If true, another foolish act by Russians... Russia should prefer to keep the wars away from their land and neighbours....
Russia fudges pledge not to sell S-300s to Iran
From http://www.upi.com/
WASHINGTON, Oct. 10 (UPI) -- The good news for Israel is that its outgoing Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has won assurances from Russia that it isn't going to sell advanced anti-aircraft and anti-missile systems to Iran.
The bad news is that Russia already has sold a lot of other dangerous things to Iran, and its position on the S-300 could change too. Also the assurance in question didn't actually mention the S-300 system that so alarms the Israelis. It didn't mention the Iskander-E missiles that Syria wants from the Kremlin either, for that matter.
Iran already has taken delivery of a series of Tor-M1 anti-aircraft and anti-missile defense systems from Russia. But the Tor-M1 could be regarded as roughly equivalent to the U.S. Patriot anti-ballistic missile interceptor in its tactical role: It is designed to shoot down targets flying at very low, low or medium altitude. If the Iranians want to try to shoot down U.S. B-52s or Stealth bombers flying at great altitudes, or Israeli aircraft flying high, they would want a lot of S-300s.
The Russians assured the Israelis years ago that wasn't going to happen. And while Russian-Israeli relations seemed to be good during most of this decade, especially during the five-year premiership of Ariel Sharon in Israel, that remained the case. However, even then, Russia did sell Iran its Tor-M1 systems in a $700 million deal and went ahead with building Iran's nuclear reactor complex at Bushehr.
However, the Russians have been infuriated by what they regarded as reckless Israeli support for the former Soviet republic of Georgia in the Caucasus and its strongly pro-American President Mikheil Saakashvili. Following the Russian army's occupation of one-third of Georgia in a fast and efficient campaign Aug. 8 to Aug. 12, the Russian press has alarmed the Israeli government by dropping hints the Kremlin may sell the S-300 to Iran after all, as well as selling short-range, solid fuel, highly accurate Iskander-E missiles to Syria.
Olmert, who has been forced to step down because of a major corruption probe, flew to Moscow to try to persuade Russian President Dmitry Medvedev and Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov not to do those things. And on Thursday, the Russian Foreign Ministry announced the S-300s would not be made available to Tehran or other countries "in volatile regions."
"We have repeatedly said that we do not plan to supply those types of weapons to countries located in volatile regions," spokesman Andrei Nesterenko stated, according to a report from the RIA Novosti news agency.
Selling weapons like the S-300 "run(s) contrary to both Russia's foreign policy and its interest in maintaining stability in different regions," Nesterenko continued.
"Any country can decide to purchase some types of Russian weapons, but we made decisions at the top political level," he added.
Israeli officials quickly responded they were pleased with the Russian statement.
However, one Israeli official, speaking on condition of anonymity, told The Jerusalem Post newspaper that Nesterenko's remarks had been vague and that he had not specifically referred to the S-300s. He cautioned that it was too soon "to celebrate," the newspaper said.
The S-300PMU1 -- NATO designation SA-20 Gargoyle -- has a range of more than 100 miles, with the capability of destroying ballistic missiles and operating at both low and high altitudes.
Some analysts have even claimed that the S-300 could have an 80 percent interception rate capability against America's old, slow and in many respects obsolete subsonic Tomahawk cruise missiles.
Iran News and Discussions
Re: Iran News and Discussions - 11 December 2007
Russia keen on Iran ties
Posted: 2008/10/11
From: MNN
Russian Deputy FM Alexei Borodavkin said on Friday that his country is keen to strengthen bilateral ties with Iran.
http://mathaba.net/news/?x=608556
Borodavkin said in a meeting with Iran's new Ambassador to Russia Mahmoud-Reza Sajjadi that he hopes to see two countries rapid move to promote ties during the ambassador's term.
He said that Russia is willing to cooperate with Iran on the international, regional, cultural, economic and political issues.
Sajjadi, for his part, extended the warm greetings of the Iranian senior officials to the Russian nation and leaders.
Referring to Iran-Russia longstanding ties and the need to upgrade relations, Sajjadi said that Iran is ready to boost ties with Russia in all fields.
He expressed hope that the cooperation between the two sides will develop in light of mutual interest.
He added that the cooperation would be based on mutual respect and trust. --IRNA
Posted: 2008/10/11
From: MNN
Russian Deputy FM Alexei Borodavkin said on Friday that his country is keen to strengthen bilateral ties with Iran.
http://mathaba.net/news/?x=608556
Borodavkin said in a meeting with Iran's new Ambassador to Russia Mahmoud-Reza Sajjadi that he hopes to see two countries rapid move to promote ties during the ambassador's term.
He said that Russia is willing to cooperate with Iran on the international, regional, cultural, economic and political issues.
Sajjadi, for his part, extended the warm greetings of the Iranian senior officials to the Russian nation and leaders.
Referring to Iran-Russia longstanding ties and the need to upgrade relations, Sajjadi said that Iran is ready to boost ties with Russia in all fields.
He expressed hope that the cooperation between the two sides will develop in light of mutual interest.
He added that the cooperation would be based on mutual respect and trust. --IRNA
Re: Iran News and Discussions - 11 December 2007
Iran talks energy with India, Pakistan
From UPI.com
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan, Oct. 10 (UPI) -- Iranian energy officials Friday said India will become a top oil customer in 2009, eclipsing China, while Pakistan secures oil on a deferred payment schedule.
Ali Ashgar Arshi, the managing director of global affairs at the National Iranian Oil Co., said sales forecasts for 2009 put India over other Asian countries in the Iranian customer base, the Iranian Fars News Agency said.
"Currently the leading customers of Iran's crude oil in Asia are Japan, China and India, but in the upcoming year the top ranking will change to India, China and Japan," he said.
Meanwhile, Pakistani Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi spoke with his Iranian counterpart, Manouchehr Mottaki, in Islamabad on working toward satisfying Pakistani energy demands in a faltering world economy.
"We discussed difficult economic challenges," Qureshi said. "I made a request that it will be a great help if Iran provides us with oil on a deferred payment under the Iranian law," he said.
All parties are in ongoing negotiations surrounding the 1,724-long Iran-Pakistan-India natural gas pipeline.
From UPI.com
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan, Oct. 10 (UPI) -- Iranian energy officials Friday said India will become a top oil customer in 2009, eclipsing China, while Pakistan secures oil on a deferred payment schedule.
Ali Ashgar Arshi, the managing director of global affairs at the National Iranian Oil Co., said sales forecasts for 2009 put India over other Asian countries in the Iranian customer base, the Iranian Fars News Agency said.
"Currently the leading customers of Iran's crude oil in Asia are Japan, China and India, but in the upcoming year the top ranking will change to India, China and Japan," he said.
Meanwhile, Pakistani Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi spoke with his Iranian counterpart, Manouchehr Mottaki, in Islamabad on working toward satisfying Pakistani energy demands in a faltering world economy.
"We discussed difficult economic challenges," Qureshi said. "I made a request that it will be a great help if Iran provides us with oil on a deferred payment under the Iranian law," he said.
All parties are in ongoing negotiations surrounding the 1,724-long Iran-Pakistan-India natural gas pipeline.
Re: Iran News and Discussions - 11 December 2007
American intel? Like they gad intel on Iraq?
Nuclear Aid by Russian to Iranians Suspected
PARIS — International nuclear inspectors are investigating whether a Russian scientist helped Iran conduct complex experiments on how to detonate a nuclear weapon, according to European and American officials. As part of the investigation, inspectors at the International Atomic Energy Agency are seeking information from the scientist, who they believe acted on his own as an adviser on experiments described in a lengthy document obtained by the agency, the officials said.
Iran's Nuclear ProgramThe officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the investigation is under way, said that the document appeared authentic, without explaining why, but they made it clear that they did not think the scientist was working on behalf of the Russian government.
Still, it is the first time that the nuclear agency has suggested that Iran may have received help from a foreign weapons scientist in developing nuclear arms.
The American and European officials said the new document, written in Farsi, was part of an accumulation of evidence that Iran had worked toward developing a nuclear weapon, despite Iran’s claims that its atomic work over the past two decades has been aimed solely at producing electrical power.
In February, in a closed-door briefing at the agency’s headquarters in Vienna, its chief nuclear inspector presented diplomats from dozens of countries with newly declassified evidence — documents, sketches and even a video — that he said raised questions about whether Iran had tried to design a weapon.
Among the data presented by Olli Heinonen, the chief inspector, were indications that the Iranians had worked on exploding detonators that are critical for the firing of most nuclear weapons.
When the Iranian envoy at the briefing called the charges “groundless” and protested that the tests were for conventional arms, Mr. Heinonen replied that the experiments were “not consistent with any application other than the development of a nuclear weapon,” two participants said. He called the shape and timing involved in the firing systems and detonators “key components of nuclear weapons.”
At the same time, Mr. Heinonen acknowledged that the agency “did not have sufficient information at this stage to conclude whether the allegations are groundless or the data fabricated.”
The new document under investigation offers further evidence of such experiments, the Western officials said.
Iranian officials have said repeatedly that the documents the agency is using in its investigation of Iran’s past nuclear activities are fabrications or forgeries, and that any experiments were not related to nuclear weapons.
Iran has said the same about the new evidence, although the agency has not shown the full document to government officials in Tehran. Instead, Iran has been given only five pages of excerpts that have been translated from Farsi into English.
The Western officials said that the conditions under which the inspectors obtained the document prohibited them from revealing it in full to the Iranians, out of fear that doing so could expose the source of the document.
These restrictions present a problem for Mohamed ElBaradei, the agency’s director general, who is pressing Iran to reveal its past nuclear activity. “I cannot accuse a person without providing him or her with the evidence,” he said last year.
Although officials would not say how they had obtained the new document, it was first publicly mentioned in an agency report in May as one of 18 documents presented to Iran in connection with suspected nuclear weapons studies. At the time it was described as a “five-page document in English” about experiments with a complex initiation system to detonate a large amount of high explosives and to monitor the detonation with probes. There was no indication that the document was a translation of a much longer, more comprehensive document in Farsi.
The original, Farsi document is described by officials familiar with it as a detailed narrative of experiments aimed at creating a perfectly timed implosion of nuclear material.
According to experts, the most difficult challenges in developing nuclear weapons are creating the bomb fuel and figuring out how to compress and detonate it.
That was followed by an agency report last month that revealed that Iran might have received “foreign expertise” in its detonator experiments.
A senior official with links to the agency said then that a foreign government was not involved. He ruled out the involvement of Libya and the remnants of the network run by Abdul Qadeer Khan, the Pakistani metallurgist who built the world’s largest black-market sales operation for nuclear technology. But he would not comment further.
European and American officials now say that the “foreign expertise” was a reference to the Russian scientist, but they offered only scant details. They said that the scientist was believed to have helped guide Iranians in the experiments, but that he did not write the document.
Nor is he thought to have been affiliated with the civilian electric power plant that is being rebuilt by Russia at the Iranian port of Bushehr, and which Russia has agreed to fuel with nuclear material, the officials said.
Russia says it opposes any effort by Iran to obtain a weapon, but cooperation by Russian companies and individuals with some aspects of Iran’s nuclear program dates back years.
In the late 1990s, Russia’s scientific and technical elite, reeling from the collapse of the Soviet Union, forged ties to Iran, which paid hard currency for aid in weapons and technical programs. Western experts say the help extended to Tehran’s atomic efforts, but there was never any proof in those years of a Russian link to nuclear weapons development.
“The Iranians were very active in recruiting and paying Russian scientists to provide them with assistance in their nuclear program,” said Gary S. Samore, a National Security Council official during the Clinton administration who now directs studies at the Council on Foreign Relations.
He said he had no recollection of Russian aid in the design of Iranian nuclear arms but added that it could have happened. “It’s plausible to me that they at some point paid a Russian nuclear expert to provide assistance,” he said in an interview.
Asked about the potential contribution of the Russian scientist in detonator experimentation, a senior Russian official who has long followed Iran’s nuclear program said, “It is difficult for me to add anything.”
William J. Broad contributed reporting from New York, and David E. Sanger from Washington.
Nuclear Aid by Russian to Iranians Suspected
PARIS — International nuclear inspectors are investigating whether a Russian scientist helped Iran conduct complex experiments on how to detonate a nuclear weapon, according to European and American officials. As part of the investigation, inspectors at the International Atomic Energy Agency are seeking information from the scientist, who they believe acted on his own as an adviser on experiments described in a lengthy document obtained by the agency, the officials said.
Iran's Nuclear ProgramThe officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the investigation is under way, said that the document appeared authentic, without explaining why, but they made it clear that they did not think the scientist was working on behalf of the Russian government.
Still, it is the first time that the nuclear agency has suggested that Iran may have received help from a foreign weapons scientist in developing nuclear arms.
The American and European officials said the new document, written in Farsi, was part of an accumulation of evidence that Iran had worked toward developing a nuclear weapon, despite Iran’s claims that its atomic work over the past two decades has been aimed solely at producing electrical power.
In February, in a closed-door briefing at the agency’s headquarters in Vienna, its chief nuclear inspector presented diplomats from dozens of countries with newly declassified evidence — documents, sketches and even a video — that he said raised questions about whether Iran had tried to design a weapon.
Among the data presented by Olli Heinonen, the chief inspector, were indications that the Iranians had worked on exploding detonators that are critical for the firing of most nuclear weapons.
When the Iranian envoy at the briefing called the charges “groundless” and protested that the tests were for conventional arms, Mr. Heinonen replied that the experiments were “not consistent with any application other than the development of a nuclear weapon,” two participants said. He called the shape and timing involved in the firing systems and detonators “key components of nuclear weapons.”
At the same time, Mr. Heinonen acknowledged that the agency “did not have sufficient information at this stage to conclude whether the allegations are groundless or the data fabricated.”
The new document under investigation offers further evidence of such experiments, the Western officials said.
Iranian officials have said repeatedly that the documents the agency is using in its investigation of Iran’s past nuclear activities are fabrications or forgeries, and that any experiments were not related to nuclear weapons.
Iran has said the same about the new evidence, although the agency has not shown the full document to government officials in Tehran. Instead, Iran has been given only five pages of excerpts that have been translated from Farsi into English.
