Coming Soon - War with Iran?

[DrVolin]

I don't know. Stennis is in the Arabian Sea and George HW is now in the Med. Big E has been out in either the Arabian Sea or the Med since July, so nearing the end of deployment. I can't find an exact current location. Everyone else is pretty much at home, stateside or Yokosuka. That's actually an unusually low number of CVs out. Stennis and George HW did put on this little show last week when they sailed through Hormuz side by side. But I wouldn't call the current CV deployments an obvious clue to an impending attack. More like preparation for evac and 'humanitarian' intervention. Maybe someone else is slated to do the dirty work. Like the Air Force. Or maybe even the subs. Either that or all the other carriers are currently getting ready to come out in force for something while these three show the flag to divert attention.

[MinM]

Iran says it has arrested 12 CIA "spies", for allegedly trying to cripple Iran's nuclear, military and security areas.

Report: Suspected CIA 'spies' captured in Iran
By the CNN Wire Staff
updated 7:23 AM EST, Thu November 24, 2011

(CNN) -- An Iranian lawmaker said Thursday that officials in Iran and Lebanon have arrested 12 CIA "spies" who intended to a "deal a strong blow" to Iran, state media reported.

Parliamentarian Parviz Sorouri said the alleged spies were trying to cripple Iran in nuclear, military and security areas, said Iran's official IRNA news agency.

The report did not say when the suspects were arrested or add details about the arrests.

Earlier this week, a U.S. official confirmed to CNN that informants that worked with the CIA had been captured in Lebanon. The official would not say how many informants were arrested.

One of the means used by Hezbollah counterterrorism operatives to identify the informants was to trace their cell phone calls, the official said.

The official added, "look who helps them," a reference to Iran, with which Hezbollah shares tactics and information.

The United States considers Hezbollah, which has close ties to Iran and Syria, to be a terrorist organization.

CNN's Mitra Mobasherat contributed to this report

http://www.cnn.com/2011/11/24/world/mea ... index.html

[DrVolin]

Right, the old humanitarian corridor ploy. Now we know why the CV showed up.

http://news.yahoo.com/france-calls-huma ... 05275.html

[seemslikeadream]

Ex-Ambassador Exposes Government Cover-Up
Is Britain Plotting With Israel to Attack Iran?
by JONATHAN COOK

Last February Britain’s then defense minister Liam Fox attended a dinner in Tel Aviv with a group described as senior Israelis. Alongside him sat Adam Werritty, a lobbyist whose “improper relations” with the minister would lead eight months later to Fox’s hurried resignation.

According to several reports in the British media the Israelis in attendance at the dinner were representatives of the Mossad, Israel’s spy agency, while Fox and Werritty were accompanied by Matthew Gould, Britain’s ambassador to Israel. A former British diplomat has now claimed that the topic of discussion that evening was a secret plot to attack Iran.

The official inquiry castigating the UK’s former defence secretary for what has come to be known as a “cash-for-access” scandal appears to have only scratched the surface of what Fox and accomplice Adam Werritty may have been up to when they met for dinner in Tel Aviv.

Little was made of the dinner in the 10-page inquiry report published last month by Gus O’Donnell, the cabinet’s top civil servant.

Instead O’Donnell concentrated on other aspects of Werritty’s behaviour: the 33-year-old friend of Fox’s had presented himself as the minister’s official adviser and jetted around the world with him arranging meetings with businessmen.

The former minister’s allies, seeking to dismiss the gravity of the case against him, have described Werritty as a harmless dreamer. Following his resignation, Fox himself claimed O’Donnell’s report had exonerated him of putting national security at risk.

However, a spate of new concerns raised in the wake of the inquiry challenge both of these assumptions. These include questions about the transparency of the O’Donnell investigation, the extent of Fox and Werritty’s ties to Israel and the unexplained role of Gould.

Craig Murray, Britain’s former ambassador to Uzbekistan until 2004, when he turned whistle blower on British and US collusion on torture, said senior British government officials were profoundly disturbed by the O’Donnell inquiry, seeing it as a “white wash.”

Murray himself accused O’Donnell of being “at the most charitable interpretation, economical with the truth.”

Two well-placed contacts alerted Murray to Gould’s central – though largely ignored – role in the Fox-Werritty relationship, he said.

Murray has pieced together evidence that Fox, Werritty and Gould met on at least six occasions over the past two years or so, despite the O’Donnell inquiry claiming they had met only twice. Gould is the only ambassador Fox and Werritty are known to have met together.

In an inexplicable break with British diplomatic and governmental protocol, officials were not present at a single one of the six meetings between the three men. No record was taken of any of the discussions.

Murray, who first made public his concerns on his personal blog, said a source familiar with the O’Donnell inquiry told him the parameters of the investigation were designed to divert attention away from the more damaging aspects of Fox and Werritty’s behaviour.

Subsequently, the foreign office has refused to respond to questions, including from an MP, about the Tel Aviv dinner. Officials will not say who the Israelis were, what was discussed or even who paid for the evening, though under Whitehall rules all hospitality should be declared.

Also unexplained is why Fox rejected requests by his own staff to attend the dinner, and why Werritty was privy to such a high-level meeting when he had no security clearance.

Nonetheless, O’Donnell appeared inadvertently to confirm that Mossad representatives were present at the dinner during questioning from an MP at a meeting of the House of Commons’ Public Administration Committee this week.

Responding to a question about the dinner from opposition MP Paul Flynn, O’Donnell said: “The important point here was that, when the Secretary of State [Fox] had that meeting, he had an official with him—namely, in this case, the ambassador [Gould]. That is very important, and I should stress that I would expect our ambassador in Israel to have contact with Mossad. That will be part of his job.”

The real concern among government officials, Murray said, is that Fox, Werritty and Gould were conspiring in a “rogue” foreign policy – opposed to the British government’s stated aims – that was authored by Mossad and Israel’s neoconservative allies in Washington.

This suspicion was partially confirmed by a report in the Guardian last month, as O’Donnell was carrying out his investigation. It cited unnamed government officials saying they were worried that Fox and Werritty had been pursuing what was termed an “alternative” government policy.

Murray said the Tel Aviv dinner was especially significant. His contact with access to O’Donnell’s investigations had told him that the discussion that night focused on ways to ensure Britain assisted in creating favourable diplomatic conditions for an attack on Iran.

Israel is widely believed to favor a military strike on Iran, in an attempt to set back its nuclear program. Israel claims Tehran is trying to develop a nuclear weapon under cover of a civilian nuclear energy project.

Israel has its own large but undeclared nuclear arsenal and is known to be fearful of losing its nuclear monopoly in the region.

Britain, like many in the international community, including the US government, officially favors imposing sanctions on Iran to halt its nuclear ambitions.

