Bharat Rakshak

AnimeshP wrote:Ayatollah Khamenei's Jet Checked, Iran Supreme Leader May Flee To Russia If Necessary

Not sure if this is a true news item or just psy-ops from the western countries ...

As a former intelligence officer I frequently shake my head when I read a piece like "There's Only One Way to Stop Iran" because I know exactly how what the Soviets used to call disinformation works. When the policy stinks and you have to create buzz about it anyway, you dig up someone who can plausibly describe himself as an "expert" and then find some obliging folks in the media to publish a piece that enables you to change the story line. That is what I used to do myself back in the days when I was working hard to demonize the Soviets. Take an incident or development, twist it a bit so you can come to a conclusion that is at odds with the facts, get your paid asset to write it up, hand it over to another paid agent in the media, and then let it fly. It will be picked up here and there, spread around the world and incorporated into other news coverage, and eventually everyone is saying we have to stand up to the Russians. Or Chinese. Or Iranians. Or the Yemenis.

Two pro-reform Iranian women attend the funeral ceremony of Grand Ayatollah Hossein Ali Montazeri, the spiritual father of Iran's reform movement, as they wear green headbands, the symbolic color of Iranian opposition, in the holy city of Qom, 125 km (78 mi) south of the capital Tehran, Iran on Monday, Dec. 21, 2009. Montazeri, who died Sunday at the age of 87, was a key figure in the 1979 Islamic Revolution who later accused his fellow clerical leaders of imposing dictatorship in the name of Islam. (AP Photo)

TEHRAN (AFP) – The university lecturer killed in a bomb blast in the Iranian capital on Tuesday was a nuclear scientist, Tehran's prosecutor told ISNA news agency.

"Massoud Ali Mohammadi was a lecturer in nuclear energy and no suspects have yet been arrested," Abbas Jafari Dolatabadi said, adding that he was climbing into his car when a nearby parked motorbike exploded.

Another Iranian news agency, Borna news, said Mohammadi was a "senior nuclear scientist of the country," quoting unnamed sources.

"Massoud Ali Mohammadi was a lecturer in nuclear energy and no suspects have yet been arrested," Abbas Jafari Dolatabadi said, adding that he was climbing into his car when a nearby parked motorbike exploded.

Another Iranian news agency, Borna news, said Mohammadi was a "senior nuclear scientist of the country," quoting unnamed sources.

The student speculated that the bombing, in which a remote-controlled explosive attached to a bicycle blew up, was a political assassination by Iranian security forces, part of a "dirty war" in which the regime has taken aim at its political enemies but blamed the attacks on the opposition or the West.

TEHRAN (FNA)- Iranian university professor and nuclear scientist Masoud Ali Mohammadi was assassinated in a terrorist bomb attack here in Tehran on Tuesday.


The London-based armed opposition, the Kingdom Association, has claimed responsibility for the attack.

shyamd wrote:India, Iran discuss Afghanistan

India and Iran have held extensive discussions on the developments in the region including Afghanistan as part of their annual diplomatic consultations.

Foreign Secretary Nirupama Rao headed the Indian delegation, while Mohammad Ali Fathollahi, Iran’s Deputy Foreign Minister for Asia and Oceania led the Iranian side during the two-day dialogue.

Diplomatic sources told The Hindu that substantial discussions were held on “regional issues” including the recent developments regarding Afghanistan and the transit route from Iranian port of Chabahar to Afghanistan, which Iran and India have jointly developed.

In the past, both India and Iran have been wary of engaging the so called “moderate Taliban” in Afghanistan. However, last month’s conference in London, in which Iran did not participate, has decided to create a fund in anticipation that resources would be needed to draw a significant number of Taliban into the Afghan mainstream.

Discussions were also held on transit, including further activation of the North-South corridor which has been a joint initiative of India, Iran and Russia.

Sources said Ms. Rao had an “excellent” meeting, which lasted for more than an hour on Tuesday, with Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki.

She also met Iran’s point person on nuclear talks, Saeed Jalili, widely known as a confidant of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Mr. Jalili had led the Iranian delegation for talks, held last year in Geneva, in which the Americans had also participated.

He also led the Iranian side to talks held in Autumn in Vienna, where a deal was proposed to swap Iran’s stocks of lightly enriched uranium with atomic fuel rods for use in a Tehran research reactor engaged in producing medical isotopes.