The Western officials said that the conditions under which the inspectors obtained the document prohibited them from revealing it in full to the Iranians, out of fear that doing so could expose the source of the document.
These restrictions present a problem for Mohamed ElBaradei, the agency’s director general, who is pressing Iran to reveal its past nuclear activity. “I cannot accuse a person without providing him or her with the evidence,” he said last year.
Although officials would not say how they had obtained the new document, it was first publicly mentioned in an agency report in May as one of 18 documents presented to Iran in connection with suspected nuclear weapons studies. At the time it was described as a “five-page document in English” about experiments with a complex initiation system to detonate a large amount of high explosives and to monitor the detonation with probes. There was no indication that the document was a translation of a much longer, more comprehensive document in Farsi.
The original, Farsi document is described by officials familiar with it as a detailed narrative of experiments aimed at creating a perfectly timed implosion of nuclear material.
According to experts, the most difficult challenges in developing nuclear weapons are creating the bomb fuel and figuring out how to compress and detonate it.
That was followed by an agency report last month that revealed that Iran might have received “foreign expertise” in its detonator experiments.
A senior official with links to the agency said then that a foreign government was not involved. He ruled out the involvement of Libya and the remnants of the network run by Abdul Qadeer Khan, the Pakistani metallurgist who built the world’s largest black-market sales operation for nuclear technology. But he would not comment further.
European and American officials now say that the “foreign expertise” was a reference to the Russian scientist, but they offered only scant details. They said that the scientist was believed to have helped guide Iranians in the experiments, but that he did not write the document.
Nor is he thought to have been affiliated with the civilian electric power plant that is being rebuilt by Russia at the Iranian port of Bushehr, and which Russia has agreed to fuel with nuclear material, the officials said.
Russia says it opposes any effort by Iran to obtain a weapon, but cooperation by Russian companies and individuals with some aspects of Iran’s nuclear program dates back years.
In the late 1990s, Russia’s scientific and technical elite, reeling from the collapse of the Soviet Union, forged ties to Iran, which paid hard currency for aid in weapons and technical programs. Western experts say the help extended to Tehran’s atomic efforts, but there was never any proof in those years of a Russian link to nuclear weapons development.
“The Iranians were very active in recruiting and paying Russian scientists to provide them with assistance in their nuclear program,” said Gary S. Samore, a National Security Council official during the Clinton administration who now directs studies at the Council on Foreign Relations.
He said he had no recollection of Russian aid in the design of Iranian nuclear arms but added that it could have happened. “It’s plausible to me that they at some point paid a Russian nuclear expert to provide assistance,” he said in an interview.
Asked about the potential contribution of the Russian scientist in detonator experimentation, a senior Russian official who has long followed Iran’s nuclear program said, “It is difficult for me to add anything.”
William J. Broad contributed reporting from New York, and David E. Sanger from Washington.
Re: Iran News and Discussions - 11 December 2007
Warning signs of an Israeli strike on Iran
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/commen ... 926251.ece
David Owen
Some key decision makers in Israel fear that unless they attack Iranian nuclear enrichment facilities in the next few months, while George W Bush is still president, there will not be another period when they can rely on the United States as being anywhere near as supportive in the aftermath of a unilateral attack.
In the past 40 years there have been few occasions when I have been more concerned about a specific conflict escalating to involve, economically, the whole world. We are watching a disinformation exercise involving a number of intelligence services. Reality is becoming ever harder to disentangle.
Last month a story in The Guardian claimed that on May 14 Ehud Olmert, the Israeli prime minister, in a meeting with Bush, had asked for a green light to attack Iran’s nuclear enrichment facilities. We were told that Bush refused. He believed Iran would see the United States as being behind any such assault and Americans would come under renewed attack in Iraq and Afghanistan. Shipping in the Gulf would be vulnerable. We were told that the source of the story was a European head of government and “his” officials – as if to exclude Angela Merkel and Germany. It is, however, improbable that Israel abandoned its option to take unilateral action.
Three weeks later the Israeli military conducted an exercise over the Mediterranean to demonstrate to the United States as well as Iran that it could attack. More recently there have been a number of stories raising concern about what is happening in Iran. One said Iran’s first nuclear electricity generating plant would go critical in December and thereafter any air attack would become impossible since it would trigger a nuclear explosion. Then we were told that a US radar system had been deployed in Israel with US personnel to strengthen Israel’s defence against Iranian airstrikes. There was also an interview with Olmert where he dismissed as “megalomania” any thought that Israel should attack Iran. He appeared to be trying to disrupt the Israeli coalition negotiations.
Finally, on Friday, The New York Times revealed that in February an IAEA inspector had talked of experiments in Iran that were “not consistent with any application other than the development of a nuclear weapon”. Iran denied the claim.
Before the Israeli negotiations got under way, Ehud Barak, the Labour leader, spoke first to Benjamin Netanyahu, leader of the Likud opposition party, rather than to Tzipi Livni, the newly elected leader of Kadima. This indicated that Barak was interested in an all-party coalition, presumably believing that a Palestinian settlement is not yet achievable and that Israel needs maximum unity to deal with a world transfixed by the economic crisis and resigned to Iran becoming a nuclear weapon state.
If Israel were to attack Iran, one Iranian response would be to block the Strait of Hormuz. On September 16 Iran said its Revolutionary Guards would defend the Gulf waters. In the narrow strait just one oil tanker sunk would halt shipping for months. Insurance cover would be refused and owners would fear the risks of sailing even if the US navy cleared mines.
The Revolutionary Guards are committed to a war against Israel and prepared, in the process, to take on the rest of the world. They have good equipment and operate from the land, sea and air. They will be suicide soldiers, seamen and airmen. If Iran is attacked, Russia and China will supply it with arms.
The circumstances surrounding Georgia’s decision to attack South Ossetia are worth remembering. The Georgian president was advised by Condoleezza Rice, the US secretary of state, not to attack but there were powerful voices in Washington that, by a nod and a wink, were encouraging action, so the Georgian government felt confident in going ahead.
Following an Israeli attack and Iranian countermeasures, the American military would be bound to follow Bush’s orders. The president-designate or, if before the election, the two candidates, would be wary of criticising him. It is imperative that voices are raised in America and Europe to warn Israel off unilateral action against Iran. The experience of Georgia has given an amber, if not a green, light to Israel and only Bush can switch that to red.
Bush’s legacy would be best served by taking dramatic diplomatic action to prevent a war with Iran. He should publicly warn Israel that the United States will use its air power to prevent it bombing Iran, while announcing that he is sending Rice to Tehran to start negotiating a grand bargain whereby all sanctions would be lifted if Iran forgoes the nuclear weapons option. He could indicate that the negotiations would not continue indefinitely, but they would give his successor, as president, time to consider all the options, military and economic. It would also allow time for Israel either to negotiate a coalition to last until 2010 or to hold elections. It would replace the present multilateral negotiations, which are stalled with Russia and China unwilling to move on strong economic sanctions. Above all, it would be a last act of real statesmanship from Bush who is otherwise destined to end his term a miserable failure.
David Owen was foreign secretary from 1977 to 1979
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/commen ... 926251.ece
David Owen
Some key decision makers in Israel fear that unless they attack Iranian nuclear enrichment facilities in the next few months, while George W Bush is still president, there will not be another period when they can rely on the United States as being anywhere near as supportive in the aftermath of a unilateral attack.
In the past 40 years there have been few occasions when I have been more concerned about a specific conflict escalating to involve, economically, the whole world. We are watching a disinformation exercise involving a number of intelligence services. Reality is becoming ever harder to disentangle.
Last month a story in The Guardian claimed that on May 14 Ehud Olmert, the Israeli prime minister, in a meeting with Bush, had asked for a green light to attack Iran’s nuclear enrichment facilities. We were told that Bush refused. He believed Iran would see the United States as being behind any such assault and Americans would come under renewed attack in Iraq and Afghanistan. Shipping in the Gulf would be vulnerable. We were told that the source of the story was a European head of government and “his” officials – as if to exclude Angela Merkel and Germany. It is, however, improbable that Israel abandoned its option to take unilateral action.
Three weeks later the Israeli military conducted an exercise over the Mediterranean to demonstrate to the United States as well as Iran that it could attack. More recently there have been a number of stories raising concern about what is happening in Iran. One said Iran’s first nuclear electricity generating plant would go critical in December and thereafter any air attack would become impossible since it would trigger a nuclear explosion. Then we were told that a US radar system had been deployed in Israel with US personnel to strengthen Israel’s defence against Iranian airstrikes. There was also an interview with Olmert where he dismissed as “megalomania” any thought that Israel should attack Iran. He appeared to be trying to disrupt the Israeli coalition negotiations.
Finally, on Friday, The New York Times revealed that in February an IAEA inspector had talked of experiments in Iran that were “not consistent with any application other than the development of a nuclear weapon”. Iran denied the claim.
Before the Israeli negotiations got under way, Ehud Barak, the Labour leader, spoke first to Benjamin Netanyahu, leader of the Likud opposition party, rather than to Tzipi Livni, the newly elected leader of Kadima. This indicated that Barak was interested in an all-party coalition, presumably believing that a Palestinian settlement is not yet achievable and that Israel needs maximum unity to deal with a world transfixed by the economic crisis and resigned to Iran becoming a nuclear weapon state.
If Israel were to attack Iran, one Iranian response would be to block the Strait of Hormuz. On September 16 Iran said its Revolutionary Guards would defend the Gulf waters. In the narrow strait just one oil tanker sunk would halt shipping for months. Insurance cover would be refused and owners would fear the risks of sailing even if the US navy cleared mines.
The Revolutionary Guards are committed to a war against Israel and prepared, in the process, to take on the rest of the world. They have good equipment and operate from the land, sea and air. They will be suicide soldiers, seamen and airmen. If Iran is attacked, Russia and China will supply it with arms.
The circumstances surrounding Georgia’s decision to attack South Ossetia are worth remembering. The Georgian president was advised by Condoleezza Rice, the US secretary of state, not to attack but there were powerful voices in Washington that, by a nod and a wink, were encouraging action, so the Georgian government felt confident in going ahead.
Following an Israeli attack and Iranian countermeasures, the American military would be bound to follow Bush’s orders. The president-designate or, if before the election, the two candidates, would be wary of criticising him. It is imperative that voices are raised in America and Europe to warn Israel off unilateral action against Iran. The experience of Georgia has given an amber, if not a green, light to Israel and only Bush can switch that to red.
Bush’s legacy would be best served by taking dramatic diplomatic action to prevent a war with Iran. He should publicly warn Israel that the United States will use its air power to prevent it bombing Iran, while announcing that he is sending Rice to Tehran to start negotiating a grand bargain whereby all sanctions would be lifted if Iran forgoes the nuclear weapons option. He could indicate that the negotiations would not continue indefinitely, but they would give his successor, as president, time to consider all the options, military and economic. It would also allow time for Israel either to negotiate a coalition to last until 2010 or to hold elections. It would replace the present multilateral negotiations, which are stalled with Russia and China unwilling to move on strong economic sanctions. Above all, it would be a last act of real statesmanship from Bush who is otherwise destined to end his term a miserable failure.
David Owen was foreign secretary from 1977 to 1979
Re: Iran News and Discussions - 11 December 2007
Is Sarkozy Also Helping Iran?
http://aawsat.com/english/news.asp?section=2&id=14368
http://aawsat.com/english/news.asp?section=2&id=14368
Re: Iran News and Discussions - 11 December 2007
Iran could make 60 N. bombs in 2 years: US expert
Milan: Iran may have the capacity to produce up to 60 nuclear bombs within two years, a leading US non-proliferation expert has told Adnkronos International.
Henry Sokolski, executive director of the Washington-based Nonproliferation Policy Education Center (NPEC), was taking part in a summit , "Preventing nuclear proliferation in the Middle East", organised by Italy's Institute for the Study of Foreign Policy (ISPI) and the Italian Foreign Ministry in Milan.
In an interview with AKI, Sokolski raised the alarm about Iran's intentions, claiming that it would have sufficient plutonium after the opening of the Bushehr plant to construct from 30 to 60 bombs.
The nuclear facility at Bushehr is being built under an agreement between the Russian and Iranian governments for 800 million dollars and is expected to begin production in early 2009.
Sokolski said Iran was putting in place the necessary technology and knowledge to recover the new plant's waste using a chemical process that does not need complex installation or specific structures.
"Plutonium that could be used to make atomic bombs," he told AKI. "The fuel for Bushehr will be supplied by the Russians who also said they would dispose of the waste products from it." But he said few people know that this waste will remain in Iran for two years before being taken away.
"In this time frame the Iranians, with an excuse to analyse the waste, can transfer it to a chemical factory and extract the plutonium," he said.
He said in the first 18 months the plant would use between 22 to 25 tonnes of fuel, from which 300 kilogrammes of plutonium could be recovered from the waste to make from 30 to 60 bombs.
Henry Sokolski heads the nonprofit organisation founded in 1994 to promote a better understanding of strategic weapons proliferation issues among policy-makers, scholars and the media.
He also serves as an adjunct professor at the Institute of World Politics in Washington and is a member of the Congressional Commission on the Prevention of Weapons of Mass Destruction Proliferation and Terrorism, to which he was appointed in May 2008.
Milan: Iran may have the capacity to produce up to 60 nuclear bombs within two years, a leading US non-proliferation expert has told Adnkronos International.
Henry Sokolski, executive director of the Washington-based Nonproliferation Policy Education Center (NPEC), was taking part in a summit , "Preventing nuclear proliferation in the Middle East", organised by Italy's Institute for the Study of Foreign Policy (ISPI) and the Italian Foreign Ministry in Milan.
In an interview with AKI, Sokolski raised the alarm about Iran's intentions, claiming that it would have sufficient plutonium after the opening of the Bushehr plant to construct from 30 to 60 bombs.
The nuclear facility at Bushehr is being built under an agreement between the Russian and Iranian governments for 800 million dollars and is expected to begin production in early 2009.
Sokolski said Iran was putting in place the necessary technology and knowledge to recover the new plant's waste using a chemical process that does not need complex installation or specific structures.