The episode of the Tel Aviv dinner, Murray said, raises “vital concerns about a secret agenda for war at the core of government, comparable to [former British prime minister Tony] Blair’s determination to drive through a war on Iraq.”

The Guardian revealed this month that the defense ministry under Fox had drawn up detailed plans for British assistance in the event of a US military strike on Iran, including allowing the Americans to use Diego Garcia, a British territory in the Indian ocean, as a base from which to launch an attack.

The O’Donnell inquiry has done little to allay many officials’ concerns about the series of strange meetings involving Fox, Werritty and Gould.

David Cameron, the British prime minister, has so far refused opposition demands to hold a full public inquiry into Fox and Werritty’s relationship. And the three men at the centre of the saga have refused to discuss the nature of their ties.

This month revelations surfaced that Werritty had had dealings with other government ministers.

“It is deeply inadequate of the prime minister to continue to refuse to probe this issue further,” said shadow defense spokesman Kevan Jones, in response to the new information.

The British media have cautiously raised the issue of apparent Israeli links to Fox and Werritty.

The Daily Telegraph reported that the pair secretly met the head of the Mossad – possibly at the Tel Aviv dinner, though the paper has not specified where or when the meeting took place.

Last month the Independent on Sunday claimed that Werritty had close ties to the Mossad as well as to “US-backed neocons” plotting to overthrow the Iranian regime. The Mossad were reported to have assumed Werritty was Fox’s “chief of staff.”

In addition, the O’Donnell report revealed that Werritty’s many trips overseas alongside Fox had been funded by at least six donors, three of whom were leading members of the pro-Israel lobby in Britain.

The donations were made to two organisations, Atlantic Bridge and Pargav, that Werritty helped to establish. Werritty apparently used the organizations as a way to gain access to Conservative government ministers, including three in the defense ministry.

The advisory board of Atlantic Bridge, which Werritty founded with Fox, included William Hague, the current foreign minister, Michael Gove, the education minister, and George Osborne, the Chancellor of the Exchequer.

Despite Werritty’s apparently well-established connections to the ruling Conservative party, the media coverage has implied at most that he was a lone “rogue operator,” hoping to use his contacts with Fox and other ministers to manipulate British government policy.

Murray, however, raises the more troubling question of whether Werritty was actually given access, through Fox and Gould, to the heart of the British government. Were all three secretly trying to pursue a policy on Iran favored by Israel and its ideological allies in the US?

The answer, according to Murray, may lie in a series of meetings between the three that have slowly come to light since O’Donnell published his findings.

According to the 2,700-word report, Werritty joined Fox on 18 of his official trips overseas, and the pair met another 22 times at the defense ministry, with almost none of their discussions recorded by officials. The Guardian has also reported that Fox’s staff repeatedly warned him off his relationship with Werritty but were overruled.

Despite the serious concerns raised about Werritty by defense ministry staff, Gould, one of the country’s most senior diplomats, appears nonetheless to have cultivated a close relationship with Werritty as well as Fox.

According to Murray’s sources, Gould and Werritty “had been meeting and communicating for years.” The foreign office has refused to answer questions about whether the two had any contacts.

When Murray sent an email request late at night this week for “all communications” between Gould and Werritty, he received a response from the foreign office in less than 90 minutes stating that providing an answer was “likely to exceed the cost limit”.

As well as noting that the answer should have been straightforward unless Gould and Werritty had had a protracted correspondence, Murray wrote on his blog: “The Freedom of Information team in the FCO is not a 24 hour unit. Plainly not only are they hiding the Gould/Werritty correspondence, they are primed and on alert for this cover-up operation.”

O’Donnell’s report mentions a second meeting between the three men, in September 2010. On that occasion, Gould met Fox in what a foreign office spokesman has described as a “pre-posting briefing call” – a sort of high-level induction for ambassadors to acquaint themselves with their new posting.

Werritty was also present, according to O’Donnell, “as an individual with some experience in…the security situation in the Middle East.” His participation at the meeting was “not appropriate,” O’Donnell concluded.

However, Murray said such briefings would never be conducted at ministerial level, and certainly not by the defense minister himself.

He added that a senior official in the defense ministry had alerted him to two other peculiar aspects of the meeting: no officials were present to take notes, as would be expected; and their conversation took place in the ministry’s dining room, not in Fox’s office.

“As someone who worked for many years as a diplomat, I know how these things should work,” Murray said. “So much of this affair simply smells wrong.”

Murray’s queries to the foreign office about this meeting have gone unanswered but have revealed other unexpected details not included in the O’Donnell report.

In a statement in late October, after the report’s publication, a foreign office spokesman said Gould had met Fox and Werritty earlier than previously known – before Gould was appointed ambassador to Israel and when Fox was in opposition as shadow defense minister.

The foreign office has refused to answer questions about this meeting too – including when it occurred and why – or to respond to a parliamentary question on the matter tabled by MP Jeremy Corbyn. All that is known is that it must have taken place before May 2010, when Fox was appointed defense minister.

In replying to Corbyn’s questions, William Hague, the foreign minister, acknowledged yet another meeting between Fox, Werritty and Gould – at a private social engagement in the summer of 2010.

Again, the foreign office has refused to answer further questions, including one from Corbyn about who else attended the social engagement.

The trio were also together shortly before the Tel Aviv dinner, when Fox made a speech at the hawkish Herzliya security conference in a session on the strategic threat posed by Iran.

And a sixth meeting has come to light. Fox and Gould were photographed together at a “We believe in Israel” conference in London in May 2011. Werritty was again present.

“That furtive meeting between Fox, Werritty and Gould in the MOD dining room [in September 2010], deliberately held away from Fox’s office where it should have taken place, and away from the MOD officials who should have been there, now looks less like briefing and more like plotting,” Murray wrote on his blog about the Ministry of Defense meeting.

Murray said he believed more meetings will surface. During questioning at the Commons’ Public Administration Committee this week, O’Donnell made two references to “meetings” between Gould and Fox before the general election and Fox’s appointment to the post of defence secretary.

Until now, only one such meeting had been admitted by the foreign office.

Murray noted: “A senior British diplomat cannot just hold a series of meetings with the opposition shadow Defence Secretary and a paid zionist lobbyist. What on earth was happening?”

Both Werritty and Gould are considered to have an expertise on Iran.

Gould was the deputy head of mission at the British embassy in Iran from 2003 to 2005, a role in which he was responsible for coordinating on US policy towards Iran. Next he was moved to the British embassy in Washington at a time when the neoconservatives still held sway in the White House.

Werritty, meanwhile, has travelled frequently to Iran where he has teamed up with opposition groups seeking the overthrow of the Iranian regime. On his return from one trip to Iran he was called in by Britain’s MI6 foreign intelligence service for a debriefing, according to the Independent on Sunday.