For the past few years, STRATFOR has been carefully following the imbroglio over the Iranian nuclear weapons program and efforts by the United States and others to scuttle the program. This situation has led to threats by both sides, with the United States and Israel discussing plans to destroy Iranian weapons sites with airstrikes and the Iranians holding well-publicized missile launches and military exercises in the Persian Gulf.

Much attention has been paid to the Iranian deterrents to an attack on its nuclear program, such as the ballistic missile threat and the potential to block the Strait of Hormuz, but these are not the only deterrents Iran possesses. Indeed, over the past several years, Iran has consistently reminded the world about the network of proxy groups that the country can call upon to cause trouble for any country that would attack its nuclear weapons program.

Over the past several weeks, interesting new threads of information about Iranian proxies have come to light, and when the individual strands are tied together they make for a very interesting story.
Iran’s Proxies

From almost the very beginning of the Islamic republic, Iran’s clerical regime has sought to export its Islamic revolution to other parts of the Muslim world. This was done not only for ideological purposes — to continue the revolution — but also for practical reasons, as a way to combat regional adversaries by means of proxy warfare. Among the first groups targeted for this expansion were the Shiite populations in Iraq, the Persian Gulf and, of course, Lebanon. The withdrawal of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) from Lebanon in 1982 left behind a cadre of trained Shiite militants who were quickly recruited by agents of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC). These early Lebanese recruits included hardened PLO fighters from the slums of South Beirut such as Imad Mughniyah. These fighters formed the backbone of Iran’s militant proxy force in Lebanon, Hezbollah, which, in the ensuing decades, would evolve from a shadowy terrorist group into a powerful political entity with a significant military capability.

One of the most impressive things about these early proxy efforts in Lebanon is that the IRGC and the Iranian Ministry of Intelligence and Security were both very young institutions at the time, and they were heavily pressured by the 1980 invasion of Iran by Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, which was backed by the Gulf states and the United States. The Iranians also had to compete with the Amal movement, which was backed by Libya and Syria and which dominated the Lebanese Shiite landscape at the time. Projecting power into Lebanon under such conditions was quite an amazing feat, one that many more mature intelligence organizations have not been able to match.

Though these institutions were young, the Iranians were not without experience in intelligence tradecraft. The years of operating against the Shah’s intelligence service, a brutal and efficient organization known as the SAVAK, taught the Iranian revolutionaries many hard-learned lessons about operational security and clandestine operations, and they incorporated many of these lessons into their handling of proxy operations. For example, it was very difficult for the U.S. government to prove that the Iranians, through their proxies, were behind the bombings of the U.S. Embassy (twice) and Marine barracks in Beirut or the kidnapping of Westerners in Lebanon. The use of different names in public statements such as the Islamic Jihad Organization, Revolutionary Justice Organization and the Organization of the Oppressed on Earth, when combined with very good Iranian operational security, served to further muddy the already murky waters of Lebanon’s militant landscape. Iran has also done a fairly good job at hiding its hand in places like Kuwait and Bahrain.

While Iran has invested a lot of effort to build up Shiite proxy groups such as Hezbollah and assorted other groups in Iraq, Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states, the Iranians do not exclusively work with Shiite proxies. As we discussed last week, the Iranians also have a pragmatic streak and will work with Marxist groups like the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, Sunni groups like Hamas in Gaza and various militant groups in Pakistan and Afghanistan (they sought to undermine the Taliban while that group was in power in Afghanistan but are currently aiding some Taliban groups in an effort to thwart the U.S. effort there). In an extremely complex game, the Iranians are also working with various Sunni and Kurdish groups in Iraq, in addition to their Shiite proxies, as they seek to shape their once-feared neighbor into something they can more-easily influence and control.

