or will be developing nuclear weapons, as has been claimed to justify years of sanctions, covert subversion, terrorism, and unprovoked attacks by the West against Iran.

[Image: index.php?q=aHR0cDovL3RoZWNhYmxlLmZvcmVp...pwZw%3D%3D]

Image: Rudy Giuliani consorting with MEK's political wing leader Maryam Rajavi in Paris, France. Giuliani is best known for his role playing a strong supporter for the "War on Terror" and his incessant fear mongering verses "Islamic extremists." In real life, he coddles listed terrorist organizations in direct violation of US law and even lobbies for them.
....

It appears that not only Israel, but the US in tandem with Mossad have been training, arming, financing, harboring, and directing the US State Department-listed foreign terror organization (#29) Mujahideen-e-Khalq (MEK) since as early as 2005 where MEK terrorists were brought to Las Vegas, Nevada to train. The April 2012 New Yorker article, "Our Men in Iran?" by Seymour Hersh, elaborates in detail how the Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) trained a listed terrorist organization on US soil before sending them back to Iran with weapons and money to carry out "anti-regime terrorist activities." MEK is suspected to be behind a rash of assassinations targeting Iranian scientists, as well as handling patsies in a string of international bombings US and Israeli officials attempted to pin on Iran.

And while MEK's representatives, including a growing lobby in Washington D.C. consisting of some of the most disingenuous supporters of the "War on Terror," including Rudy Giuliani, former US Marine Commandant General James Jones, Tom Ridge, and Lee Hamilton, claim MEK has renounced "terror," the entire purpose of training them, funding them, and getting them removed from the US State Department "Foreign Terrorist Organization" list is to allow them to carry out a wider campaign of violence against the Iranian people with even greater US support. In essence - to support terror on an unprecedented scale.

This is stated in US policy think-tank Brookings Institution's "Which Path to Persia?" report published in 2009 which stated (emphasis added):

"Perhaps the most prominent (and certainly the most controversial) opposition group that has attracted attention as a potential U.S. proxy is the NCRI (National Council of Resistance of Iran), the political movement established by the MEK (Mujahedin-e Khalq). Critics believe the group to be undemocratic and unpopular, and indeed anti-American.

In contrast, the group's champions contend that the movement's long-standing opposition to the Iranian regime and record of successful attacks on and intelligence-gathering operations against the regime make it worthy of U.S. support. They also argue that the group is no longer anti-American and question the merit of earlier accusations. Raymond Tanter, one of the group's supporters in the United States, contends that the MEK and the NCRI are allies for regime change in Tehran and also act as a useful proxy for gathering intelligence. The MEK's greatest intelligence coup was the provision of intelligence in 2002 that led to the discovery of a secret site in Iran for enriching uranium.Despite its defenders' claims, the MEK remains on the U.S. government list of foreign terrorist organizations. In the 1970s, the group killed three U.S. officers and three civilian contractors in Iran. During the 1979-1980 hostage crisis, the group praised the decision to take America hostages and Elaine Sciolino reported that while group leaders publicly condemned the 9/11 attacks, within the group celebrations were widespread.

Undeniably, the group has conducted terrorist attacksoften excused by the MEK's advocates because they are directed against the Iranian government. For example, in 1981, the group bombed the headquarters of the Islamic Republic Party, which was then the clerical leadership's main political organization, killing an estimated 70 senior officials. More recently, the group has claimed credit for over a dozen mortar attacks, assassinations, and other assaults on Iranian civilian and military targets between 1998 and 2001. At the very least, to work more closely with the group (at least in an overt manner), Washington would need to remove it from the list of foreign terrorist organizations."

- page 117-118 of "Which Path to Persia?" Brookings Institution, 2009
Clearly the United States, its policy makers, and "elected representatives" are well aware that MEK was, and still is a terrorist organization, targeting not only military and political targets in Iran, but civilian targets as well. The indefensible excuse being used now, is that MEK's terrorist activities are only being directed at the people of Iran, not the West, therefore it is somehow justifiable.