"Plutonium that could be used to make atomic bombs," he told AKI. "The fuel for Bushehr will be supplied by the Russians who also said they would dispose of the waste products from it." But he said few people know that this waste will remain in Iran for two years before being taken away.
"In this time frame the Iranians, with an excuse to analyse the waste, can transfer it to a chemical factory and extract the plutonium," he said.
He said in the first 18 months the plant would use between 22 to 25 tonnes of fuel, from which 300 kilogrammes of plutonium could be recovered from the waste to make from 30 to 60 bombs.
Henry Sokolski heads the nonprofit organisation founded in 1994 to promote a better understanding of strategic weapons proliferation issues among policy-makers, scholars and the media.
He also serves as an adjunct professor at the Institute of World Politics in Washington and is a member of the Congressional Commission on the Prevention of Weapons of Mass Destruction Proliferation and Terrorism, to which he was appointed in May 2008.
Re: Iran News and Discussions - 11 December 2007
Iran allays Indian fears on pipeline plan
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/Indi ... 587879.cms
NEW DELHI: Iran and Pakistan may have announced going ahead with the IPI (Iran-Pakistan-India) gas pipeline project even without India, but Iran apparently is still doing its bit to ensure India eventually joins them.
In one of its GSPA (Gas Supply Purchase Agreement) proposals which was discussed during the recent meeting of foreign ministers of the two countries, Iran has said that if Pakistan cuts off gas supply to India on purpose, Iran would cut off the supply to Pakistan by the same amount.
It's not known how Pakistan has reacted to this but official sources said that Pakistan would bargain with Iran before accepting any such condition. The main reason for India not joining the 1,600-mile pipe-line till now remains security.
India is also sceptical about a hostile country holding the key to a crucial energy supply line and Iran has sought to address this concern with the latest move. With Pranab Mukherjee slated to visit Iran in first week of November, they said the $7.5 billion pipeline will again come under focus.
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/Indi ... 587879.cms
NEW DELHI: Iran and Pakistan may have announced going ahead with the IPI (Iran-Pakistan-India) gas pipeline project even without India, but Iran apparently is still doing its bit to ensure India eventually joins them.
In one of its GSPA (Gas Supply Purchase Agreement) proposals which was discussed during the recent meeting of foreign ministers of the two countries, Iran has said that if Pakistan cuts off gas supply to India on purpose, Iran would cut off the supply to Pakistan by the same amount.
It's not known how Pakistan has reacted to this but official sources said that Pakistan would bargain with Iran before accepting any such condition. The main reason for India not joining the 1,600-mile pipe-line till now remains security.
India is also sceptical about a hostile country holding the key to a crucial energy supply line and Iran has sought to address this concern with the latest move. With Pranab Mukherjee slated to visit Iran in first week of November, they said the $7.5 billion pipeline will again come under focus.
Re: Iran News and Discussions - 11 December 2007
Evidence grows that Israel is preparing to attack Iran
Recent events, such as the sale of new bunker-busting bombs, suggest such a strike could receive U.S. support
http://www.etaiwannews.com/etn/news_con ... ?id=759818
Recent events, such as the sale of new bunker-busting bombs, suggest such a strike could receive U.S. support
http://www.etaiwannews.com/etn/news_con ... ?id=759818
Re: Iran News and Discussions - 11 December 2007
Why Israel will hit Iran soon
By HOWARD LURIE
http://www.philly.com/dailynews/opinion ... _soon.html
MAJOR EVENTS like the slumping economy and the war in Iraq are always likely to have an effect on the upcoming presidential election. But the fact that we're having an election is highly likely to have a major effect on one very specific international event:
I suspect that Israel will launch an attack against Iran's nuclear facilities not later than one week before the U.S. presidential election.
It will probably happen with U.S. assistance or, at least, acquiescence. It's unlikely that the U.S. will object. Assistance and cooperation by the United States would greatly enhance the likelihood of a successful outcome.
I'm led to my conclusion by a number of facts that are probably not in dispute: Israel has good reason to fear a nuclear-armed Iran, and is unlikely to let it happen. Israel has previously attacked nuclear facilities in Iraq and Syria. There is no reason to believe that it will not do so in Iran. The only question is when such an attack is likely to occur.
Our approaching election will probably affect Israel's decision.
There are essentially only three time periods to consider: (1) after the new president takes office, (2) after the U.S. election but before the new president is inaugurated, and (3) before the election.
Given his views on the Iraq war, it's highly unlikely that Israel could count upon U.S. assistance if Barack Obama wins the election and is in office at the time of an attack. John McCain is far more likely to cooperate with Israel in an attack if he's president. But Israel won't know who'll occupy the White House until after the election. So waiting carries a strong risk for Israel.
Even if Obama wins, George Bush will still be president until Jan. 20. However, if Obama wins, Israel and Bush run the risk of serious public disapproval if an attack occurs before Obama moves into the Oval Office. A disapproving Obama would be in a position to make Israel pay a very heavy price for its action.
Of course, McCain could win, but that appears increasingly unlikely. Thus, again, Israel runs a risk if it waits until after Nov. 4.
Acting before the voting presents Israel with its best opportunity. President Bush is probably inclined to provide U.S. assistance. He has spoken out against a nuclear Iran. As a lame duck, he also has nothing to lose politically by assisting Israel.
Before the election, neither Obama nor McCain is likely to condemn Israel, at least too harshly, for fear of alienating the Jewish vote, which could be crucial in several states.
Iran, of course, is likely to retaliate against Israel if attacked. But Iranian retaliation is less likely if it's clear that the U.S. will come to Israel's defense.
Regardless of his views on Israel's attack on Iran's nuclear facilities, neither candidate is likely to be willing, before the election, to express strong opposition to U.S. efforts to defend Israel against Iranian retaliation.
INDEED, IT'S inevitable, if Israel is attacked before the election, that the candidates will have to respond about defending Israel against Iranian retaliation.
It would be difficult for the candidates to equivocate on this. It is also appears unlikely that either would refuse to support coming to Israel's defense.
Thus, whatever effect an Israeli attack will have on the election, it seems clear to me that the approaching election itself will have a major effect on Israel's decision to attack. *
Howard Lurie of King of Prussia was an instructor at the Army Intelligence School in the early years of the Vietnam war.
By HOWARD LURIE
http://www.philly.com/dailynews/opinion ... _soon.html
MAJOR EVENTS like the slumping economy and the war in Iraq are always likely to have an effect on the upcoming presidential election. But the fact that we're having an election is highly likely to have a major effect on one very specific international event:
I suspect that Israel will launch an attack against Iran's nuclear facilities not later than one week before the U.S. presidential election.
It will probably happen with U.S. assistance or, at least, acquiescence. It's unlikely that the U.S. will object. Assistance and cooperation by the United States would greatly enhance the likelihood of a successful outcome.
I'm led to my conclusion by a number of facts that are probably not in dispute: Israel has good reason to fear a nuclear-armed Iran, and is unlikely to let it happen. Israel has previously attacked nuclear facilities in Iraq and Syria. There is no reason to believe that it will not do so in Iran. The only question is when such an attack is likely to occur.
Our approaching election will probably affect Israel's decision.
There are essentially only three time periods to consider: (1) after the new president takes office, (2) after the U.S. election but before the new president is inaugurated, and (3) before the election.
Given his views on the Iraq war, it's highly unlikely that Israel could count upon U.S. assistance if Barack Obama wins the election and is in office at the time of an attack. John McCain is far more likely to cooperate with Israel in an attack if he's president. But Israel won't know who'll occupy the White House until after the election. So waiting carries a strong risk for Israel.
Even if Obama wins, George Bush will still be president until Jan. 20. However, if Obama wins, Israel and Bush run the risk of serious public disapproval if an attack occurs before Obama moves into the Oval Office. A disapproving Obama would be in a position to make Israel pay a very heavy price for its action.
Of course, McCain could win, but that appears increasingly unlikely. Thus, again, Israel runs a risk if it waits until after Nov. 4.
Acting before the voting presents Israel with its best opportunity. President Bush is probably inclined to provide U.S. assistance. He has spoken out against a nuclear Iran. As a lame duck, he also has nothing to lose politically by assisting Israel.
Before the election, neither Obama nor McCain is likely to condemn Israel, at least too harshly, for fear of alienating the Jewish vote, which could be crucial in several states.
Iran, of course, is likely to retaliate against Israel if attacked. But Iranian retaliation is less likely if it's clear that the U.S. will come to Israel's defense.
Regardless of his views on Israel's attack on Iran's nuclear facilities, neither candidate is likely to be willing, before the election, to express strong opposition to U.S. efforts to defend Israel against Iranian retaliation.
INDEED, IT'S inevitable, if Israel is attacked before the election, that the candidates will have to respond about defending Israel against Iranian retaliation.
It would be difficult for the candidates to equivocate on this. It is also appears unlikely that either would refuse to support coming to Israel's defense.
Thus, whatever effect an Israeli attack will have on the election, it seems clear to me that the approaching election itself will have a major effect on Israel's decision to attack. *
Howard Lurie of King of Prussia was an instructor at the Army Intelligence School in the early years of the Vietnam war.
Re: Iran News and Discussions - 11 December 2007
In all likelyhood Iran will take some action before that happens.
Re: Iran News and Discussions - 11 December 2007
Like what? Attack on israel would be suicide. US is just looking for an excuse to hit them.
Re: Iran News and Discussions - 11 December 2007
China blocking Iran sanctions
http://www.jta.org/cgi-bin/iowa/breaking/110799.html
China is blocking talks on how to further isolate Iran, according to reports.
An Associated Press report Thursday cited U.S. officials as saying that China is blocking a conference call among the "P5 plus 1" group of major powers who are leading efforts to get Iran to stand down from its suspected nuclear weapons program.
The Bush administration had hoped to convene such a meeting last month in New York during the opening of the U.N. General Assembly, but at that time Russia resisted -- in part because it was still angry at U.S. backing for Georgia during the Caucasus miniwar over the summer.
Now, AP quoted U.S. officials as saying, China is angry at the United States over its sale of arms to Taiwan.
The "P5 plus 1" -- comprised of the United States, Russia, France, Britain and China, all veto-wielding permanent members of the U.N. Security Council, as well as Germany -- has pushed through three sets of U.N. Security Council sanctions on Iran over the last year. The United States, Britain, France and Germany now want to tighten the sanctions.
http://www.jta.org/cgi-bin/iowa/breaking/110799.html
China is blocking talks on how to further isolate Iran, according to reports.
An Associated Press report Thursday cited U.S. officials as saying that China is blocking a conference call among the "P5 plus 1" group of major powers who are leading efforts to get Iran to stand down from its suspected nuclear weapons program.
The Bush administration had hoped to convene such a meeting last month in New York during the opening of the U.N. General Assembly, but at that time Russia resisted -- in part because it was still angry at U.S. backing for Georgia during the Caucasus miniwar over the summer.
Now, AP quoted U.S. officials as saying, China is angry at the United States over its sale of arms to Taiwan.
The "P5 plus 1" -- comprised of the United States, Russia, France, Britain and China, all veto-wielding permanent members of the U.N. Security Council, as well as Germany -- has pushed through three sets of U.N. Security Council sanctions on Iran over the last year. The United States, Britain, France and Germany now want to tighten the sanctions.
Re: Iran News and Discussions - 11 December 2007
Iran warns West against talks with Taliban
Monday October 20, 2008
TEHRAN: Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki warned the West on Sunday not to push for talks with the Taliban militia, which had stormy relations with Tehran when it ruled Afghanistan up to 2001.
The whole world knows today about the strategic failure of foreign forces in Afghanistan and we advise them not to try a new failure,î FM Mottaki told a news conference. We advise them to think about the consequences of talks with the Taliban, which are taking place in the region and in Europe and avoid being bitten in the same spot twice,î Mottaki said, citing a Persian proverb.
Representatives of the Afghan government met Taliban leaders in Makkah for talks on ending the insurgency that has plagued Afghanistan ever since the militia was ousted from power in a US-led invasion seven years ago, the Saudi daily ëAsharq Al-Awsatí reported.
The Afghan government denied the report but President Hamid Karzai has long called for talks with the Taliban on condition that they accept his governmentís constitution and are not involved with al-Qaeda. Several Western countries have expressed support to Karzaiís call for negotiations with the militia. The West should not think that they can confine extremism to Afghanistan, Pakistan and Central Asia,î Mottaki said, warning that extremism would also reach Europe and the West one day.
Monday October 20, 2008
TEHRAN: Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki warned the West on Sunday not to push for talks with the Taliban militia, which had stormy relations with Tehran when it ruled Afghanistan up to 2001.
The whole world knows today about the strategic failure of foreign forces in Afghanistan and we advise them not to try a new failure,î FM Mottaki told a news conference. We advise them to think about the consequences of talks with the Taliban, which are taking place in the region and in Europe and avoid being bitten in the same spot twice,î Mottaki said, citing a Persian proverb.
Representatives of the Afghan government met Taliban leaders in Makkah for talks on ending the insurgency that has plagued Afghanistan ever since the militia was ousted from power in a US-led invasion seven years ago, the Saudi daily ëAsharq Al-Awsatí reported.
The Afghan government denied the report but President Hamid Karzai has long called for talks with the Taliban on condition that they accept his governmentís constitution and are not involved with al-Qaeda. Several Western countries have expressed support to Karzaiís call for negotiations with the militia. The West should not think that they can confine extremism to Afghanistan, Pakistan and Central Asia,î Mottaki said, warning that extremism would also reach Europe and the West one day.
Re: Iran News and Discussions - 11 December 2007
Israel laying its yellow brick road to Iran war
http://www.haber27.com/news_detail.php?id=14307
http://www.haber27.com/news_detail.php?id=14307
Re: Iran News and Discussions - 11 December 2007
Elusive consensus on Iran: By Kaveh L Afrasiabi
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/JJ23Ak02.html
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/JJ23Ak02.html
Re: Iran News and Discussions - 11 December 2007
Tehran wants Barack Obama in the White House, rules out war
DEBKAfile Special Report
October 23, 2008, 11:19 AM (GMT+02:00)
Iranian parliament speaker Ali Larijani
During a visit to Bahrain, Iran’s parliament speaker Ali Larijani said Wednesday, Oct. 22, that Tehran would prefer Democratic senator Barack Obama in the White House next year. He also ruled out any US attack on his country. “The risk was low before, but now I am 100 percent certain that the United States will not unleash a war against Iran,” he said at a new conference in Manama.