More than Foot Stomping

For several years now, every time there is talk of a possible attack on Iran there is a corresponding threat by Iran to use its proxy groups in response to such an attack. Iran has also been busy pushing intelligence reports to anybody who will listen (including STRATFOR) that it will activate its militant proxy groups if attacked and, to back that up, will periodically send operatives or proxies out to conduct not-so-subtle surveillance of potential targets. Hezbollah and Hamas have both stated publicly that they will attack Israel if Israel launches an attack against Iran’s nuclear program, and such threats are far more than mere rhetorical devices. Iran has taken many concrete steps to prepare and arm its various proxy groups:
• On Dec. 11, 2009, authorities seized an Ilyushin-76 cargo plane in Bangkok that contained 35 tons of North Korean-produced military weapons that were destined for Iran (though Iran, naturally, denies the report). The weapons, which included man-portable air defense systems (MANPADS), were either equivalent to, or less advanced than, weapons Iran produces on its own. This fact raised the real possibility that the Iranians had purchased the North Korean weapons in order to distribute them to proxies and hide Iran’s hand if those arms were recovered after an attack.
• In November 2009, Israeli naval commandos seized a ship off the coast of Cyprus that was loaded with hundreds of tons of weapons that were apparently being sent from Iran to Hezbollah. The seizure, which was the largest in Israel’s history, included artillery shells, rockets, grenades and small-arms ammunition.
• In August 2009, authorities in the United Arab Emirates seized a ship carrying 10 containers of North Korean weapons disguised as oil equipment. The seized cache included weapons that Iran produces itself, like rockets and rocket-propelled grenade rounds, again raising the probability that the arms were intended for Iran’s militant proxies.
• In April 2009, Egyptian authorities announced that they had arrested a large network of Hezbollah operatives who were planning attacks against Israeli targets inside Egypt. It is likely, however, that the network was involved in arms smuggling and the charges of planning attacks may have been leveled against the smugglers to up the ante and provide a warning message to anyone considering smuggling in the future.
• In January 2009, a convoy of suspected arms smugglers in northern Sudan near the Egyptian border was attacked by an apparent Israeli air strike. The arms were reportedly destined for Hamas and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad and were tied to an Iranian network that, according to STRATFOR sources in the region, had been purchasing arms in Sudan and shipping them across the Sinai to Gaza.

As illustrated by most of the above incidents (and several others we did not include for the sake of brevity), Israeli intelligence has been actively attempting to interdict the flow of weapons to Iran and Iranian proxy groups. Such Israeli efforts may explain the assassination of Mahmoud al-Mabhouh, whose body was discovered Jan. 20 in his room at a five-star hotel in Dubai. Al-Mabhouh, a senior commander of the Izz al-Din al-Qassam Brigades, Hamas’ military wing, lived in exile in Damascus and was reportedly the Hamas official responsible for coordinating the transfer of weapons from Iran to Hamas forces in Gaza. A STRATFOR source advised us that, at the time of his death, al-Mabhouh was on his way to Tehran to meet with his IRGC handlers. The operation to kill al-Mabhouh also bears many similarities to past Israeli assassination operations. His status as an Izz al-Din al-Qassam Brigades commander involved in many past attacks against Israel would certainly make him an attractive target for the Israelis.

Of course, like anything involving the Iranians, there remains quite a bit of murkiness involving the totality of their meddling in the region. Hezbollah sources have told STRATFOR that they have troops actively engaged in combat in Yemen, with the al-Houthi rebels in the northern province of Saada along the Saudi border, and have lost several fighters there. Hezbollah also has claimed that its personnel have shot down several Yemeni aircraft using Iranian-manufactured Misagh-1 MANPADS.
The governments of Yemen and Saudi Arabia have very good reason to fear Iran’s plans to expand its influence in the Gulf region, and the Yemenis in particular have been very vocal about blaming Iran for stirring up the al-Houthi rebels. Because of this, if there truly were Hezbollah fighters being killed in Saada and signs of Iranian ordnance (like MANPADS) being used by Hezbollah fighters or al-Houthi rebels, we believe the government of Yemen would have been documenting the evidence and providing the documentation to the world (especially in light of Yemen’s long and unsuccessful attempt to gain U.S. assistance for its struggle against the al-Houthi insurgency). That said, while Hezbollah MANPADS teams are not likely to be running around Saada, there is evidence that the Iranians have been involved in smuggling weapons to the al-Houthi via Yemen’s rugged Red Sea coast. Indeed, such arms smuggling has resulted in a Saudi naval blockade of the Yemeni coast. Reports of al-Houthi militants being trained by the IRGC in Lebanon and Iran are also plausible.

Iran has long flirted with jihadist groups. This support has sporadically stretched from the early days of al Qaeda’s stay in Sudan, where Hezbollah bomb makers instructed al Qaeda militants in how to make large vehicle bombs, to more recent times, when the IRGC has provided arms to Iraqi Sunni militants and Taliban factions in Afghanistan. Iran has also provided weapons to the now-defunct Supreme Islamic Courts Council in Somalia and one of its offshoots, al Shabaab.