[Image: BrookingsWhichPathtoPersia2010Cover.jpg]
Brookings Institution's 2009 Which Path to Persia? .pdf

....

MEK has carried out decades of brutal terrorist attacks, assassinations, and espionage against the Iranian government and its people, as well as targeting Americans including the attempted kidnapping of US Ambassador Douglas MacArthur II, the attempted assassination of USAF Brigadier General Harold Price, the successful assassination of Lieutenant Colonel Louis Lee Hawkins, the double assassinations of Colonel Paul Shaffer and Lieutenant Colonel Jack Turner, and the successful ambush and killing of American Rockwell International employees William Cottrell, Donald Smith, and Robert Krongard.

Admissions to the deaths of the Rockwell International employees can be found within a report written by former US State Department and Department of Defense official Lincoln Bloomfield Jr. on behalf of the lobbying firm Akin Gump in an attempt to dismiss concerns over MEK's violent past and how it connects to its current campaign of armed terror - a true testament to the depths of depravity from which Washington and London lobbyists operate.

MEK today is described by Council on Foreign Relations Senior Fellow Ray Takeyh (who was attempting to defend MEK) as a "cult-like organization" with "totalitarian tendencies." While Takeyh fails to expand on what he meant by "cult-like" and "totalitarian," an interview with US State Department-run Radio Free Europe-Radio Liberty reported that a MEK Camp Ashraf escapee claimed the terrorist organization bans marriage, using radios, the Internet, and holds many members against their will with the threat of death if ever they are caught attempting to escape.

With a similar story being uncovered behind Al Qaeda's Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG) which has been for decades backed, armed, trained, and directed by the CIA and MI6 under varying banners up to and including NATO's recent 2011 Libyan intervention - a pattern of using "terrorists" as both a convenient casus belli and as an effective proxy military force is becoming apparent. With LIFG commander Abdul Hakim Belhaj turning up in Syria carrying out a NATO-backed campaign to topple President Bashar al-Assad, it appears terrorist mercenaries in the employ of the West are at work there as well. Tales of "pro-democracy" "freedom fighters" are spun for anyone ignorant enough to believe them, while in reality the violence there is nothing more than the symptoms of neo-imperial machinations.

The War on Terror is a Fraud

The "War on Terror" is a fraud. For 10 years the West, and in particular America's armed forces have been lied to, misled, and bled dry literally while the American tax payers have been bled dry financially. Americans have resigned their personal freedoms to the "Patriot Act" and the increasingly perverse and invasive Transportation Security Administration (TSA). The corporate-financier think-tanks, like the Brookings Institution, who conspire to train, arm, and fund terrorist organizations we supposedly sent thousands of our sons to die fighting, and who's "omnipresent danger" we have surrendered our liberties to help combat, do so not for the greater good of the American people, but for the greater good of the corporate-financier sponsors that fund their work.


[Image: BrookingsSponsors_2.jpg]
Image: Some of the corporate sponsors behind the Brookings Institution, who have openly conspired to fund, train, and arm terrorist organizations to carry out regime change in Iran. America is bled to death literally and financially to fight wars of conquest justified by claiming armies of omnipresent terrorists threaten the West's way of life, when this very army of terrorists is a creation of the corporate-financier oligarchs in Wall Street and London in the first place. (click image to enlarge)
....

For it is the corporate-financier oligarchs who have made trillions fighting this unending war, who have had barriers such as individual liberty and state sovereignty torn down in their quest for more wealth and power, and who have overturned nation after nation only then to be rolled into their growing Wall Street-London collective. This is modern global empire - its moral imperative one entirely contrived to hide a glaring reality so outrageous even when it is admitted amongst the mainstream press, the general public has no idea, apparently, what to make of it.

It would be suggested, however, that the public identify these corporations, boycott them completely, and replace them with a new, local paradigm with a moral imperative derived from their own personal convictions - not ideology sold to them on the corporate-sponsored evening news.

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Labels: iran, middle east, war on terror