Werritty also arranged for Fox to travel with him to Iran in summer 2007, when Fox was shadow defense minister. And he organised a meeting in May 2009 at the British parliament between Fox and an Iranian lobbyist with links to the current regime in Tehran.

The murky dealings between Fox, Werritty and Gould, and the government’s refusal to clarify what took place between them, is evidence, said Murray, that a serious matter is being hidden. His fear, and that of his contacts inside the senior civil service, is that “a neo-con cell of senior [British] ministers and officials” were secretly setting policy in coordination with Israel and the US.

Gould’s unexamined role is of particular concern, as he is still in place in his post in Israel.

Murray has noted that, in appointing Gould, a British Jew, to the ambassadorship in Israel in September last year, the foreign office broke with long-standing policy. No Jewish diplomat has held the post before because of concerns that it might lead to a conflict of interest, or at the very least create the impression of dual loyalty. Similar restrictions have been in place to avoid Catholics holding the post of ambassador to the Vatican.

Given these traditional concerns, Gould was a strange choice. He is a self-declared Zionist who has cultivated an image that led the Forward, the most prominent Jewish newspaper in the US, to describe him recently as “not just an ambassador who’s Jewish, but a Jewish ambassador.”

[eyeno]

Iranian lawmaker says 12 CIA agents working with Mossad arrested
Parviz Sorouri
Madison Ruppert, Contributing Writer
Activist Post

According to the Iranian state news agency IRNA, Parviz Sorouri reports that Iran has arrested 12 agents of the United States Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) that were operating in concert with the Israeli Mossad.

Sorouri, who is a member of the influential parliamentary committee on foreign policy and national security, said that the agents were also coordinating their efforts with other regional agencies and were targeting the country’s military and nuclear program.

He did not provide the nationality of the alleged agents or the location where they were found and arrested, and the CIA has declined to comment on the matter.

“The U.S. and Zionist regime’s espionage apparatuses were trying to damage Iran both from inside and outside with a heavy blow, using regional intelligence services,” Sorouri said.

Sorouri added that, “Fortunately, with swift reaction by the Iranian intelligence department, the actions failed to bear fruit.”

Although, there has been heavy speculation that the Mossad and likely the CIA are already carrying out covert operations in Iran, with considerable success.


Several anonymous sources cited by many news agencies around the world claimed that the recent “accidental” explosions in Iran were, in fact, the work of foreign intelligence agencies.

This is not the first time that Iran has made a public announcement saying that they have captured foreign intelligence agents, although as CBS News correctly points out, “often no further information is released.”

This announcement from Iran comes on the heels of Hezbollah announcing that they had “vanquished” the CIA and Mossad’s attempts to infiltrate and bring down the group.

A member of Hezbollah and the Lebanese Parliament, Hassan Fadlallah, told reporters, “Our security… has exposed several American and Israeli plots on Lebanon.”

“We call on the Lebanese government to take immediate action… and raise the issue with the United Nations and embassies, so that the whole world is aware of what the U.S. embassy in Lebanon is doing,” Fadlallah said.

He said that they had exposed CIA operatives that had successfully infiltrated Hezbollah’s ranks and just days earlier Hezbollah reported that they had uncovered CIA assets that were operating in the group.

In June, the chief of Hezbollah Hassan Nasrallah admitted for the first time since the founding in the 80s that the group had been infiltrated.

Nasrallah said that they had caught at least two people who were working for the CIA within Hezbollah’s ranks and unsurprisingly the U.S. Embassy officially denied the claim.

However, The New York Times points out that a recent article by the Associated Press cited anonymous American officials who said that Nasrallah’s claims were accurate and that those captures had led the group to finding other informants.

It would be quite naïve to actually believe that the American and Israeli intelligence agencies are not operating inside these groups in any and every way they can.

In fact, this would be wholly ignorant and would require setting aside historical precedent and the countless reports coming from these countries not to mention simple logic.

Indeed the British Guardian writes that former U.S. officials told Reuters that the individuals arrested by Hezbollah were indeed working for the CIA.

Furthermore, the officials claimed that the agents were “believed to be local recruits” from Lebanon, rather than U.S. citizens who were brought into the country by the CIA.

The CIA’s comment on the most recent Iranian allegations are somewhat suspicious, as they did not outright deny that the CIA was conducting operations in Iran or that the 12 individuals were CIA agents.

Instead, using the typical politicized and highly ambiguous rhetoric, the CIA said, “it does not, as a rule discuss allegations of operational activities.”

Earlier this month Iran claimed that they had “100 unbeatable documents” that proved that the United States were directing and funding terrorist operations in Iran and throughout the region, which is far from an absurd allegation.

The unfortunate aspect is that they have only thus far sent the documents to the United Nations and not the public or even media outlets.

“By releasing these documents, we will dishonor the US and those who claim to be the advocates of human rights and campaign against terrorism among the world public opinion,” Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said at the time.

Iran must understand that the United Nations is a cancerous and highly corrupt body that has no interest in justice and would under no circumstances actually go after the United States.

I find it quite strange that the Iranian government, if indeed they are in possession of such iron-clad evidence, wouldn’t just release it publicly so the world could know the truth of the West’s “war on terror.”

Madison Ruppert is the Editor and Owner-Operator of the alternative news and analysis database End The Lie and has no affiliation with any NGO, political party, economic school, or other organization/cause. If you have questions, comments, or corrections feel free to contact him at admin@EndtheLie.com

http://www.activistpost.com/2011/11/ira ... gents.html

[American Dream]

http://antifascist-calling.blogspot.com ... wn-to.html

FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 25, 2011

Target Iran: Washington's Countdown to War



The Iranian people know what it means to earn the enmity of the global godfather.

As William Blum documented in Killing Hope: U.S. Military and CIA Interventions Since World War II, 1953's CIA-organized coup against Iranian Prime Minister Mohammed Mossadegh, guilty of the "crime" of nationalizing the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company, may have "saved" Iran from a nonexistent "Red Menace," but it left that oil-rich nation in proverbial "safe hands"--those of the brutal dictatorship of Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi.

Similarly today, a nonexistent "nuclear threat" is the pretext being used by Washington to install a "friendly" regime in Tehran and undercut geopolitical rivals China and Russia in the process, thereby "securing" the country's vast petrochemical wealth for American multinationals.

As the U.S. and Israel ramp-up covert operations against Iran, the Pentagon "has laid out its most explicit cyberwarfare policy to date, stating that if directed by the president, it will launch 'offensive cyber operations' in response to hostile acts," according to The Washington Post.

Citing "a long-overdue report to Congress released late Monday," we're informed that "hostile acts may include 'significant cyber attacks directed against the U.S. economy, government or military'," unnamed Defense Department officials stated.

However, Air Force General Robert Kehler, the commander of U.S. Strategic Command (USSTRATCOM) told Reuters, "I do not believe that we need new explicit authorities to conduct offensive operations of any kind."