“We lean more in favor of Obama,”, “because he is more flexible and rational, even through we know American policy will not change that much.”
DEBKAfile’s Iranian sources note that Larijani is one of the most powerful voices in Tehran’s conservative camp and a close confidant of supreme ruler Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. He would not have spoken out in favor of Obama without top-level sanction.
The location Larijani chose for his statement is significant: Bahrain is one of America’s greatest friends in the Gulf region, host to the US 5th Fleet headquarters. Tehran was laying claim to a foothold in the Gulf region.
The argument he advanced against a US attack was arithmetical: “The economic crisis has cost America 1,400 billion dollars and Washington is working to resolve its internal problems and not a war.”
Re: Iran News and Discussions - 11 December 2007
debka = unreliable source of information
Re: Iran News and Discussions - 11 December 2007
Iran: Arabian Nightmare
http://www.strategypage.com/qnd/iran/ar ... 81025.aspx
October 25, 2008: U.S. and Iraqi forces regularly capture Iraqis smuggling weapons in from Iran. Over the Summer, nearly 10,000 Iranian weapons were seized from smugglers, usually by American troops. Iran denies any involvement, as there is a lot of smuggling from Iran to Iraq. But many of the captured smugglers admit that they received military training in Iran, as part of a plan to build a pro-Iranian terrorist organization inside Iraq, to be used whenever Iran believes it needs a little more chaos inside its Shia neighbor. The Iraqi government officially thanks Iran and Syria (a client state of Iran) for helping to halt the flow of aid to Sunni terrorists inside Iraq. But many Iraqis suspect that Iran wants to annex southern Iraq, which is over 80 percent Shia, has the major Shia holy places and oil fields that would increase Iranian exports by over 50 percent. Iraqis, particularly Shia Iraqis, note that Iranian Arabs, living just across the border in Iran's oil producing region, are not treated well, never have been, and probably never will be. Ethnic Iranians (an Indo-European people) have a low opinion of Arabs, and do little to hide it.
Iran's Central Bank, which controls the nation's banking system, has had three governors (the guy in charge) removed in the last three years. Each of the former governors was a professional banker who rebelled at government orders to make bad loans and subsidize make-work (economically inefficient enterprises) to try and reduce the unemployment rate (officially about 10 percent, really more than twice that). That has sent inflation to nearly 30 percent and starved legitimate firms for credit. The professional bankers see this as economic suicide, even though there is some political wisdom in trying to reduce the unemployment rate in the short term. What the bankers are smart enough to not bring up is that the majority of Iranians oppose the clerical dictatorship they have been living under for nearly three decades, but are not yet ready to go into open rebellion against.
Growing hostility between Arab Sunni and Iranian Shia religious zealots has resulted in a Cyber War. Last month, Sunni hackers defaced hundreds of web sites of Iranian clerics. This month Shia hackers have responded by shutting down the news site of Saudi satellite TV news channel Al Arabiya. The two main web sites for dispensing al Qaeda propaganda were also shut down. Media in Iran and the Arab world generally deplore this religious Cyber War, urging the hackers to go after Israel instead, or do something, anything, more productive. The hackers are not listening. Many Sunnis believe the Iranians will somehow take over Iraq, and then invade Arabia and seize all the Arab oil. Some Iranians believe this as well, and talk openly about how the Moslem world would be better off if the Shia (that is, the Iranians) were in charge. When the Sunnis see Iranian weapons being smuggled into Iraq, and Iraqi politicians being bribed by Iran to vote for laws the Iranians prefer, they see their fears being realized. The general Iranian strategy appears to be getting U.S. troops out of Iraq so that pro-Iranian Iraqi groups, perhaps with the help of the Iranian military, can take over the government.
The war against Kurdish separatists (the PKK, for the most part) continues in the north. There are several dozen casualties or arrests each week. The government continues its crackdown on the Arab minority as well, arresting more people each week for being American spies, or simply suspected of disloyalty. A new law passed by the parliament will inflict the death penalty for any Iranian Moslem male who converts to Christianity. Women converts got to jail for life. There have been 189 executions so far this year, most of them for drug offenses (heroin and opium are pouring in from Afghanistan).
The government is trying to muzzle criticism of this by Grand Ayatollah Hossein-Ali Montazeri, one of the senior clerics. An aide to Montazeri was recently arrested (for putting critical, of the government, comments on Montazeri's web site). Montazeri has long been a critic of the radicals, and was under house arrest from 1997-2003.
The government is becoming more vocal in its support of Hamas, a Sunni dominated Palestinian terrorist organization that controls the Gaza Strip (between Israel and Egypt.) This is seen as an unnatural arrangement, given the growing hostility between Shia and Sunni radicals. But Hamas is so intent on attacking (and destroying) Israel, that Iranian radicals make an exception. Hamas cooperates by not joining its fellow Sunni radicals in openly hating Iran.
October 24, 2008: The U.S. has imposed more sanctions on Iranian banks and businesses, in a continued effort to cripple the Iranian smuggling network. For over two decades, the Iranians have been successfully smuggling in components for weapons and other technology they are not allowed to buy openly (because Iran is a supporter of Islamic terrorism.)
October 21, 2008: Security forces seized two pigeons near the Natanz nuclear plant and declared that the birds had been equipped with some mysterious Israeli technology, so the nuclear plant could be spied on. Or at least that's how it's being reported in the Iranian media. We're not making this up.
October 15, 2008: An Iranian-American graduate student, in the country do research on women's rights, was arrested for a traffic offense. But now she is being held indefinitely, apparently because of her academic work. In the past, Iranian expatriates have been arrested and beaten to death, apparently while being interrogated.
October 14, 2008: Compulsory military service has been cut from 18 to 16 months (except in areas with very high unemployment, where it is only cut to 17 months). The half million man armed forces is expensive to operate, even if the conscripts are paid very little. They still have to be fed, housed and supervised. Moreover, there are more young Iranian men becoming eligible for the draft each year, than the military needs. This is causing social unrest as draft exemptions are for sale, and become another annoying example of government corruption.
October 10, 2008: The government made it pretty obvious who controls the Lebanese Shia terrorist organization Hezbollah, by sending a senior intelligence officer, Mohammad Rida Zahidi, to serve as the new military commander (and number two guy) for Hezbollah. The previous incumbent, a Lebanese Shia Arab, was assassinated in Syria last February. Zahidi is apparently under orders to make sure Hezbollah does not start any more unauthorized wars, like it did two years ago with Israel. Hezbollah is now pushing the other factions in the country (which comprise the majority of the population) into a civil war, which Iran does not want.
In Somalia, pirates freed an Iranian cargo ship, which had been seized two months ago. Apparently a ransom had been paid. The ship was carrying chemicals and raw materials from Iran to the Netherlands. There were rumors that 16 pirates died when they opened one of the cargo containers holding what appeared to be holding a poisonous substance. Exactly what the ship was carrying is not yet known.
October 8, 2008: Israeli officials convinced Russia to announce that Russian S-300 surface-to-air missile systems would not be shipped to Iran. This system is similar to the U.S. Patriot system. Israel did not reveal what it used to persuade the Russians to halt the S-300 shipments, but it was believed to be a promise not to market technology that would help attackers defeat S-300 missiles and radars. Meanwhile, Iran is being criticized for exporting weapons to Sudan, where the government is slaughtering its own people in Darfur.
October 6, 2008: An airplane from Iraq, carrying a senior politician (the Sunni Arab speaker of the parliament) was refused permission to land at the capital. The official reason was a technical problem on the ground. More radical Iranian clerics are very hostile to Iraqis Sunnis (who are all seen as still secretly loyal to Saddam Hussein.) Elsewhere, a passenger plane carrying Hungarian air traffic controllers and air port administrators, to work in Afghanistan, mistakenly strayed into Iranian air space and was forced to land by Iranian warplanes. The Iranians promptly announced that they had captured an American military plane and its crew. It took almost a day for the real story to get out. The Hungarians were allowed to continue on their way.
http://www.strategypage.com/qnd/iran/ar ... 81025.aspx
October 25, 2008: U.S. and Iraqi forces regularly capture Iraqis smuggling weapons in from Iran. Over the Summer, nearly 10,000 Iranian weapons were seized from smugglers, usually by American troops. Iran denies any involvement, as there is a lot of smuggling from Iran to Iraq. But many of the captured smugglers admit that they received military training in Iran, as part of a plan to build a pro-Iranian terrorist organization inside Iraq, to be used whenever Iran believes it needs a little more chaos inside its Shia neighbor. The Iraqi government officially thanks Iran and Syria (a client state of Iran) for helping to halt the flow of aid to Sunni terrorists inside Iraq. But many Iraqis suspect that Iran wants to annex southern Iraq, which is over 80 percent Shia, has the major Shia holy places and oil fields that would increase Iranian exports by over 50 percent. Iraqis, particularly Shia Iraqis, note that Iranian Arabs, living just across the border in Iran's oil producing region, are not treated well, never have been, and probably never will be. Ethnic Iranians (an Indo-European people) have a low opinion of Arabs, and do little to hide it.
Iran's Central Bank, which controls the nation's banking system, has had three governors (the guy in charge) removed in the last three years. Each of the former governors was a professional banker who rebelled at government orders to make bad loans and subsidize make-work (economically inefficient enterprises) to try and reduce the unemployment rate (officially about 10 percent, really more than twice that). That has sent inflation to nearly 30 percent and starved legitimate firms for credit. The professional bankers see this as economic suicide, even though there is some political wisdom in trying to reduce the unemployment rate in the short term. What the bankers are smart enough to not bring up is that the majority of Iranians oppose the clerical dictatorship they have been living under for nearly three decades, but are not yet ready to go into open rebellion against.
Growing hostility between Arab Sunni and Iranian Shia religious zealots has resulted in a Cyber War. Last month, Sunni hackers defaced hundreds of web sites of Iranian clerics. This month Shia hackers have responded by shutting down the news site of Saudi satellite TV news channel Al Arabiya. The two main web sites for dispensing al Qaeda propaganda were also shut down. Media in Iran and the Arab world generally deplore this religious Cyber War, urging the hackers to go after Israel instead, or do something, anything, more productive. The hackers are not listening. Many Sunnis believe the Iranians will somehow take over Iraq, and then invade Arabia and seize all the Arab oil. Some Iranians believe this as well, and talk openly about how the Moslem world would be better off if the Shia (that is, the Iranians) were in charge. When the Sunnis see Iranian weapons being smuggled into Iraq, and Iraqi politicians being bribed by Iran to vote for laws the Iranians prefer, they see their fears being realized. The general Iranian strategy appears to be getting U.S. troops out of Iraq so that pro-Iranian Iraqi groups, perhaps with the help of the Iranian military, can take over the government.
The war against Kurdish separatists (the PKK, for the most part) continues in the north. There are several dozen casualties or arrests each week. The government continues its crackdown on the Arab minority as well, arresting more people each week for being American spies, or simply suspected of disloyalty. A new law passed by the parliament will inflict the death penalty for any Iranian Moslem male who converts to Christianity. Women converts got to jail for life. There have been 189 executions so far this year, most of them for drug offenses (heroin and opium are pouring in from Afghanistan).
The government is trying to muzzle criticism of this by Grand Ayatollah Hossein-Ali Montazeri, one of the senior clerics. An aide to Montazeri was recently arrested (for putting critical, of the government, comments on Montazeri's web site). Montazeri has long been a critic of the radicals, and was under house arrest from 1997-2003.
The government is becoming more vocal in its support of Hamas, a Sunni dominated Palestinian terrorist organization that controls the Gaza Strip (between Israel and Egypt.) This is seen as an unnatural arrangement, given the growing hostility between Shia and Sunni radicals. But Hamas is so intent on attacking (and destroying) Israel, that Iranian radicals make an exception. Hamas cooperates by not joining its fellow Sunni radicals in openly hating Iran.
October 24, 2008: The U.S. has imposed more sanctions on Iranian banks and businesses, in a continued effort to cripple the Iranian smuggling network. For over two decades, the Iranians have been successfully smuggling in components for weapons and other technology they are not allowed to buy openly (because Iran is a supporter of Islamic terrorism.)
October 21, 2008: Security forces seized two pigeons near the Natanz nuclear plant and declared that the birds had been equipped with some mysterious Israeli technology, so the nuclear plant could be spied on. Or at least that's how it's being reported in the Iranian media. We're not making this up.
October 15, 2008: An Iranian-American graduate student, in the country do research on women's rights, was arrested for a traffic offense. But now she is being held indefinitely, apparently because of her academic work. In the past, Iranian expatriates have been arrested and beaten to death, apparently while being interrogated.
October 14, 2008: Compulsory military service has been cut from 18 to 16 months (except in areas with very high unemployment, where it is only cut to 17 months). The half million man armed forces is expensive to operate, even if the conscripts are paid very little. They still have to be fed, housed and supervised. Moreover, there are more young Iranian men becoming eligible for the draft each year, than the military needs. This is causing social unrest as draft exemptions are for sale, and become another annoying example of government corruption.
October 10, 2008: The government made it pretty obvious who controls the Lebanese Shia terrorist organization Hezbollah, by sending a senior intelligence officer, Mohammad Rida Zahidi, to serve as the new military commander (and number two guy) for Hezbollah. The previous incumbent, a Lebanese Shia Arab, was assassinated in Syria last February. Zahidi is apparently under orders to make sure Hezbollah does not start any more unauthorized wars, like it did two years ago with Israel. Hezbollah is now pushing the other factions in the country (which comprise the majority of the population) into a civil war, which Iran does not want.
In Somalia, pirates freed an Iranian cargo ship, which had been seized two months ago. Apparently a ransom had been paid. The ship was carrying chemicals and raw materials from Iran to the Netherlands. There were rumors that 16 pirates died when they opened one of the cargo containers holding what appeared to be holding a poisonous substance. Exactly what the ship was carrying is not yet known.