Over the past several months we have also heard from a variety of sources in different parts of the Middle East that the Iranians are assisting al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP). Some reports indicate that a jihadist training camp that had previously been operating in Syria to train and send international fighters to Iraq had been relocated to Iran, and that with Iranian assistance, the jihadists were funneling international militants from Iran to Yemen to fight with AQAP. Other reports say the Iranians are providing arms to the group. While some analysts downplay such reports, the fact that we have received similar information from a wide variety of sources in different countries and with varying ideological backgrounds suggests there is indeed something to these reports.

One last thing to consider while pondering Iran’s militant proxies is that, while Iranian missiles will be launched (and mines laid) only in the case of open hostilities, Iranian militant proxies have been busily at work across the region for many years now. With a web of connections that reaches all the way from Lebanon to Somalia to Afghanistan, Iran can cast a wide net over the Middle East. If the United States has truly begun to assume a defensive posture in the Gulf, it will have to guard not only against Iranian missile strikes but also against Iran’s sophisticated use of proxy militant groups.
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"This report is republished with permission of STRATFOR"

"The Iranian nation, with its unity and God's grace, will punch the arrogance (Western powers) on the 22nd of Bahman, February 11, in a way that will leave them stunned," Khamenei, who is also Iran's commander-in-chief, told a gathering of air force personnel according to AFP.

DEBKAfile Special Report February 9, 2010, 6:17 PM (GMT+02:00)

In a well-coordinated offensive, pro-government Basijj militiamen in civilian dress hurled rocks and eggs at the Italian and French embassies in Tehran Tuesday, Feb. 9, shouting death to their respective leaders. Some reports say the Dutch embassy was also targeted. debkafile's Iranian sources report the attacks appear to have kicked off the campaign for "stunning" the West - as threatened by spiritual ruler Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, or "crushing" the West - in president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's words this week.
Our sources expect the government-instigated violence to escalate up to and including Thursday, Feb. 1, the start of anniversary events marking Iran's 1979 Islamic revolution. They are designed to raise international tensions around Iran to fever pitch to deter opposition leaders from staging their planned mass protest demonstrations lest they be accused of treason and collaborating with the Islamic republic's foreign foes.
The Iranian regime has a long score to settle with French president Nicolas Sarkozy and his ministers. They are the most outspoken of any Western critics of Iran, often citing intelligence input to prove Iran is running a military nuclear program and building a nuclear bomb.
Sarkozy also warns that Israel will not stand by and let this happen without resorting to a military offensive that will generate a major war drawing Middle Eastern and other nations into the conflict
Tehran's grievance against The Hague stems from the suspicion that the Dutch BVD national security service maintains the farthest-flung network of agents inside Iran of any other agency and the high quality of its intelligence on happenings inside the Islamic republic:

Carl_T wrote:Even if they do test one, wouldn't it be a while before they turn it into a credible threat if they don't have the tech to deliver the weapons?
It just seems like an open invitation for their neighbours to bomb them.

negi wrote:Well in today's world even US cant go on a bombing run unchallenged by the rest (specially RU and PRC) , in the long term a nuclear Iran is in India's interests (for we already have a nice neighbor to contend with and things cant get more worser than this ) as it would reduce Unkil's hegemony and control over oil in the region ; Unkil has time and again come in the way of growing trade relations between Iran and India and its only a matter of time before Iran asserts itself in the region and for good . More power to countries like NoKo and Iran .

Carl_T wrote:Even if they do test one, wouldn't it be a while before they turn it into a credible threat if they don't have the tech to deliver the weapons?

It just seems like an open invitation for their neighbours to bomb them.

Iran has supported India's opposition to the idea of "good" and "bad" Taliban, dismissing recent western overtures to the Taliban at last month's conference on Afghanistan held in London.

"Our experience is not to believe in the 'good-and-bad' Taliban theory. Taliban is Taliban. Extremists should not be part of any government in Kabul," Iranian ambssador to India Seyed Mehdi Nabizadeh said in New Delhi on the occasion of the 31st anniversary of Iran's Islamic Revolution.

He added the Hamid Karzai government in Afghanistan should be run with the support of the people, and neighboring countries were duty-bound to help it bring about peace there.

Advocating a regional approach involving India to address the Afghan issue, he said Tehran, like New Delhi, had a lot at stake in Afghanistan. But unlike Pakistan, it had no sympathy for the Taliban.

The Iranian envoy cautioned that the return of the Taliban would further deteriorate regional security.