The Pentagon report, which is still not publicly available, asserts: "We reserve the right to use all necessary means--diplomatic, informational, military and economic--to defend our nation, our allies, our partners and our interests."

Washington's "interests," which first and foremost include "securing its hegemony over the energy-rich regions of the Middle East and Central Asia" as the World Socialist Web Site observed, may lead the crisis-ridden U.S. Empire "to take another irresponsible gamble to shore up its interests in the Middle East ... as a means of diverting attention from the social devastation produced by its austerity agenda."

Recent media reports suggest however, that offensive cyber operations are only part of Washington's multipronged strategy to soften-up the Islamic Republic's defenses as a prelude to "regime change."

Terrorist Proxies

For the better part of six decades, terrorist proxies have done America's dirty work. Hardly relics of the Cold War past, U.S. and allied secret state agencies are using such forces to carry out attacks inside Iran today.

Asia Times Online reported that "deadly explosions at a military base about 60 kilometers southwest of Tehran, coinciding with the suspicious death of the son of a former commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) in Dubai in the United Arab Emirates, have triggered speculation in Iran on whether or not these are connected to recent United States threats to resort to extrajudicial executions of IRGC leaders."

And Time Magazine, a frequent outlet for sanctioned leaks from the Pentagon, reported that the blast at the Iranian missile base west of Tehran, which killed upwards of 40 people according to the latest estimates, including Major General Hassan Moqqadam, a senior leader of Iran's missile program, was described as the work "of Israel's external intelligence service, Mossad."

An unnamed "Western intelligence source" told reporter Karl Vick: "'Don't believe the Iranians that it was an accident,' adding that other sabotage is being planned to impede the Iranian ability to develop and deliver a nuclear weapon. 'There are more bullets in the magazine,' the official says."

While Iranian officials insist that the huge blast was an "accident," multiple accounts in the corporate press and among independent analysts provide strong evidence for the claim that Israel and their terrorist cat's paw, the bizarre political cult, Mojahedin-e Khalq (MEK) were responsible for the attack.

Richard Silverstein, a left-wing analyst who writes for the Tikun Olam web site, said that the blast was a sign that "the face of the Israeli terror machine may have reared its ugly head in the world."

Citing "an Israeli source with extensive senior political and military experience," Silverstein's correspondent provided "an exclusive report that it was the work of the Mossad in collaboration with the MEK."

Hardly a stranger to controversial reporting, Silverstein published excerpts of secret FBI transcripts leaked to him by the heroic whistleblower Shamai Leibowitz. Those wiretapped conversations of Israeli diplomats caught spying on the U.S., "described an Israeli diplomatic campaign in this country to create a hostile environment for relations with Iran."

In a Truthout piece, Silverstein wrote that Leibowitz, a former IDF soldier who refused to serve in the Occupied Territories, "explained that he was convinced from his work on these recordings that the Israel foreign ministry and its officials in this country were responsible for a perception management campaign directed against Iran. He worried that such an effort might end with either Israel or the US attacking Iran and that this would be a disaster for both countries."

Unfortunately, while Leibowitz sits in a U.S. prison his warnings are all but ignored.

According to Silverstein's latest account, "it is widely known within intelligence circles that the Israelis use the MEK for varied acts of espionage and terror ranging from fraudulent Iranian memos alleging work on nuclear trigger devices to assassinations of nuclear scientists and bombings of sensitive military installations."

Silverstein noted that "a similar act of sabotage happened a little more than a year ago at another IRG missile base which killed nearly 20."

Terrorist attacks targeting defense installations coupled with the murder of Iranian scientist, five "targeted killings" have occurred since 2010, aren't the only aggressive actions underway.

On Friday, The Washington Post reported that "a series of mysterious incidents involving explosions at natural gas transport facilities, oil refineries and military bases ... have caused dozens of deaths and damage to key infrastructure in the past two years."

According to the Post, "suspicions have been raised in Iran by what industry experts say is a fivefold increase in explosions at refineries and gas pipelines since 2010."

With Iran's oil industry under a strict sanctions regime by the West, maintenance of this critical industrial sector has undoubtedly suffered neglect due to the lack of spare parts.

However, "suspicions that covert action might already be underway were raised when four key gas pipelines exploded simultaneously in different locations in Qom Province in April," the Post disclosed.

"Lawmaker Parviz Sorouri told the semiofficial Mehr News Agency that the blasts were the work of 'terrorists' and were 'organized by the enemies of the Islamic Republic'," hardly an exaggerated charge given present tensions.

Whether or not these attacks were the handiwork of Mossad, their MEK proxies or even CIA paramilitary officers and Pentagon Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) commandos, as Seymour Hersh revealed more than three years ago in The New Yorker, it is clear that Washington and Tel Aviv are "preparing the battlespace" on multiple fronts.

'Collapse the Iranian Economy'

Along with covert operations and terrorist attacks inside the Islamic Republic, on the political front, a bipartisan consensus has clearly emerged in Washington in favor of strangling the Iranian economy.

Indeed, congressional grifters are threatening to crater Iran's Central Bank, an unvarnished act of war. IPS reported that neocon Senator Mark Kirk (R-IL), "a key pro-Israel senator," has offered legislation "that would effectively ban international financial companies that do business with the Central Bank of Iran (CBI) from participating in the U.S. economy."

"Dubbed the 'nuclear option' by its critics," Jim Lobe reported that "the measure, which was introduced Thursday in the form of an amendment to the 2012 defence authorisation bill, is designed to 'collapse the Iranian economy'... by making it virtually impossible for Tehran to sell its oil."

However, "independent experts," Lobe wrote, "including some officials in the administration of President Barack Obama, say the impact of such legislation, if it became law, could spark a major spike in global oil prices that would push Washington's allies in Europe even deeper into recession and destroy the dwindling chances for economic recovery here."

That amendment was introduced as tensions were brought to a boil over allegations by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in its latest report that Iran may be seeking to develop nuclear weapons.

IAEA Director General Yukiya Amano claims the Agency has "identified outstanding issues related to possible military dimensions to Iran's nuclear programme and actions required of Iran to resolve these."

"Since 2002," Amano averred, "the Agency has become increasingly concerned about the possible existence in Iran of undisclosed nuclear related activities involving military related organizations, including activities related to the development of a nuclear payload for a missile, about which the Agency has regularly received new information."

However, despite the fact that the "Agency continues to verify the non-diversion of declared nuclear material at the nuclear facilities," to whit, that such materials have not been covertly channeled towards military programs, Amano, reprising former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's famous gaff that "the absence of evidence is not the evidence of absence," the IAEA "is unable to provide credible assurance about the absence of undeclared nuclear material and activities in Iran, and therefore to conclude that all nuclear material in Iran is in peaceful activities."