October 8, 2008: Israeli officials convinced Russia to announce that Russian S-300 surface-to-air missile systems would not be shipped to Iran. This system is similar to the U.S. Patriot system. Israel did not reveal what it used to persuade the Russians to halt the S-300 shipments, but it was believed to be a promise not to market technology that would help attackers defeat S-300 missiles and radars. Meanwhile, Iran is being criticized for exporting weapons to Sudan, where the government is slaughtering its own people in Darfur.
October 6, 2008: An airplane from Iraq, carrying a senior politician (the Sunni Arab speaker of the parliament) was refused permission to land at the capital. The official reason was a technical problem on the ground. More radical Iranian clerics are very hostile to Iraqis Sunnis (who are all seen as still secretly loyal to Saddam Hussein.) Elsewhere, a passenger plane carrying Hungarian air traffic controllers and air port administrators, to work in Afghanistan, mistakenly strayed into Iranian air space and was forced to land by Iranian warplanes. The Iranians promptly announced that they had captured an American military plane and its crew. It took almost a day for the real story to get out. The Hungarians were allowed to continue on their way.
Re: Iran News and Discussions - 11 December 2007
Iran opposes NATO extension to the East
Tehran Times Political Desk
TEHRAN – Iran’s Deputy Foreign Minister for Educational and Research Affairs Manuchehr Mohammadi expressed Iran’s protest to the extension of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization to the East.
http://www.tehrantimes.com/index_View.asp?code=180901
Mohammadi said the regional governments should distance themselves from competitive and hostile policies which have remained from the cold war era.
He said, “NATO’s presence in a region it is not familiar with would not be to its benefit because it has already experienced an unsuccessful presence in Iraq and Afghanistan.”
U.S. President George W. Bush signed papers Friday to formally declare U.S. support of NATO membership for Albania and Croatia.
Bush also reiterated U.S. support for prospective NATO members Ukraine, Georgia, Montenegro, and Bosnia-Herzegovina. Bush added, “The door to NATO membership also remains open to the people of Serbia should they choose that path.”
NATO leaders agreed at a summit earlier this year in Romania to invite Albania and Croatia into the alliance. However, NATO rebuffed U.S. attempts to begin the process of inviting Ukraine and Georgia, both former Soviet republics, to join.
Despite strong U.S. backing to bring them in, Germany, France, and some other alliance members opposed the move, fearing it would provoke Russia which has made it clear it would regard such a move as something close to a hostile action by NATO.
France’s minister for European affairs on Wednesday said he was opposed to Georgia and Ukraine entering the NATO military alliance for now because it would not benefit Europe.
NATO foreign ministers are set to once again examine Georgia and Ukraine’s candidacy for membership in December.
Russia launched a military attack on Georgia on August 8 in response to a Georgian military offensive to take the region of South Ossetia back under the government control.
Mohammadi said the recent conflict between Russia and Georgia is one of the most important events since the September 11 attacks on the United States which would have a great influence on the international relations.
He said the 16th conference of the Central Asia and Caucasus, due to be held in Tehran this week, will specifically focus on the Caucasus conflict and its effects on the world.
Mohammadi said experts form different countries including the United States, Britain, Armenia, Ukraine, Germany, Italy, Russia, India, Sweden, Georgia, Japan, Turkey, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, and Poland will attend the conference.
He insisted that Iran believes the Caucasus conflict has not yet ended and expressed Tehran’s readiness to mediate between Russia and Georgia to resolve the issue
Tehran Times Political Desk
TEHRAN – Iran’s Deputy Foreign Minister for Educational and Research Affairs Manuchehr Mohammadi expressed Iran’s protest to the extension of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization to the East.
http://www.tehrantimes.com/index_View.asp?code=180901
Mohammadi said the regional governments should distance themselves from competitive and hostile policies which have remained from the cold war era.
He said, “NATO’s presence in a region it is not familiar with would not be to its benefit because it has already experienced an unsuccessful presence in Iraq and Afghanistan.”
U.S. President George W. Bush signed papers Friday to formally declare U.S. support of NATO membership for Albania and Croatia.
Bush also reiterated U.S. support for prospective NATO members Ukraine, Georgia, Montenegro, and Bosnia-Herzegovina. Bush added, “The door to NATO membership also remains open to the people of Serbia should they choose that path.”
NATO leaders agreed at a summit earlier this year in Romania to invite Albania and Croatia into the alliance. However, NATO rebuffed U.S. attempts to begin the process of inviting Ukraine and Georgia, both former Soviet republics, to join.
Despite strong U.S. backing to bring them in, Germany, France, and some other alliance members opposed the move, fearing it would provoke Russia which has made it clear it would regard such a move as something close to a hostile action by NATO.
France’s minister for European affairs on Wednesday said he was opposed to Georgia and Ukraine entering the NATO military alliance for now because it would not benefit Europe.
NATO foreign ministers are set to once again examine Georgia and Ukraine’s candidacy for membership in December.
Russia launched a military attack on Georgia on August 8 in response to a Georgian military offensive to take the region of South Ossetia back under the government control.
Mohammadi said the recent conflict between Russia and Georgia is one of the most important events since the September 11 attacks on the United States which would have a great influence on the international relations.
He said the 16th conference of the Central Asia and Caucasus, due to be held in Tehran this week, will specifically focus on the Caucasus conflict and its effects on the world.
Mohammadi said experts form different countries including the United States, Britain, Armenia, Ukraine, Germany, Italy, Russia, India, Sweden, Georgia, Japan, Turkey, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, and Poland will attend the conference.
He insisted that Iran believes the Caucasus conflict has not yet ended and expressed Tehran’s readiness to mediate between Russia and Georgia to resolve the issue
Re: Iran News and Discussions - 11 December 2007
No, its not foolish, just business. Selling arms isnt just a means to an end, its often an end in itself.renukb wrote:If true, another foolish act by Russians... Russia should prefer to keep the wars away from their land and neighbours....
Russia fudges pledge not to sell S-300s to Iran
From http://www.upi.com/
WASHINGTON, Oct. 10 (UPI) -- The good news for Israel is that its outgoing Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has won assurances from Russia that it isn't going to sell advanced anti-aircraft and anti-missile systems to Iran.
The bad news is that Russia already has sold a lot of other dangerous things to Iran, and its position on the S-300 could change too. Also the assurance in question didn't actually mention the S-300 system that so alarms the Israelis. It didn't mention the Iskander-E missiles that Syria wants from the Kremlin either, for that matter.
....The S-300PMU1 -- NATO designation SA-20 Gargoyle -- has a range of more than 100 miles, with the capability of destroying ballistic missiles and operating at both low and high altitudes.
Some analysts have even claimed that the S-300 could have an 80 percent interception rate capability against America's old, slow and in many respects obsolete subsonic Tomahawk cruise missiles.
The Russians have a lot of markets for the S-300; Iran and Syria are far from the largest. The Israelis made it clear that if the system was sold to either country, they were already in a position to field, and internationally market effective counter-measures.
Besides, there are those in Russia who are uneasy about Iran getting too strong. For 200 years its been the Russians pushing south against the Iranians. Now its the Iranians who are demanding a redrawing of the maritime boundaries in the Caspian.
Re: Iran News and Discussions - 11 December 2007
US Says Curbing Iran's Nuclear Program in Moscow's Interest By David Gollust
Washington
27 October 2008
http://www.voanews.com/english/2008-10-27-voa40.cfm
The U.S. State Department said Monday that working to curb Iran's nuclear ambitions is in Russia's own interest and not a favor to Washington. Moscow has threatened to cut back cooperation on Iran because of new U.S. non-proliferation sanctions on a Russian company. VOA's David Gollust reports from the State Department.
The State Department says Russia would only be harming its own interests if it follows through with a threat to curtail cooperation with other major powers on preventing Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons.
The Russian warning came from Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, who angrily protested a U.S. decision announced Friday to impose non-proliferation sanctions against 13 foreign companies including Russia's state arms exporter, Rosoboronexport.
A State Department announcement, published in the U.S. government's official journal, the Federal Register, did not specify charges against the Russian firm.
But it did say there was credible information that it violated U.S. laws curbing sales of weapons of mass destruction and missile technology to Iran, North Korea and Syria.
Rosoboronexport had previously been sanctioned in 2006 in a move protested by Moscow, and the decision Friday extends U.S. penalties against it for another two years.
Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov, at a news conference in Luxembourg Friday, called the U.S. sanctions against the Russian firm illegal and unjust, and said they undermine cooperation among the five permanent U.N. Security Council member countries and Germany, the P5+1 group, to get Iran to stop enriching uranium.
At a news briefing, State Department Spokesman Sean McCormack confirmed that Moscow had made a similar complaint about the sanctions move through diplomatic channels. He said Russia would only be harming itself if it cut back its role in the P5+1.
"This is not a favor to us. Iran having a nuclear weapon is not in Russia's interest. It is in nobody's interest. So, working diplomatically to see that they do not have the abilities and the know-how and the technologies and the hardware to solve some of the toughest problems that could lead to a nuclear weapon is in Russia's interest," he said.
State Department officials said the reasons for penalizing the Russian firm and the others were classified, but Lavrov indicated it had to do with Rosoboronexport dealings with Iran.
Lavrov said all Russian military-technical cooperation with Iran is in strict accordance with international law, and called the U.S. move an arrogant extra-territorial exercise of American law.
The action bars all U.S. government business dealings with the Russian company and its subsidiaries, and sales to them of U.S. military hardware and technology.
Other foreign entities named in the sanctions announcement are Iran's Revolutionary Guards Corps, three companies from China, two each from North Korea and Sudan, and one each from Syria, Venezuela, South Korea and the United Arab Emirates.
Washington
27 October 2008
http://www.voanews.com/english/2008-10-27-voa40.cfm
The U.S. State Department said Monday that working to curb Iran's nuclear ambitions is in Russia's own interest and not a favor to Washington. Moscow has threatened to cut back cooperation on Iran because of new U.S. non-proliferation sanctions on a Russian company. VOA's David Gollust reports from the State Department.
The State Department says Russia would only be harming its own interests if it follows through with a threat to curtail cooperation with other major powers on preventing Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons.
The Russian warning came from Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, who angrily protested a U.S. decision announced Friday to impose non-proliferation sanctions against 13 foreign companies including Russia's state arms exporter, Rosoboronexport.
A State Department announcement, published in the U.S. government's official journal, the Federal Register, did not specify charges against the Russian firm.
But it did say there was credible information that it violated U.S. laws curbing sales of weapons of mass destruction and missile technology to Iran, North Korea and Syria.
Rosoboronexport had previously been sanctioned in 2006 in a move protested by Moscow, and the decision Friday extends U.S. penalties against it for another two years.
Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov, at a news conference in Luxembourg Friday, called the U.S. sanctions against the Russian firm illegal and unjust, and said they undermine cooperation among the five permanent U.N. Security Council member countries and Germany, the P5+1 group, to get Iran to stop enriching uranium.
At a news briefing, State Department Spokesman Sean McCormack confirmed that Moscow had made a similar complaint about the sanctions move through diplomatic channels. He said Russia would only be harming itself if it cut back its role in the P5+1.
"This is not a favor to us. Iran having a nuclear weapon is not in Russia's interest. It is in nobody's interest. So, working diplomatically to see that they do not have the abilities and the know-how and the technologies and the hardware to solve some of the toughest problems that could lead to a nuclear weapon is in Russia's interest," he said.
State Department officials said the reasons for penalizing the Russian firm and the others were classified, but Lavrov indicated it had to do with Rosoboronexport dealings with Iran.
Lavrov said all Russian military-technical cooperation with Iran is in strict accordance with international law, and called the U.S. move an arrogant extra-territorial exercise of American law.
The action bars all U.S. government business dealings with the Russian company and its subsidiaries, and sales to them of U.S. military hardware and technology.
Other foreign entities named in the sanctions announcement are Iran's Revolutionary Guards Corps, three companies from China, two each from North Korea and Sudan, and one each from Syria, Venezuela, South Korea and the United Arab Emirates.
Re: Iran News and Discussions - 11 December 2007
Iran opens new naval base at mouth of Persian Gulf• Move boosts Tehran threat to choke vital oil supply
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/oct/29/iran
• Extent of forces at site remains unclearJulian Borger, diplomatic editor The Guardian, Wednesday October 29 2008 Iran yesterday signalled its intention to extend its military presence in the world's most important oil conduit, opening a new naval base at the mouth of the Persian Gulf and adding weight to its threats to choke off oil supplies, if the Islamic Republic came under attack.
The inauguration of the new base at Jask was announced by Iran's naval commander, Admiral Habibollah Sayyari, who said it represented a new line of defence, blocking the entry of the "enemy" into the Persian Gulf and the strategically vital Strait of Hormuz, the gateway through which 40% of the world's traded oil passes each day.
As international tensions have grown over Iran's nuclear programme and US allegations of Iranian involvement in Iraq's insurgency, the US has reinforced its naval presence, keeping two aircraft carriers and their battle groups in the Gulf for long periods this year, instead of one. The USS Ronald Reagan and USS Theodore Roosevelt carriers are currently on patrol, and being used for sorties over Iraq.
Nato and the EU have announced plans to dispatch more ships to the Gulf of Aden in the coming months. The move is aimed at combating Somali-based pirates and escorting food aid deliveries in the Horn of Africa, but the naval build-up has been viewed with suspicion in Tehran.
French president Nicolas Sarkozy has also moved to bolster naval presence in the Gulf, signing a deal with Abu Dhabi to site a new base on the Emirate's coast. There is an ongoing dispute between Iran and Abu Dhabi over possession of three small islands in the Strait of Hormuz.
Iran's deputy army commander, Brigadier General Abdul-Rahim Moussavi, commenting on the base's inauguration, said it would represent an "impenetrable naval barrier". As speculation has waxed and waned in recent months over the possibility of a US or an Israeli air strike against Iranian nuclear facilities, the Iranian government has threatened a multi-pronged response, including the possible closure of the Strait of Hormuz.
Iranian naval doctrine is focused on asymmetric attacks against western navies using swarms of small high-speed fibreglass boats armed with anti-ship missiles under the command of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. The IRGC would rely on strength in numbers and surprise, calling it a "presence everywhere and nowhere doctrine".