Ahead of the January 28 London Conference on Afghanistan, India's External Affairs Minister S.M. Krishna voiced New Delhi's opposition to the idea of "good" and "bad" Taliban. But the meet rejected India's argument.

U.S.-led efforts to broker talks between the Karzai government and the Taliban have alarmed India as it fears that the return of the Taliban (with the backing of Pakistan's ISI) will jeopardize its interests in that land-locked country.
Nabizadeh also pointed out none of the three aims for the 2001 U.S.-led military invasion of Afghanistan--stopping the trafficking of narcotics, fighting the Taliban and terrorism, besides establishing security in the region--was achieved.

He said the production of narcotics increased, Islamic fundamentalism spread to other countrie, and the security of neighboring countries was being threatened.

India Must Decide Soon

On the Iran-Pakistan-India (IPI) gas pipeline project, Nabizadeh said New Delhi must join the project soon, while observing that discussions on the pipeline were continuing for 15 years and there should be "some limit" to the time being taken to decide.

"The doors are open to India to join. We can't wait indefinitely. There should be some limit. We hope it will be decided in the future," Nabizadeh said, adding Iran's negotiations with Pakistan were reaching the implementation stage.

On the expiry of the one-month time-limit for India to join the project, he said Iran was keeping alive the negotiations on IPI and that a team from the Indian Oil Ministry was in Tehran recently.

India stopped attending trilateral meetings after the last one in 2007 with its demand for an Iranian guarantee for uninterrupted supply of gas via Pakistan and a stable pricing mechanism was not yet met.

by RTT Staff Writer

shyamd wrote:

Carl_T wrote:Even if they do test one, wouldn't it be a while before they turn it into a credible threat if they don't have the tech to deliver the weapons?

It just seems like an open invitation for their neighbours to bomb them.

Their missiles are nuclear capable. Chinese/NoKo have given them the tech. Would you want to call Iran's bluff over the nuclear weapons? To me its obvious that Israel/US know that the risk is not worth taking. Obama administrations stance has changed to "containment" rather than engagement now.

Carl_T wrote:

shyamd wrote:Their missiles are nuclear capable. Chinese/NoKo have given them the tech. Would you want to call Iran's bluff over the nuclear weapons? To me its obvious that Israel/US know that the risk is not worth taking. Obama administrations stance has changed to "containment" rather than engagement now.

I thought that even after a successful test, it would be a while before reliable nuclear devices that can be fitted on missiles could be manufactured.

shyamd wrote:Carl_T perhaps... What if Iran were to receive reliable tech from another country that possesses nuke weapons which are tested.

AnimeshP wrote:
I'm a novice when it comes to nuclear weapons but could it be that the "test" may not be an actual test but a demonstration of a working bomb which has already been created and mated with delivery systems ??

With tensions over Iran’s nuclear ambitions hitting new levels, the United States is mounting a diplomatic full-court press in the Middle East, sending four top diplomats, including Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, to confer with Arab and Israeli leaders.

The envoys’ visits to Israel, Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Qatar were planned separately in recent weeks, but they now have a common purpose, administration officials said: to reassure Iran’s neighbors that the United States will stand firm against Tehran, and to enlist other countries in a global effort to put pressure on the Iranian authorities.

Mrs. Clinton will play a central part in the effort, leaving Saturday for Qatar and Saudi Arabia, where she will meet with the Saudi leader, King Abdullah. Officials said she was expected to press the Saudis to reassure China that Saudi Arabia would offset any disruption in oil shipments that could occur if Beijing were to back new United Nations sanctions against Iran.

China, which has major investments in Iran’s oil and gas industry, has been the main holdout in the American-led effort to impose tougher sanctions against Iran through the United Nations Security Council.

In a sign of the importance of the trip, Mrs. Clinton stuck to her plans even after her husband, former President Bill Clinton, entered the hospital for a heart procedure on Thursday, though she delayed her departure by a day.

...

The State Department’s under secretary for political affairs, William Burns, has perhaps the most challenging itinerary, traveling to Syria, one of Iran’s staunchest allies in the region, and to Lebanon, which holds a seat on the Security Council and is likely to resist sanctions against Iran.


...


“The attitude in the Middle East countries is going to be, ‘Can we count on the United States?’ ” said Patrick Clawson, the deputy director of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. “If the Obama administration wants to persuade people it can deter Iran, it’s going to require continuing high-level attention. It’s going to require cold war-level diplomacy.”