Far from being an independent "nuclear watchdog," the IAEA under Amano's stewardship has been transformed into highly-politicized and pliable organization eager to do Washington's bidding.

As a 2009 State Department cable released by WikiLeaks revealed, U.S. Ambassador Glyn Davies cheerily reported: "Yukiya Amano thanked the U.S. for having supported his candidacy and took pains to emphasize his support for U.S. strategic objectives for the Agency. Amano reminded Ambassador on several occasions that he would need to make concessions to the G-77, which correctly required him to be fair-minded and independent, but that he was solidly in the U.S. court on every key strategic decision, from high-level personnel appointments to the handling of Iran's alleged nuclear weapons program." (emphasis added)

Although the new report "offered little that was not already known by experts about Iran's nuclear programme" IPS averred, "it cited what it alleged was new evidence that 'Iran has carried out activities relevant to the development of a nuclear device' since 2003--the date when most analysts believe it abandoned a centralised effort to build a nuclear bomb'."

But as the United States, with the connivance of corporate media, bury the conclusions of not one, but two National Intelligence Estimates issued by the U.S. Director of National Intelligence, it is clear to any objective observer that "nonproliferation" is a cover for aggressive geopolitical machinations by Washington.

Both estimates, roundly denounced by U.S. neoconservatives and media commentators when they were published, insisted that "in fall of 2003, Tehran halted its nuclear weapons program," a finding intelligence analysts judged with "high confidence."

In contrast, the highly-politicized IAEA report is a provocative document whose timing neatly corresponds with the imposition of a new round of economic sanctions meant to crater the Iranian economy. Never mind that even according to the IAEA's own biased reporting, they could find no evidence that Iran had diverted nuclear materials from civilian programs (power generation, medical isotopes) to alleged military initiatives.

Indeed, with sinister allusions that hint darkly at "undeclared nuclear materials," the agency fails to provide a single scrap of evidence that diverted stockpiles even exist.

Another key allegation made by the Agency that Iran had constructed an "explosives chamber to test components of a nuclear weapon and carry out a simulated nuclear explosion," was denounced by former IAEA inspector Robert Kelley as "highly misleading," according to an IPS report filed by investigative journalist Gareth Porter.

With "information provided by Member States," presumably Israel and the United States, the IAEA said it "had 'confirmed' that a 'large cylindrical object' housed at the same complex had been 'designed to contain the detonation of up to 70 kilograms of high explosives'. That amount of explosives, it said, would be 'appropriate' for testing a detonation system to trigger a nuclear weapon."

"Kelley rejected the IAEA claim that the alleged cylindrical chamber was new evidence of an Iranian weapons programme," Porter wrote. "We've been led by the nose to believe that this container is important, when in fact it's not important at all," the former nuclear inspector said.

But as Mark Twain famously wrote, "A lie can travel half way around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes." This is certainly proving to be the case with the IAEA under Yukiya Amano.

Another player "solidly in the U.S. court" is David Albright, the director of the Institute for Science and International Security (ISIS), a Washington, D.C. "think tank" funded by the elitist Carnegie, Ford and Rockefeller Foundations.

In an earlier piece for IPS, Porter demolished Albright's "sensational claim previously reported by news media all over the world that a former Soviet nuclear weapons scientist had helped Iran construct a detonation system that could be used for a nuclear weapon."

"But it turns out that the foreign expert, who is not named in the IAEA report but was identified in news reports as Vyacheslav Danilenko, is not a nuclear weapons scientist but one of the top specialists in the world in the production of nanodiamonds by explosives," Porter wrote.

"In fact," Porter averred, "Danilenko, a Ukrainian, has worked solely on nanodiamonds from the beginning of his research career and is considered one of the pioneers in the development of nanodiamond technology, as published scientific papers confirm."

"It now appears that the IAEA and David Albright ... who was the source of the news reports about Danilenko, never bothered to check the accuracy of the original claim by an unnamed 'Member State' on which the IAEA based its assertion about his nuclear weapons background."

It is no small irony, that Albright, corporate media's go-to guy on all things nuclear, penned an alarmist screed in 2002 entitled, "Is the Activity at Al Qaim Related to Nuclear Efforts?", an article which lent "scientific" credence to false claims made by the Bush White House against Iraq.

As investigative journalist Robert Parry pointed out on the Consortium News web site, "Albright's nuclear warning about Iraq coincided with the start of the Bush administration's propaganda campaign to rally Congress and the American people to war with talk about 'the smoking gun in the form of a mushroom cloud'."

"Yet," Parry noted, "when the Washington Post cited Albright on Monday, as the key source of a front-page article about Iran's supposed progress toward reaching 'nuclear capability,' all the history of Albright's role in the Iraq fiasco disappeared."

History be damned. Congressional warmongers and corporate media who cite these fraudulent claims, are "spurred by Israel's whisper campaign to create a sense of urgency on Capitol Hill where the Israel lobby, acting mainly through the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, exerts its greatest influence," as IPS noted, and punish Iran for the "crime" of opening its nuclear facilities to international inspection!

That "whisper campaign" has now bloomed into a full court press for war by "liberal" Democrats and "conservative" Republicans alike, even as public approval of Congress's work by the American people tracks only slightly higher than the popularity enjoyed by child molesters or serial killers.

As tensions are dialed up, the United States is spearheading a relentless drive to throttle Iran's economy. The New York Times reported that "major Western powers took significant steps on Monday to cut Iran off from the international financial system, announcing coordinated sanctions aimed at its central bank and commercial banks."

A strict sanctions regime was also imposed on Iran's "petrochemical and oil industries, adding to existing measures that seek to weaken the Iranian government by depriving it of its ability to refine gasoline or invest in its petroleum industry," the Times reported.

In a move which signals that even-more stringent sanctions are on the horizon, the U.S. Treasury Department "named the Central Bank of Iran and the entire Iranian banking system as a 'primary money laundering concern'."

That's rather rich coming from an administration which slapped Wachovia Bank on the wrist after that corrupt financial institution, now owned by Wells Fargo Bank, pleaded guilty to laundering as much as $378 billion for Mexico's notorious drug cartels as Bloomberg Markets Magazine reported last year!

Going a step further, France's President Nicolas Sarkozy called on the major imperialist powers "to freeze the assets of the central bank and suspend purchases of Iranian oil."

The Guardian reported that Britain "went the furthest by, for the first time, cutting an entire country's banking system off from London's financial sector."

Playing catch-up with war-hungry Democrats and Republicans, President Obama stated that the "new sanctions target for the first time Iran's petrochemical sector, prohibiting the provision of goods, services and technology to this sector and authorizing penalties against any person or entity that engages in such activity."

"They expand energy sanctions, making it more difficult for Iran to operate, maintain, and modernize its oil and gas sector," Obama said.