Iran's regular navy is comparatively small, comprising three frigates, two corvettes, and three "kilo" class submarines. It is currently based at the northern shore of the Strait of Hormuz, at Bandar Abbas. Jason Alderwick, a naval expert at the International Institute for Strategic Studies, said Jask would offer some important advantages.
"It is in a better position strategically than Bandar Abbas," Alderwick said. "It has access to the Arabian sea, so there is deep water access straight away. It has a commanding position vis-à-vis access to the straights, being forward, to the east for them. The real question is what forces are going to be based there? At this stage it's unclear what the Iranians are going to station there, for example, if they want to re-site their submarines there. That would be significant."
Lee Willett, the head of maritime studies at the Royal United Services Institute, said the mere announcement of a new base could be an end in itself. "The cynic would say that any time Iranians say something about the Gulf the oil prices go up, and they are oil exporters, so they are going to make some money," Willett said.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/oct/29/iran
• Extent of forces at site remains unclearJulian Borger, diplomatic editor The Guardian, Wednesday October 29 2008 Iran yesterday signalled its intention to extend its military presence in the world's most important oil conduit, opening a new naval base at the mouth of the Persian Gulf and adding weight to its threats to choke off oil supplies, if the Islamic Republic came under attack.
The inauguration of the new base at Jask was announced by Iran's naval commander, Admiral Habibollah Sayyari, who said it represented a new line of defence, blocking the entry of the "enemy" into the Persian Gulf and the strategically vital Strait of Hormuz, the gateway through which 40% of the world's traded oil passes each day.
As international tensions have grown over Iran's nuclear programme and US allegations of Iranian involvement in Iraq's insurgency, the US has reinforced its naval presence, keeping two aircraft carriers and their battle groups in the Gulf for long periods this year, instead of one. The USS Ronald Reagan and USS Theodore Roosevelt carriers are currently on patrol, and being used for sorties over Iraq.
Nato and the EU have announced plans to dispatch more ships to the Gulf of Aden in the coming months. The move is aimed at combating Somali-based pirates and escorting food aid deliveries in the Horn of Africa, but the naval build-up has been viewed with suspicion in Tehran.
French president Nicolas Sarkozy has also moved to bolster naval presence in the Gulf, signing a deal with Abu Dhabi to site a new base on the Emirate's coast. There is an ongoing dispute between Iran and Abu Dhabi over possession of three small islands in the Strait of Hormuz.
Iran's deputy army commander, Brigadier General Abdul-Rahim Moussavi, commenting on the base's inauguration, said it would represent an "impenetrable naval barrier". As speculation has waxed and waned in recent months over the possibility of a US or an Israeli air strike against Iranian nuclear facilities, the Iranian government has threatened a multi-pronged response, including the possible closure of the Strait of Hormuz.
Iranian naval doctrine is focused on asymmetric attacks against western navies using swarms of small high-speed fibreglass boats armed with anti-ship missiles under the command of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. The IRGC would rely on strength in numbers and surprise, calling it a "presence everywhere and nowhere doctrine".
Iran's regular navy is comparatively small, comprising three frigates, two corvettes, and three "kilo" class submarines. It is currently based at the northern shore of the Strait of Hormuz, at Bandar Abbas. Jason Alderwick, a naval expert at the International Institute for Strategic Studies, said Jask would offer some important advantages.
"It is in a better position strategically than Bandar Abbas," Alderwick said. "It has access to the Arabian sea, so there is deep water access straight away. It has a commanding position vis-à-vis access to the straights, being forward, to the east for them. The real question is what forces are going to be based there? At this stage it's unclear what the Iranians are going to station there, for example, if they want to re-site their submarines there. That would be significant."
Lee Willett, the head of maritime studies at the Royal United Services Institute, said the mere announcement of a new base could be an end in itself. "The cynic would say that any time Iranians say something about the Gulf the oil prices go up, and they are oil exporters, so they are going to make some money," Willett said.
Re: Iran News and Discussions - 11 December 2007
Will the U.S. have to turn to Iran for help on Afghanistan?
http://blogs.reuters.com/pakistan/2008/ ... ghanistan/
Will the United States have to turn to its old nemesis Iran for help in Afghanistan? A couple of articles out this month suggest it will.
In this article published by the MIT Center for International Studies, the authors argue that the hostility between Washington and Tehran has been bad for the United States, Iran and Afghanistan, and played into the hands of the Pakistan military, the Taliban and al Qaeda.
After 9/11, Iran cooperated with the United States to hep defeat the Taliban rulers of Afghanistan. (Shi’ite Iran has traditionally been opposed to the hardline brand of Sunni Islam espoused by the Taliban and al Qaeda.) So from Tehran’s point of view, the country felt badly betrayed when in return for its help, President George W. Bush labelled Iran as part of the “axis of evil” along with Iraq and North Korea. US betrayal.... It seems that US has used and betrayed every country it has dealt with, one or the other way.
This was not helped, according to the article’s authors Barnett Rubin and Sara Batmanglich, by U.S. suggestions in 2007 that the United States might consider attacking Iran over its nuclear programme. This, they say, may have actually driven Tehran to support the Taliban to neutralise the threat of a U.S. attack from neighbouring Afghanistan. “Afghanistan is our friend,” it quotes an Iranian diplomat as saying. “But when your life is at stake you may have to sacrifice even your friends.”
They argue that to stabilise Afghanistan, Washington should recognise it shares a common interest with Iran in combating Sunni Islamist militancy there, while recalibrating its relationship with Pakistan.
Pakistan - which unlike Iran already has unclear weapons - traditionally supported the Taliban in Afghanistan as a way of giving it ”strategic depth” against its eastern neighbour, India. “Since the Iranian revolution, the U.S. has overreacted to the Iranian threat and engaged in systematic appeasement of Pakistan…” they say.
“Using Afghanistan as a base for anti-Iran policies handicaps the U.S. in pressing for Pakistani cooperation, thus undermining one of the country’s most important strategic objectives. Of course, such recalibration will also require shifts in Iranian policy away from the path it has taken. Clearly abandoning any U.S. agenda of forcible regime change in Iran will make such a shift much more likely.”
An op-ed in the Boston Globe makes a similar point. “Few countries were as helpful to the United States in its early involvement in Afghanistan as Iran,” write Lawrence Korb and Laura Conley from the Center for American Progress. “Yet after the fall of the Taliban, the US failed to capitalize on the possibilities of that strategic relationship. Now coalition and Afghan troops are losing ground against the same insurgents they confronted in 2001, in a war that the United States is unlikely to win unless it rethinks its relationship with Iran.”
“While US efforts in Afghanistan do require more troops, any success will not come without a renewed commitment to diplomacy and the engagement of Afghanistan’s neighbours. Iran is the indispensable player in this process,” they write.
U.S. policies towards Iran are up for review, and not just because of the presidential election. According to this op-ed in the New York Times, the United States needs “a game-changing diplomatic initiative” if it wants to stop Iran acquiring nuclear weapons (Tehran says its nuclear programme is for peaceful purposes only, to generate electricity rather than produce bombs.) “Let us be clear, there are no good military options.”
At the same time, the situation in Afghanistan is so serious that the next U.S. president is going to have to move quickly on a broad new initiative for the region, as Reuters correspondent David Morgan writes in this analysis. As I wrote in an earlier post, that could require help from Afghanistan’s neighbours, including Iran.
A case of the Great Satan sups with the devil? Or will the United States and Iran be able to put the past behind them and find enough common ground to cooperate on Afghanistan, while backing away from confrontation over Tehran’s nuclear programme?
http://blogs.reuters.com/pakistan/2008/ ... ghanistan/
Will the United States have to turn to its old nemesis Iran for help in Afghanistan? A couple of articles out this month suggest it will.
In this article published by the MIT Center for International Studies, the authors argue that the hostility between Washington and Tehran has been bad for the United States, Iran and Afghanistan, and played into the hands of the Pakistan military, the Taliban and al Qaeda.
After 9/11, Iran cooperated with the United States to hep defeat the Taliban rulers of Afghanistan. (Shi’ite Iran has traditionally been opposed to the hardline brand of Sunni Islam espoused by the Taliban and al Qaeda.) So from Tehran’s point of view, the country felt badly betrayed when in return for its help, President George W. Bush labelled Iran as part of the “axis of evil” along with Iraq and North Korea. US betrayal.... It seems that US has used and betrayed every country it has dealt with, one or the other way.
This was not helped, according to the article’s authors Barnett Rubin and Sara Batmanglich, by U.S. suggestions in 2007 that the United States might consider attacking Iran over its nuclear programme. This, they say, may have actually driven Tehran to support the Taliban to neutralise the threat of a U.S. attack from neighbouring Afghanistan. “Afghanistan is our friend,” it quotes an Iranian diplomat as saying. “But when your life is at stake you may have to sacrifice even your friends.”
They argue that to stabilise Afghanistan, Washington should recognise it shares a common interest with Iran in combating Sunni Islamist militancy there, while recalibrating its relationship with Pakistan.
Pakistan - which unlike Iran already has unclear weapons - traditionally supported the Taliban in Afghanistan as a way of giving it ”strategic depth” against its eastern neighbour, India. “Since the Iranian revolution, the U.S. has overreacted to the Iranian threat and engaged in systematic appeasement of Pakistan…” they say.
“Using Afghanistan as a base for anti-Iran policies handicaps the U.S. in pressing for Pakistani cooperation, thus undermining one of the country’s most important strategic objectives. Of course, such recalibration will also require shifts in Iranian policy away from the path it has taken. Clearly abandoning any U.S. agenda of forcible regime change in Iran will make such a shift much more likely.”
An op-ed in the Boston Globe makes a similar point. “Few countries were as helpful to the United States in its early involvement in Afghanistan as Iran,” write Lawrence Korb and Laura Conley from the Center for American Progress. “Yet after the fall of the Taliban, the US failed to capitalize on the possibilities of that strategic relationship. Now coalition and Afghan troops are losing ground against the same insurgents they confronted in 2001, in a war that the United States is unlikely to win unless it rethinks its relationship with Iran.”
“While US efforts in Afghanistan do require more troops, any success will not come without a renewed commitment to diplomacy and the engagement of Afghanistan’s neighbours. Iran is the indispensable player in this process,” they write.
U.S. policies towards Iran are up for review, and not just because of the presidential election. According to this op-ed in the New York Times, the United States needs “a game-changing diplomatic initiative” if it wants to stop Iran acquiring nuclear weapons (Tehran says its nuclear programme is for peaceful purposes only, to generate electricity rather than produce bombs.) “Let us be clear, there are no good military options.”
At the same time, the situation in Afghanistan is so serious that the next U.S. president is going to have to move quickly on a broad new initiative for the region, as Reuters correspondent David Morgan writes in this analysis. As I wrote in an earlier post, that could require help from Afghanistan’s neighbours, including Iran.
A case of the Great Satan sups with the devil? Or will the United States and Iran be able to put the past behind them and find enough common ground to cooperate on Afghanistan, while backing away from confrontation over Tehran’s nuclear programme?
Re: Iran News and Discussions - 11 December 2007
Iran condemns US attacks on Syria, Pakistan
http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.as ... 008_pg7_35
TEHRAN: Iran has strongly condemned recent US attacks in Syria and Pakistan, and called for the next White House resident to correct the damaged US image worldwide.
Addressing a press conference along with visiting former Lebanese president Emile Lahoud, Iranian Foreign Minister Manoucher Mottaki said on Tuesday that the recent US attacks in Pakistan and Syria had killed innocent people in both countries.
The minister’s comments came in the backdrop of a US drone attack in South Waziristan that killed at least 20 people on Monday night, making it the 70th violation of the country’s territory by US and NATO forces. Also, American troops from Iraq on Sunday launched an assault on a residential area in the Syrian village of Al-Sukkiraya, killing eight civilians in the attack.
“Every intellectual now believes that the world has become more insecure after the so-called fight against terrorism,” said Mottaki. Criticising the outgoing government of President George Bush, the Iranian minister said it appeared that White House officials were trying to ‘register the last days of their administration with more blood and aggression.’ nni
http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.as ... 008_pg7_35
TEHRAN: Iran has strongly condemned recent US attacks in Syria and Pakistan, and called for the next White House resident to correct the damaged US image worldwide.
Addressing a press conference along with visiting former Lebanese president Emile Lahoud, Iranian Foreign Minister Manoucher Mottaki said on Tuesday that the recent US attacks in Pakistan and Syria had killed innocent people in both countries.
The minister’s comments came in the backdrop of a US drone attack in South Waziristan that killed at least 20 people on Monday night, making it the 70th violation of the country’s territory by US and NATO forces. Also, American troops from Iraq on Sunday launched an assault on a residential area in the Syrian village of Al-Sukkiraya, killing eight civilians in the attack.
“Every intellectual now believes that the world has become more insecure after the so-called fight against terrorism,” said Mottaki. Criticising the outgoing government of President George Bush, the Iranian minister said it appeared that White House officials were trying to ‘register the last days of their administration with more blood and aggression.’ nni
Re: Iran News and Discussions - 11 December 2007
Iran will be able to build first nuclear bomb by February 2009
Wednesday, Oct 29, 2008
Link Here
US intelligence' s amended estimate, that Iran will be ready to build its first bomb just one month after the next US president is sworn in, is disclosed by DEBKAfile's Washington sources as having been relayed as a guideline to the Middle East teams of both presidential candidates, Senators John McCain and Barack Obama.
The information prompted the assertion by Democratic vice presidential nominee Joseph Biden in Seattle Sunday, Oct. 19: "It will not be six months before the world tests Barack Obama like they did John Kennedy." McCain retorted Tuesday, Oct. 21: "America does not need a president that needs to be tested. I've been tested. I was aboard the Enterprise off the coast of Cuba. I've been there.")
DEBKAfile's military sources cite the new US timeline: By late January, 2009, Iran will have accumulated enough low-grade enriched uranium (up to 5%) for its "break-out" to weapons grade (90%) material within a short time. For this, the Iranians have achieved the necessary technology. In February, they can move on to start building their first nuclear bomb.
US intelligence believes Tehran has the personnel, plans and diagrams for a bomb and has been running experiments to this end for the past two years. The UN International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna last week asked Tehran to clarify recent complex experiments they conducted in detonating nuclear materials for a weapon, but received no answer.