"As long as Iran continues down this dangerous path, the United States will continue to find ways, both in concert with our partners and through our own actions, to isolate and increase the pressure upon the Iranian regime."

Last summer, Rep. Brad Sherman (D-CA), a strong backer of punishing sanctions, echoed Richard Nixon's vow to "make the economy scream" prior to the CIA's overthrow of Chile's democratically-elected socialist president, Salvador Allende, and wrote in The Hill that "critics ... argued that these measures will hurt the Iranian people. Quite frankly, we need to do just that."

With a new round of crippling economic sanctions on tap from the West, "liberal" Democrat Sherman might just get his wish.

Targeting Civilian Infrastructure

While the Obama administration claims that their aggressive stance towards Iran is meant to promote "peace" and "help" the Iranian people achieve a "democratic transformation," ubiquitous facts on the ground betray a far different, and uglier, reality.

Anonymous U.S. "intelligence officials" told The Daily Beast "that any Israeli attack on hardened nuclear sites in Iran would go far beyond airstrikes from F-15 and F-16 fighter planes and likely include electronic warfare against Iran's electric grid, Internet, cellphone network, and emergency frequencies for firemen and police officers."

According to Newsweek national security correspondent Eli Lake, "Israel has developed a weapon capable of mimicking a maintenance cellphone signal that commands a cell network to 'sleep,' effectively stopping transmissions, officials confirmed. The Israelis also have jammers capable of creating interference within Iran's emergency frequencies for first responders."

But Israel isn't the only nation capable of launching high-tech attacks or, borrowing the Pentagon's euphemistic language, conduct "Information Operations" (IO).

The U.S. Air Force Cyberspace & Information Operations Study Center (CIOSC) describe IO as "The integrated employment of the core capabilities of electronic warfare, computer network operations, psychological operations, military deception and operations security, in concert with specified supporting and related capabilities, to influence, disrupt, corrupt or usurp adversarial human and automated decision making while protecting our own."

In this light, The Daily Beast disclosed that "Israel also likely would exploit a vulnerability that U.S. officials detected two years ago in Iran's big-city electric grids, which are not 'air-gapped'--meaning they are connected to the Internet and therefore vulnerable to a Stuxnet-style cyberattack--officials say."

The anonymous officials cited by Lake informed us that "a highly secretive research lab attached to the U.S. joint staff and combatant commands, known as the Joint Warfare Analysis Center (JWAC), discovered the weakness in Iran's electrical grid in 2009," the same period when Stuxnet was launched, and that Israeli and Pentagon cyberwarriors "have the capability to bring a denial-of-service attack to nodes of Iran's command and control system that rely on the Internet."

But as Ralph Langer, the industrial controls systems expert who first identified the Stuxnet virus warned in an interview with The Christian Science Monitor, the deployment of military-grade malicious code is a "game changer" that has "opened Pandora's box."

Among a host of troubling questions posed by Stuxnet, Langer said: "It raises, for one, the question of how to apply cyberwar as a political decision. Is the US really willing to take down the power grid of another nation when that might mainly affect civilians?"

But as we have seen, most recently during the punishing air campaign that helped "liberate" Libya--from their petrochemical resources--the U.S. and their partners are capable of doing that and more.

Future targeting of Iran's civilian infrastructure may in fact have been one of the tasks of the recently-discovered Duqu Trojan, which Israeli and U.S. "boutique arms dealers" are suspected of designing for their respective governments.

And whom, pray tell, has the means, motives and expertise to design weaponized computer code?

As BusinessWeek disclosed in July, when one of America's cyber merchants of death, Endgame Systems, pitch their products they "bring up maps of airports, parliament buildings, and corporate offices. The executives then create a list of the computers running inside the facilities, including what software the computers run, and a menu of attacks that could work against those particular systems."

According to BusinessWeek, "Endgame weaponry comes customized by region--the Middle East, Russia, Latin America, and China--with manuals, testing software, and 'demo instructions'."

"A government or other entity," journalists Michael Riley and Ashlee Vance revealed, "could launch sophisticated attacks against just about any adversary anywhere in the world for a grand total of $6 million. Ease of use is a premium. It's cyber warfare in a box."

Kaspersky Lab analyst Ryan Naraine, writing on the Duqu FAQ blog averred that Duqu's "main purpose is to act as a backdoor into the system and facilitate the theft of private information. This is the main difference when compared to Stuxnet, which was created to conduct industrial sabotage."

In other words, unlike Stuxnet, Duqu is an espionage tool which can smooth the way for future attacks such as those described by The Daily Beast.

As The Washington Post disclosed last May, while the military "needs presidential authorization to penetrate a foreign computer network and leave a cyber-virus that can be activated later," it does not need such authorization "to penetrate foreign networks for a variety of other activities."

According to the Post, these activities include "studying the cyber-capabilities of adversaries or examining how power plants or other networks operate," and can "leave beacons to mark spots for later targeting by viruses."

Or more likely given escalating tensions, Iranian air defenses and that nation's power and electronic communications grid which include "emergency frequencies for firemen and police officers" who would respond to devastating air and missile attacks.

Countdown to War

We can conclude that Israel, NATO and the United States are doing far more than placing "all options on the table" with respect to the Islamic Republic of Iran.

Along with ratcheting-up bellicose rhetoric, moves to collapse the economy, an assassination and sabotage campaign targeting Iranian scientists and military installations, cyberwarriors are infecting computer networks with viruses and "beacons" that will be used to attack air defense systems and civilian infrastructure.

After all, as Dave Aitel, the founder of the computer security firm Immunity told BusinessWeek, "nothing says you've lost like a starving city."

As Global Research analyst Michel Chossudovsky warned last year, now confirmed by CIA and Pentagon leaks to corporate media: "It is highly unlikely that the bombings, if they were to be implemented, would be circumscribed to Iran's nuclear facilities as claimed by US-NATO official statements. What is more probable is an all out air attack on both military and civilian infrastructure, transport systems, factories, public buildings."

With the global economy in deep crisis as a result of capitalism's economic meltdown, and as the first, but certainly not the last political actions by the working class threaten the financial elite's stranglehold on power, the ruling class may very well gamble that a war with Iran is a risk worth taking.

As Chossudovsky warned in a subsequent Global Research report, "there are indications that Washington might envisage the option of an initial (US backed) attack by Israel rather than an outright US-led military operation directed against Iran."

"The Israeli attack--although led in close liaison with the Pentagon and NATO--would be presented to public opinion as a unilateral decision by Tel Aviv. It would then be used by Washington to justify, in the eyes of world opinion," Chossudovsky wrote, "a military intervention of the US and NATO with a view to 'defending Israel', rather than attacking Iran. Under existing military cooperation agreements, both the US and NATO would be 'obligated' to 'defend Israel' against Iran and Syria."