The same US evaluation adds that the Iranian leadership is holding off its go-ahead to start building the bomb until the last minute so as to ward off international pressure to stop at the red line. This development together with the galloping global economic crisis will force the incoming US president to go straight into decision-making without pause on Day One in the Oval Office. He will have to determine which urgent measures can serve best for keeping a nuclear bomb out of the Islamic republic's hands - diplomatic or military - and how to proceed if those measures fail.
His knowledge of the challenge colored Sen. Biden's additional words in Seattle: "Remember I said it standing here if you don't remember anything else I said. Watch, we're gonna have an international crisis, a generated crisis, to test the mettle of this guy.
Wednesday, Oct 29, 2008
Link Here
US intelligence' s amended estimate, that Iran will be ready to build its first bomb just one month after the next US president is sworn in, is disclosed by DEBKAfile's Washington sources as having been relayed as a guideline to the Middle East teams of both presidential candidates, Senators John McCain and Barack Obama.
The information prompted the assertion by Democratic vice presidential nominee Joseph Biden in Seattle Sunday, Oct. 19: "It will not be six months before the world tests Barack Obama like they did John Kennedy." McCain retorted Tuesday, Oct. 21: "America does not need a president that needs to be tested. I've been tested. I was aboard the Enterprise off the coast of Cuba. I've been there.")
DEBKAfile's military sources cite the new US timeline: By late January, 2009, Iran will have accumulated enough low-grade enriched uranium (up to 5%) for its "break-out" to weapons grade (90%) material within a short time. For this, the Iranians have achieved the necessary technology. In February, they can move on to start building their first nuclear bomb.
US intelligence believes Tehran has the personnel, plans and diagrams for a bomb and has been running experiments to this end for the past two years. The UN International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna last week asked Tehran to clarify recent complex experiments they conducted in detonating nuclear materials for a weapon, but received no answer.
The same US evaluation adds that the Iranian leadership is holding off its go-ahead to start building the bomb until the last minute so as to ward off international pressure to stop at the red line. This development together with the galloping global economic crisis will force the incoming US president to go straight into decision-making without pause on Day One in the Oval Office. He will have to determine which urgent measures can serve best for keeping a nuclear bomb out of the Islamic republic's hands - diplomatic or military - and how to proceed if those measures fail.
His knowledge of the challenge colored Sen. Biden's additional words in Seattle: "Remember I said it standing here if you don't remember anything else I said. Watch, we're gonna have an international crisis, a generated crisis, to test the mettle of this guy.
Re: Iran News and Discussions - 11 December 2007
Iran is building a string of bases all along its coastline according to this report.This is in anticipation of a future US/Israeli strike against Iranian nuclear and military targets.Iran is building this string of bases so that it increases its capability to attack/disrupt Gulf shippingif attacked.The more bases also means that it can spread its naval assets, which will definitely be targeted simultaneously with any strike against its nuclear facilities,so that enough assets survive which can disrupt tanker and other shipping.The question is not whether an attack against Iran will occur,but when.The longer any agreement with Iran on its nuclear technology/enrichment controversy is delayed,the greater chances of an attack and the Iranians mastering N-bomb technology.Bush and Cheney still have three months left in which to wreak their hate and havoc against Iran in one parting shot and there is nothing that can stop them if they want to.
http://africa.reuters.com/world/news/usnTRE49T287.html
Iran building naval bases up to Strait of Hormuz
Thu 30 Oct 2008, 7:18 GMT
TEHRAN (Reuters) - Iran has begun building a line of naval bases along its southern coast and up to the Strait of Hormuz at the entrance to the strategic Gulf oil waterway, the Tehran Times quoted an Iranian commander as saying.
Rear Admiral Habibollah Sayyari said the bases were being built on the Sea of Oman coast from Pasa Bandar, near the Pakistan border, to Bandar Abbas, Iran's major port on the Strait of Hormuz, the English-language newspaper reported on Thursday.
He did not say when work would be completed.
Sayyari this week opened a naval port at Jask, which is also along the Sea of Oman, Iranian media reported.
"The new mission of the navy is to build an impenetrable line of defence at the entrance to the Sea of Oman," Sayyari said in Hormuzgan province in south Iran, the Tehran Times reported.
"If the enemy goes insane, we will drown them at the bottom of the Indian Ocean and the Sea of Oman before they reach the Strait of Hormuz and the entrance to the Persian Gulf," he said.
Iran has threatened to close the strait, the sea route through which two-fifths of the world's globally traded oil passes, if the United States attacked. Iranian officials have often said Washington would be foolish to contemplate an attack.
Washington is embroiled in a row over Tehran's nuclear work, which the West says is aimed at making an atomic bomb, a charge Iran denies. The U.S. administration has said it wants diplomacy to resolve the row but has not ruled out military action.
Military experts say Iran's armed forces cannot match U.S. military technology but could still cause havoc on shipping routes, particularly using small craft for hit-and-run attacks.
(Writing by Edmund Blair; Editing by Louise Ireland)
© Reuters 2008.
http://africa.reuters.com/world/news/usnTRE49T287.html
Iran building naval bases up to Strait of Hormuz
Thu 30 Oct 2008, 7:18 GMT
TEHRAN (Reuters) - Iran has begun building a line of naval bases along its southern coast and up to the Strait of Hormuz at the entrance to the strategic Gulf oil waterway, the Tehran Times quoted an Iranian commander as saying.
Rear Admiral Habibollah Sayyari said the bases were being built on the Sea of Oman coast from Pasa Bandar, near the Pakistan border, to Bandar Abbas, Iran's major port on the Strait of Hormuz, the English-language newspaper reported on Thursday.
He did not say when work would be completed.
Sayyari this week opened a naval port at Jask, which is also along the Sea of Oman, Iranian media reported.
"The new mission of the navy is to build an impenetrable line of defence at the entrance to the Sea of Oman," Sayyari said in Hormuzgan province in south Iran, the Tehran Times reported.
"If the enemy goes insane, we will drown them at the bottom of the Indian Ocean and the Sea of Oman before they reach the Strait of Hormuz and the entrance to the Persian Gulf," he said.
Iran has threatened to close the strait, the sea route through which two-fifths of the world's globally traded oil passes, if the United States attacked. Iranian officials have often said Washington would be foolish to contemplate an attack.
Washington is embroiled in a row over Tehran's nuclear work, which the West says is aimed at making an atomic bomb, a charge Iran denies. The U.S. administration has said it wants diplomacy to resolve the row but has not ruled out military action.
Military experts say Iran's armed forces cannot match U.S. military technology but could still cause havoc on shipping routes, particularly using small craft for hit-and-run attacks.
(Writing by Edmund Blair; Editing by Louise Ireland)
© Reuters 2008.
Re: Iran News and Discussions - 11 December 2007
Bush to Syria: This bomb's for you (and, symbolically, for Iran?)
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/blogs/sfg ... y_id=32072
That U.S. air attack on a village in Syria, near the border with Iraq, this past Sunday "was intended to send a warning to [the government of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in] Damascus to take stronger action against Iraq-bound foreign jihadists" who are operating within Syria's borders. "The warning came as senior officials in Washington gave their clearest briefings yet on the purpose of the raid, despite the continued official silence from the Pentagon and [the U.S.] State Department." An anonymous, senior Bush-gang official told Britain's Times: "You have to clean up the global threat that is in your backyard and if you don't do that, we are left with no choice but to take these matters into our own hands...." Bush's reps "said that Abu Ghadiyah [full name: Badran Turki Hishan al-Mazidh], the Iraqi national targeted and allegedly killed in the attack, had run a network channeling foreign fighters, weapons and funds into Iraq since 2004."
The Times' news report adds: "The timing of the attack startled many, coming so soon after American praise for Syrian efforts to [stem] the flow of jihadists over the border. While the number of foreign fighters crossing the border has fallen down to just 20 per month from 120 per month last year, analysts say Damascus has done little to stop money and weapons flowing into Iraq. Intelligence officials in Washington, speaking anonymously, said the Central Intelligence Agency had hurriedly ordered the raid...after confirming Abu Ghadiyah's location in the village...."
Yesterday, Syria's deputy foreign minister, Fayssal Mikdad, cited his country's "condemnation of the U.S. aggression that claimed the lives of a number of civilian victims in the Boukamal area, stressing that a number of political, diplomatic and legal measures will be taken in response to this aggression....Mikdad indicated that the U.S. aggression on Syria is considered as an act of piracy that contradicts international law and the role [that] Syria [has] played to maintain [the] security and stability of Iraq, and her cooperation with the Iraqi government in support of stability, development [and] national reconciliation among the Iraqi people, and [an] end [to] the U.S. occupation." (Syrian Arab News Agency)
A Reuters news-analysis piece says that last Sunday's U.S. air attack in Syrian territory "underscores the Bush administration's determination to cross borders when it can strike an enemy target and to weather any international backlash....Syria denied [that Abu] Ghadiya was a target and said eight innocent civilians were killed in the raid. Syria closed two American institutions in Damascus, and Foreign Minister Walid al-Moualem said he was giving up hope on U.S. President George W. Bush. France and Russia also condemned the raid. The Bush administration has declined to comment on or publicly acknowledge the strike, despite the protests. But a senior military official said, 'We've made it very clear that we will defend our troops and our partners from threats, both broad and specific.'"
Reuters notes that some analysts actually have suggested that "Syria, despite its public protest," might even "view the attack with relief because it has had a growing internal problem with Islamist militants, is burdened by Iraqi refugees, and wants eventual good relations with Iraq...." However, some analysts have said that it is "unlikely the United States would cross into Iran to strike at what it says are supporters of Iraq's insurgency there." Reuters also points out: "Whether Republican John McCain or Democrat Barack Obama wins the U.S. presidential election next Tuesday, the United States is unlikely to abandon a policy of covert raids across borders when an opportunity or need becomes apparent, the analysts said."
From Lebanon, an editorial in the Daily Star observes that last Sunday's "cross-border raid into Syria by U.S. forces serves as a reminder that although George W. Bush is now a 'lame duck' president, he still retains the ability to make dangerous waves in the Middle East. His power might be easier to accommodate if it had been wielded over the years with good judgment for the purpose of achieving clearly defined objectives. The problem is that [his] pursuits in this part of the world have more often been haphazard, counterproductive and/or disastrous."
The raid on Syria, the Daily Star notes, "has already had the adverse effect of throwing a monkey wrench into negotiations between Baghdad and Washington over a security pact that would govern the presence of U.S. troops in Iraq. Iraqi officials are concerned that the U.S. will seek to use its mandate in their country to carry out additional military attacks on neighboring states....The raid has also dealt a blow to ongoing efforts to forge a diplomatic coalition among Iraq's neighbors, whose efforts have been as essential to improving Iraq's security as the U.S. troop 'surge.'....We might have understood...if Bush had unfailingly used all of the powers of his office to advance the cause of democracy and had worked to topple each and every dictatorial regime across the region. Instead, he has chosen to arbitrarily court some autocrats while ostracizing others and to encourage democratic activism while remaining silent when democratic activists are jailed...."
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/blogs/sfg ... y_id=32072
That U.S. air attack on a village in Syria, near the border with Iraq, this past Sunday "was intended to send a warning to [the government of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in] Damascus to take stronger action against Iraq-bound foreign jihadists" who are operating within Syria's borders. "The warning came as senior officials in Washington gave their clearest briefings yet on the purpose of the raid, despite the continued official silence from the Pentagon and [the U.S.] State Department." An anonymous, senior Bush-gang official told Britain's Times: "You have to clean up the global threat that is in your backyard and if you don't do that, we are left with no choice but to take these matters into our own hands...." Bush's reps "said that Abu Ghadiyah [full name: Badran Turki Hishan al-Mazidh], the Iraqi national targeted and allegedly killed in the attack, had run a network channeling foreign fighters, weapons and funds into Iraq since 2004."
The Times' news report adds: "The timing of the attack startled many, coming so soon after American praise for Syrian efforts to [stem] the flow of jihadists over the border. While the number of foreign fighters crossing the border has fallen down to just 20 per month from 120 per month last year, analysts say Damascus has done little to stop money and weapons flowing into Iraq. Intelligence officials in Washington, speaking anonymously, said the Central Intelligence Agency had hurriedly ordered the raid...after confirming Abu Ghadiyah's location in the village...."
Yesterday, Syria's deputy foreign minister, Fayssal Mikdad, cited his country's "condemnation of the U.S. aggression that claimed the lives of a number of civilian victims in the Boukamal area, stressing that a number of political, diplomatic and legal measures will be taken in response to this aggression....Mikdad indicated that the U.S. aggression on Syria is considered as an act of piracy that contradicts international law and the role [that] Syria [has] played to maintain [the] security and stability of Iraq, and her cooperation with the Iraqi government in support of stability, development [and] national reconciliation among the Iraqi people, and [an] end [to] the U.S. occupation." (Syrian Arab News Agency)
A Reuters news-analysis piece says that last Sunday's U.S. air attack in Syrian territory "underscores the Bush administration's determination to cross borders when it can strike an enemy target and to weather any international backlash....Syria denied [that Abu] Ghadiya was a target and said eight innocent civilians were killed in the raid. Syria closed two American institutions in Damascus, and Foreign Minister Walid al-Moualem said he was giving up hope on U.S. President George W. Bush. France and Russia also condemned the raid. The Bush administration has declined to comment on or publicly acknowledge the strike, despite the protests. But a senior military official said, 'We've made it very clear that we will defend our troops and our partners from threats, both broad and specific.'"
Reuters notes that some analysts actually have suggested that "Syria, despite its public protest," might even "view the attack with relief because it has had a growing internal problem with Islamist militants, is burdened by Iraqi refugees, and wants eventual good relations with Iraq...." However, some analysts have said that it is "unlikely the United States would cross into Iran to strike at what it says are supporters of Iraq's insurgency there." Reuters also points out: "Whether Republican John McCain or Democrat Barack Obama wins the U.S. presidential election next Tuesday, the United States is unlikely to abandon a policy of covert raids across borders when an opportunity or need becomes apparent, the analysts said."