This prescient analysis has been borne out by events. As regional tensions escalate, the USS George H.W. Bush, "the Navy's newest aircraft carrier, has reportedly parked off the Syrian coast," The Daily Caller reported.

Earlier this week, the financial news service Zero Hedge disclosed that "the Arab League (with European and US support) are preparing to institute a no fly zone over Syria."

"But probably the most damning evidence that the 'western world' is about to do the unthinkable and invade Syria," analyst Tyler Durden wrote, "and in the process force Iran to retaliate, is the weekly naval update from Stratfor."

According to Zero Hedge, "CVN 77 George H.W. Bush has left its traditional theater of operations just off the Straits of Hormuz, a critical choke point, where it traditionally accompanies the Stennis, and has parked... right next to Syria."

In an earlier report, citing Kuwait's Al Rai daily, Zero Hedge warned that "Arab jet fighters, and possibly Turkish warplanes, backed by American logistic support will implement a no fly zone in Syria's skies, after the Arab League will issue a decision, under its Charter, calling for the protection of Syrian civilians."

The BBC reports that the Arab League "has warned Syria it has one day to sign a deal allowing the deployment of observers or it will face economic sanctions."

"Meanwhile," BBC averred, "France has suggested that some sort of humanitarian protection zones," à la Libya, "be created inside Syria."

American moves towards Syria are fraught with dangerous implications for international peace and stability. As analyst Pepe Escobar disclosed in Asia Times Online the Arab League, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Saudi Arabia and repressive Gulf emirates, dances to Washington's tune.

"Syria is Iran's undisputed key ally in the Arab world--while Russia, alongside China, are the key geopolitical allies. China, for the moment, is making it clear that any solution for Syria must be negotiated," Escobar wrote.

"Russia's one and only naval base in the Mediterranean is at the Syrian port of Tartus. Not by accident," Escobar notes, "Russia has installed its S-300 air defense system--one of the best all-altitude surface-to-air missile systems in the world, comparable to the American Patriot--in Tartus. The update to the even more sophisticated S-400 system is imminent."

"From Moscow's--as well as Tehran's--perspective, regime change in Damascus is a no-no. It will mean virtual expulsion of the Russian and Iranian navies from the Mediterranean."

"In other words," Zero Hedge warned, "if indeed Europe and the Western world is dead set upon an aerial campaign above Syria, then all eyes turn to the East, and specifically Russia and China, which have made it very clear they will not tolerate any intervention. And naturally the biggest unknown of all is Iran, which has said than any invasion of Syria will be dealt with swiftly and severely."

Despite, or possibly because no credible evidence exists that Iran is building a nuclear bomb as a hedge against "regime change," belligerent rhetoric and regional military moves targeting Syria and Iran simultaneously are danger signs that imperialism's manufactured "nuclear crisis" is a cynical pretext for war.

[seemslikeadream]

After all, as Dave Aitel, the founder of the computer security firm Immunity told BusinessWeek, "nothing says you've lost like a starving city."

[Elvis]

I reckon most folks have seen this but it always gets me thinking (and laughing).

[NeonLX]

That may be the funniest damned thing I've ever seen, Elvis.

[Nordic]

That may be the funniest damned thing I've ever seen, Elvis.

Yeah that's going straight to my Facebook page.

[AlicetheKurious]

A zionist commentator examines the question of which is better for Israel: to have a Republican or a Democratic US president bomb Iran on Israel's behalf. He concludes that if a Democrat, specifically Obama, does it, there's a greater likelihood that all the catastrophic consequences will be borne by him and by the American people (and millions of Iranians, of course), while shielding Israel and the zionist lobby in the US even from blame, which is, according to him, the priority here. (According to his own prediction, such an attack will reduce the US to a basket-case, but who cares?)

Published 11:56 28.11.11
Latest update 11:56 28.11.11

Republicans and Israel: Too much love can kill you
Republicans are saying they'll attack Iran for Israel's sake - this might not only prove to be 'bad for the Jews' in the long run, but could also come back to haunt the Republicans themselves.
By Chemi Shalev

In the first Gulf War in 1991 and once again in the war against Iraq in 2003, Israel was asked by the U.S. administration to maintain a “low profile," in order to avoid the perception that America was fighting with Israel, or on its behalf. Both George Bushes, senior and junior, considered it prudent to relegate Israel to the sidelines – even when it was under direct attack, as was the case in 1991 - in order to help establish international coalitions and to maintain public support for the war, especially in the Muslim world. In both cases, Israel complied.

Of course, such precautions won’t be relevant if a Republican-led U.S. administration should ever contemplate attacking Iran in order to prevent it from obtaining nuclear weapons. After all, the contenders for the Republican presidential nomination - with the glaring exception of the neo-isolationist Ron Paul - are on record as saying that if America attacks Iran, it will be, first and foremost, in order to “save Israel," as Texas Governor Rick Perry framed it. Professors Stephen Walt and John Mearsheimer can already add a brief appendix to their highly-controversial 2007 book “The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy” that will contain a transcript of last week’s CNN Republican foreign policy debate, followed by the letters QED – “which was to be demonstrated.”

Herman Cain said the U.S. would “join Israel” in attacking Iran, as long as the Israelis came up with a credible plan; Newt Gingrich said the U.S. would bomb Tehran only as a “last recourse” but would be happy to team up with Israel in a “conventional” attack; Michele Bachmann has already indicated that the Pentagon should present “war plans” in order to rescue “millions of Israelis who are on the precipice of losing their lives”; Rick Perry said “if we're going to be serious about saving Israel, we better get serious about Syria and Iran”; Rick Santorum made up for lost time in the debate by declaring later, “I’d be working with Israel and be very clear with Iran that we are preparing a military strike"; Mitt Romney thinks that the answer to Iran is to go to Israel “to show the world we care about that country and that region”; and former Utah governor Jon Huntsman, usually the most cautious Republican debater on matters of foreign policy, said “our interest is to ensure that Israel - that Iran does not go nuclear. Our interest in the Middle East is Israel.”

Not Saudi Arabia. Not the Gulf emirates. Not the Maghreb. Not the Horn of Africa. Not a stable Iraq. Not a moderate Egypt. Not the free flow of oil. Not containment of China and Russia. Not Islamic moderation, not even the fight against jihadist terrorism. Just Israel.

Of course, one can well understand why many Jews and Israelis might kvell - Yiddish for beam with joy - at such blanket, unequivocal expressions of love and support for Israel, especially at a time when the saying “the whole world is against us” has become a widely-accepted axiom and President Obama is perceived by many as being indifferent to Israeli interests, at best, if not actually hostile, at worst. But “too much love will kill you”, as Queen’s Brian May once wrote, and these protestations of absolute devotion may come back one day to haunt not only Jews and Israel, but also the Republicans themselves.