From Lebanon, an editorial in the Daily Star observes that last Sunday's "cross-border raid into Syria by U.S. forces serves as a reminder that although George W. Bush is now a 'lame duck' president, he still retains the ability to make dangerous waves in the Middle East. His power might be easier to accommodate if it had been wielded over the years with good judgment for the purpose of achieving clearly defined objectives. The problem is that [his] pursuits in this part of the world have more often been haphazard, counterproductive and/or disastrous."
The raid on Syria, the Daily Star notes, "has already had the adverse effect of throwing a monkey wrench into negotiations between Baghdad and Washington over a security pact that would govern the presence of U.S. troops in Iraq. Iraqi officials are concerned that the U.S. will seek to use its mandate in their country to carry out additional military attacks on neighboring states....The raid has also dealt a blow to ongoing efforts to forge a diplomatic coalition among Iraq's neighbors, whose efforts have been as essential to improving Iraq's security as the U.S. troop 'surge.'....We might have understood...if Bush had unfailingly used all of the powers of his office to advance the cause of democracy and had worked to topple each and every dictatorial regime across the region. Instead, he has chosen to arbitrarily court some autocrats while ostracizing others and to encourage democratic activism while remaining silent when democratic activists are jailed...."
Re: Iran News and Discussions - 11 December 2007
Turkish official: Syria-Israel peace would help with Iraq, Iran
By Yoav Stern, Haaretz Correspondent
Tags: Turkey, Cetin
Peace between Israel and Syria would have a regional impact on the entire Middle East, including ongoing events in Iraq and Iran, former Turkish foreign minister Hikmet Cetin told Haaretz.
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1032907.html
By Yoav Stern, Haaretz Correspondent
Tags: Turkey, Cetin
Peace between Israel and Syria would have a regional impact on the entire Middle East, including ongoing events in Iraq and Iran, former Turkish foreign minister Hikmet Cetin told Haaretz.
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1032907.html
Re: Iran News and Discussions - 11 December 2007
First the news about Iran getting nuke bums by 2009. Now this... Looks like US is cooking stories, to attack Iran before the end of 2008.
Chemical, Biological Arms: Iran's Other WMDs
http://blog.wired.com/defense/2008/10/i ... arfar.html
The rest of the world may be focused on Iran's nuclear program. But U.S. intelligence agencies, think tanks, and non-governmental organizations just can't shake the suspicion that Iran may be trying to assemble other weapons of mass destruction, too: an arsenal of chemical and biological arms.
Anthony Cordesman, noted chemical-biological (CB) weapons and Middle East analyst for the Center for Strategic and International Studies, has released a few draft reports discussing the current capabilities and uncertainties of Iran's CB warfare programs. The papers offer a pretty god summary of what open-source analysis exists on "the other WMDs" that so many people tend to ignore, as the hysteria mounts about Iran's nuclear program.
Iran is not an easy case to understand, to put it mildly. You may remember that minor conflict in the 1980s where Iraq attacked Iran and started throwing chemical weapons around. The chemical casualties incurred by Iran during that conflict was a major reason why Iran initiated its own chemical weapons program. Iran was an original state signatory to the Biological Weapons Convention in 1973 and signed onto the Chemical Weapons Convention in 1993. The country ratified the CWC in 1997 and declared its past program activities. This was followed by the destruction of Iran's former production sites in the presence of international arms control inspectors. Iran has also been very active in review conferences addressing biological weapons issues.
At the same time, U.S. observers still have a nagging feeling that Iran has been up to something. Here's the thing - Iran is a country with a modern industrial infrastructure and has been increasing its technological capabilities. The global economy, enhanced by global communications and transportation options, has benefited Iran just as much as any other growing nation. Russia and China, in particular, have been selling Iran equipment and material that could be used to develop CB weapons, but is legitimately used in commercial facilities and academic laboratories. Other nations have also been actively participating in the business of selling Iran materials and equipment. Given these facts, Iran has motive and opportunity to develop CB weapons - if its government wants that capability.
And while it could be that Iran's military desires and is pursuing a CB weapons capability, there is no public evidence of active development, testing, weaponization, stockpiling, deployment, or use of CB weapons. Without (at the least) evidence of testing and weaponization, it is very difficult to claim that Iran's military has a deployable capability to use CB weapons. Iran's government officials have both condemned CB weapons use, but also have noted that there could be incentives in having such a capability. US intelligence officials have, in open testimony, backed off of earlier claims in 2003 that Iran is definitely developing and stockpiling CB weapons to more conservative statements in this year that Iran has the capability to do so, and is suspected of engaging in CB weapons research and development. That's some significant backpedaling.
Cordesman doesn't offer much details in the form of suspected CB warfare agents or delivery systems, but he does generalize as to the possible. These case studies on agents and possible employment scenarios could apply to any nation with a modern industrial infrastructure, however. He doesn't offer any analysis as to the possibility of Iran supplying CB warfare agents to terrorists, other than to say, sure, it could happen. He ends his report on Iran's biological weapons program assessment with this statement, which is very similar to his conclusions about Tehran's chemical weapons programs:
Chemical, Biological Arms: Iran's Other WMDs
http://blog.wired.com/defense/2008/10/i ... arfar.html
The rest of the world may be focused on Iran's nuclear program. But U.S. intelligence agencies, think tanks, and non-governmental organizations just can't shake the suspicion that Iran may be trying to assemble other weapons of mass destruction, too: an arsenal of chemical and biological arms.
Anthony Cordesman, noted chemical-biological (CB) weapons and Middle East analyst for the Center for Strategic and International Studies, has released a few draft reports discussing the current capabilities and uncertainties of Iran's CB warfare programs. The papers offer a pretty god summary of what open-source analysis exists on "the other WMDs" that so many people tend to ignore, as the hysteria mounts about Iran's nuclear program.
Iran is not an easy case to understand, to put it mildly. You may remember that minor conflict in the 1980s where Iraq attacked Iran and started throwing chemical weapons around. The chemical casualties incurred by Iran during that conflict was a major reason why Iran initiated its own chemical weapons program. Iran was an original state signatory to the Biological Weapons Convention in 1973 and signed onto the Chemical Weapons Convention in 1993. The country ratified the CWC in 1997 and declared its past program activities. This was followed by the destruction of Iran's former production sites in the presence of international arms control inspectors. Iran has also been very active in review conferences addressing biological weapons issues.
At the same time, U.S. observers still have a nagging feeling that Iran has been up to something. Here's the thing - Iran is a country with a modern industrial infrastructure and has been increasing its technological capabilities. The global economy, enhanced by global communications and transportation options, has benefited Iran just as much as any other growing nation. Russia and China, in particular, have been selling Iran equipment and material that could be used to develop CB weapons, but is legitimately used in commercial facilities and academic laboratories. Other nations have also been actively participating in the business of selling Iran materials and equipment. Given these facts, Iran has motive and opportunity to develop CB weapons - if its government wants that capability.
And while it could be that Iran's military desires and is pursuing a CB weapons capability, there is no public evidence of active development, testing, weaponization, stockpiling, deployment, or use of CB weapons. Without (at the least) evidence of testing and weaponization, it is very difficult to claim that Iran's military has a deployable capability to use CB weapons. Iran's government officials have both condemned CB weapons use, but also have noted that there could be incentives in having such a capability. US intelligence officials have, in open testimony, backed off of earlier claims in 2003 that Iran is definitely developing and stockpiling CB weapons to more conservative statements in this year that Iran has the capability to do so, and is suspected of engaging in CB weapons research and development. That's some significant backpedaling.
Cordesman doesn't offer much details in the form of suspected CB warfare agents or delivery systems, but he does generalize as to the possible. These case studies on agents and possible employment scenarios could apply to any nation with a modern industrial infrastructure, however. He doesn't offer any analysis as to the possibility of Iran supplying CB warfare agents to terrorists, other than to say, sure, it could happen. He ends his report on Iran's biological weapons program assessment with this statement, which is very similar to his conclusions about Tehran's chemical weapons programs:
That is to say, we really don't know what Iran has in the form of CB weapons or what they intend to do if it is given the opportunity to develop such weapons. And if that day comes when Iran's military does acknowledge that they have CB weapons, we really don't know what will happen, but they're not irrational leaders. Other than that, it's clear as day that we ought to at least consider the possibility.None of these problems and issues implies that Iran cannot benefit from deploying biological weapons or creating a level of ambiguity that forces any potential enemy to take these threats far more seriously than they are taken today. It is also clear that Iran has the incentive to use biological weapons under some conditions and that such use might be effective.
Biological weapons also present special problems in terms of deterrence in peacetime and controlling escalation in a conflict. This does not mean that Iranian will act on the basis of ideology or ignore risk. Extreme as some Iranian statements are, Iran tends to be pragmatic in practice. Once again, however, crises create new conditions, perceptions,misunderstandings, and levels of risk taking. Rational bargainers with perfect insight and all the necessary transparency in terms of full knowledge of the situation and risks are theoretical constructs. It is dangerous to assume that even the most prudent decision maker will not take exceptional risks, overreact, or drastically miscalculate in war.
Re: Iran News and Discussions - 11 December 2007
Gates: Iran must prove nuclear nature
Wed, 29 Oct 2008 18:45:49 GMT
Secretary Gates says pressures on Iran could eventually work.
The US Defense Secretary says Washington would not care about Iran's nuclear work if it proved it has no plans to develop nuclear weapons.
http://www.presstv.ir/detail.aspx?id=73 ... =351020104
Wed, 29 Oct 2008 18:45:49 GMT
Secretary Gates says pressures on Iran could eventually work.
The US Defense Secretary says Washington would not care about Iran's nuclear work if it proved it has no plans to develop nuclear weapons.
http://www.presstv.ir/detail.aspx?id=73 ... =351020104
Re: Iran News and Discussions - 11 December 2007
Russia agrees to build choppers in Iran
Russia has agreed to commence cooperation with Iran on mass producing semi-heavy choppers in the country, an Iranian official says.
http://www.haber27.com/news_detail.php?id=15188
Russia has agreed to commence cooperation with Iran on mass producing semi-heavy choppers in the country, an Iranian official says.
http://www.haber27.com/news_detail.php?id=15188
Re: Iran News and Discussions - 11 December 2007
Russia: US has no proof against Iran
Wed, 29 Oct 2008 22:51:13 GMT
Lt. Gen. Alexander Burutin
A senior Russian official says the US is using Iran's missile program as a pretext to deploy its military equipment in Eastern Europe.
http://www.presstv.ir/detail.aspx?id=73 ... =351020101
Wed, 29 Oct 2008 22:51:13 GMT
Lt. Gen. Alexander Burutin
A senior Russian official says the US is using Iran's missile program as a pretext to deploy its military equipment in Eastern Europe.
http://www.presstv.ir/detail.aspx?id=73 ... =351020101
Re: Iran News and Discussions - 11 December 2007
Watched an interview with Dep PM of Russia. He was saying that Iran does not have any missiles that can reach Europe, so why locate them in Eastern Europe? It is clearly focused on Russia
Re: Iran News and Discussions - 11 December 2007
Pranab's 2-day visit to Iran starts Nov 1
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/Indi ... 653272.cms
NEW DELHI: The foreign ministry on Wednesday announced that minister Pranab Mukherjee will be visiting Iran for the 15th meeting of the India-Iran Joint Commission on November 1 and 2.
While Indian officials remain tight-lipped about the fate of the Iran-Pakistan-India (IPI) gas pipeline, Iran is looking upon the visit as its last chance to convince India to join the project before it goes ahead only with Pakistan.
In the context of the recently inked Indo-US nuclear deal though, Mukherjee's visit to Iran has assumed much significance. A senior official said that India wants to emphasise before Iran that its ties with the US are not at Iran's expense.
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/Indi ... 653272.cms
NEW DELHI: The foreign ministry on Wednesday announced that minister Pranab Mukherjee will be visiting Iran for the 15th meeting of the India-Iran Joint Commission on November 1 and 2.
While Indian officials remain tight-lipped about the fate of the Iran-Pakistan-India (IPI) gas pipeline, Iran is looking upon the visit as its last chance to convince India to join the project before it goes ahead only with Pakistan.
In the context of the recently inked Indo-US nuclear deal though, Mukherjee's visit to Iran has assumed much significance. A senior official said that India wants to emphasise before Iran that its ties with the US are not at Iran's expense.
Re: Iran News and Discussions - 11 December 2007
The US relations with Russia, China and India will always be driven by ONE common policy and will remain the same no matter what times we are in: CONTAIN them, by engaging them anyways possible.shyamd wrote:Watched an interview with Dep PM of Russia. He was saying that Iran does not have any missiles that can reach Europe, so why locate them in Eastern Europe? It is clearly focused on Russia
If you don't engage them, they will try to hurt you using military means. (Example they hurt India for the past 50 + years using Pakistan). If you engage them, they will start buying local governments, just like they have purchased the Indian govt now, using their $$ power.
Either way, That's the way US govt's excercise their own objectives. Unless you can hold your grounds, you will have your nation mortgaged to US policy making machine in Wash DC.
Re: Iran News and Discussions - 11 December 2007
There has been much talk about Iran in the news, but most of it is just from the perspective of Western interests, and to a lesser extent from the perspective of Iran itself, Russia, China, Pakistan, etc.
Considering that our Foreign Minister Mr. Pranab Mukherjee is flying tomorrow over to Iran, it would interest me, now that the Indo-US nuclear deal is over, and there are questions hanging over the fate of Afghanistan and the IPI gas pipeline, what is India's foreign policy position on Iran? Where can our interests coincide despite American pressure and on what will we be parting ways and letting China and Russia take over shop?
Considering that our Foreign Minister Mr. Pranab Mukherjee is flying tomorrow over to Iran, it would interest me, now that the Indo-US nuclear deal is over, and there are questions hanging over the fate of Afghanistan and the IPI gas pipeline, what is India's foreign policy position on Iran? Where can our interests coincide despite American pressure and on what will we be parting ways and letting China and Russia take over shop?
Re: Iran News and Discussions - 11 December 2007
UPA has no Indian interest. onlee American interests.
Re: Iran News and Discussions - 11 December 2007
A hard judgment Ramana Ji.
Re: Iran News and Discussions - 11 December 2007
India's foreign policy will certainly be dictated by Indian interests but I don't see IPI as being in India's interest. There is no way gas or other energy pipelines to India can be left in pakistan's hands.