As the flurry of anti-Israeli tweets following last week’s CNN debate showed, many Americans were taken aback at what could easily be portrayed as the subornation of American foreign policy to Israeli interests, and the predominance of the Israel-Iran issue over such “minor” foreign policy issues as China, the Arab Spring or the Eurozone debt crisis, which weren’t even mentioned. And even though polls show that a solid majority of Americans support Israel – especially when compared to the Palestinians – it is highly doubtful whether such support stretches to include a conflict that might plunge America and the rest of the world into a political and economic crisis of unprecedented proportions.

Of course, the main reason for the current Republican lovefest with Israel isn’t so much the Jewish lobby, the Jewish vote or even Jewish campaign contributions, but rather the intense courtship of the Israel-adoring Christian Evangelical vote, which is likely to play a pivotal role in the upcoming Republican primaries. These voters view oaths of loyalty to Israel as a qualifying benchmark for all aspiring candidates and they are hardly likely to be deterred by the possibility of conflagration in the Middle East which is, after all, but a necessary dispensationalist end-of-days landmark “on the Road to Armageddon” as Timothy Weber’s 2004 book explains.

But for many, less “Israelocentric” Americans, as well as for the hundreds of millions of people throughout the world who are closely monitoring the Republican race, the unabashed and unqualified Republican embrace of Israel at the expense of other, no-less-critical issues for America’s well-being might very well be seen as confirming the delusional conspiratorial descriptions of rabid Jew-baiters. This might not only prove to be “bad for the Jews” in the long run, but could also come back to haunt the Republicans themselves should the issue of Iran still be on the table if and when one of them is sworn into office on January 20, 2013 (or January 21, as the 20th is a Sunday).

A Republican president, no less than President Obama, would have to contend with widespread opposition among America’s top military brass and its economic and business leaders to a war that could ignite a region-wide conflagration, precipitate a dramatic rise in the price of oil, bring about a sharp increase in the U.S. budget deficit and, potentially, push the economies of both the U.S. and Europe over the edge and into the abyss. Which of the two potential presidents would be more inclined and more capable of weathering such a confrontation is certainly a matter of opinion and debate.

But a Republican president - unlike Obama – would be handicapped from the outset by the inverted “Nixon to China” principle, which makes it harder for right-wing presidents to mobilize public opinion to go to war , and then doubly encumbered by the Bush legacy, internally and in the international arena, where memories of what was widely perceived as the former president’s go-it-alone, devil-may-care cowboyish foreign policy that left America virtually isolated on the world stage haven’t been as thoroughly erased as they appear to have been among America’s conservatives.

And even though there is a compelling argument to be made for U.S. military intervention against Iran in order to safeguard a wide range of vital American interests - including Israel - a Republican president would automatically be judged by his own Israeli-inspired declarations of love and war. The Iranian propaganda ministry, one can rest assured, has already archived the videotape of the Republican debates as a public relations weapon to be drawn just when the time is right.

And while Saudi Arabia and the Gulf oil countries would be sure to lend Washington discreet tactical as well as financial support under any and all circumstances, the volatile Arab “street”, once maligned as insignificant but now the critical element in determining the future of many Arab regimes, would easily fall prey to anti-Isra eli incitement, as would left-leaning public opinion throughout Muslim World and Western Europe. This would be true in any case, of course, but doubly so if a Republican president was at the helm.

One can argue what true intentions lay behind Obama’s statement in his Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech that “those who seek peace cannot stand idly by as nations arm themselves for nuclear war” – but there should be no doubt that it is Obama who would stand a far better chance than any Republican of mustering international support, of enlisting coalition partners and of minimizing Arab rage in case America goes to war against Iran. In fact, in a twist of irony that is surely bitter for Obama-bashers, it is the president’s perceived distance from Israel and his portrayal as being “even-handed” that places him in a superior position to advance what is indeed, when all is said and done, a critical Israel interest that is still best served by maintaining a judicious low profile rather than by engaging in short-sighted, politically-motivated saber-rattling.

Perhaps that is another reason for Israel to strike now, while Obama is still in power, rather than later, when a Republican president might find that he has tied his own hands in primary-time electioneering. Link

[barracuda]

Links at the original...

Satellite Image Confirms Iranian Missile Base Was Destroyed

Today's curious news report posted by Iran's semi-official news agency Fars, which was promptly muted, only to be republished by Israel's Haaretz, of a major explosion near the Iranian city of Isfahan, has left many scratching their heads. As Haaretz reports: "Speaking with Fars news agency, Isfahan’s deputy mayor confirmed the reports and said the authorities are investigating the matter. However, after the incident was reported in Israel, the report was taken off the Fars website." Which led many to wonder: is this a real event or merely a provocation designed to make Iranians believe they were attacked? Further complicating matters is the just released news from Washington Post which shows satellite images of the aftermath of another explosion in Iran, this time from two weeks ago at an Iranian missile base. "The image of the compound, near the city of Malard, doesn’t provide any clues as to what caused the Nov. 12 explosion, which Iranian authorities described as an “accident” involving the transport of ammunition. But it does make clear that the facility has been effectively destroyed. Paul Brannan, a senior analyst for the Institute for Science and International Security, which specializes in the study of nuclear weapons programs, said it’s impossible to tell from the image whether the blast was caused by sabotage, as has has been speculated in this explosion and others at transport facilities, oil refineries and military bases in Iran. Brannan said ISIS had recently learned from “knowledgable officials” that the blast had occurred just as Iran had achieved a milestone in the development of a new missile and may have been performing a “volatile procedure involving a missile engine at the site.” So the question stands: is Iran being systematically attacked with the news being covered up for fear that it can not retaliate and thus seem week; is it being sabbotaged on a weekly basis, or is everything just one big media disinformation campaign designed to provoke Iran to lash out? We will probably know very soon, today's "oversold" and now completely disconnected from reality rally notwithstanding.

[Sounder]

Republicans and Israel: Too much love can kill you
Republicans are saying they'll attack Iran for Israel's sake - this might not only prove to be 'bad for the Jews' in the long run, but could also come back to haunt the Republicans themselves.
By Chemi Shalev

And this is why O'bummer will be reelected. (if events don't happen near term, that is) These 'chits' are better cashed in with the 'liberals', cause that makes for even more 'chits' to cash in later with the republicans.

See it's all win, win.

[Searcher08]

The day after Tehran is turned into a parking lot, Chemi will be at the front lines of the Keyboard Warriors of Hasbara, deeply saddened for the radioactive Iranian children - and how their radioactive Iranian parents are to blame - and no-one understands how much the people of Israel are suffering because of what they were FORCED to do by these people and how the lack of understanding for Israel at this time shows just how deep rapid anti-semitism runs.

[kelley]

british embassy taken by iranian students:

http://cryptogon.com/?p=26241

here it comes, i guess.