Coming Soon - War with Iran?

[tazmic]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-15662122

""The stable door has been left open and it's too late to close it." This sobering view of Iran's nuclear programme comes not from an extremist anti-Iranian campaigner, but from an experienced, rational chemistry professor who knows a thing or two about nuclear technology."

"Uzi Even worked at Israel's top-secret (nuclear) research facility at Dimona in the Negev Desert for several years."

[Elihu]

alot of excellent points:

the poetry:

""The stable door has been left open and it's too late to close it." ...Uzi Even worked at Israel's top-secret (nuclear) research facility at Dimona in the Negev Desert for several years."

the facts:

I'm with you justdrew, there are scripts that must be followed after all.

all it comes down to is: Israel gets permission to fly in, blow up a few pre-agreeded upon locations, Iran's leadership collects it's under-the-table payments for a few years, while aboveboard... status quo is rapidly restored after a round of faux-saberrattling. Israel looses two unpiloted planes in the raid, as agreed upon.

the irrational # in the equation:

If they attack Iran I have a horrible feeling it will end very badly..

the truth

Que sera sera....It's in other's hands.

the journey

Sorry for rambling, I just thought one or two of my dear friends might like to hear my thoughts. I could be wrong about that. I love you all anyway.

the speculative conversation point:

But the fact remains: when all the smoke and bullshit are cleared away, there is no rational reason for attacking Iran, and the US simply cannot afford to do so.

as a denizen of the refracted reality hologram, inferring that a long string of seemingly irrational actions continues to mold a predictably dreadful destiny, it should be considered that the people in charge cannot afford not to start another war and that therefore, in un-refracted reality, everything they are doing makes perfectly rational sense....

[eyeno]

Mitt Romney attempting to demonstrate to his bosses that 'he is their guy'.

http://www.activistpost.com/2011/11/oba ... epare.html
Obama challenger Romney says 'prepare for war' against Iran
Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney
© AFP/Getty Images/File Scott Olson
AFP

WASHINGTON (AFP) - Accusing President Barack Obama of naivete on Iran, Republican presidential challenger Mitt Romney promised Thursday that if elected president he would "prepare for war" with the Islamic republic.

In a commentary published in the Wall Street Journal, Romney said he would back up US diplomacy "with a very real and very credible military option," deploying carrier battle groups to the Gulf and boosting military aid to Israel.

"These actions will send an unequivocal signal to Iran that the United States, acting in concert with allies, will never permit Iran to obtain nuclear weapons," he wrote.

Romney, a frontrunner in the race for the Republican presidential nomination, keyed his column to a International Atomic Energy Agency report this week citing "credible evidence" that Iran had worked on a nuclear explosive device.


Iran denies it is developing nuclear weapons and insists its nuclear program is for generating electricity, but the report has prompted calls in the West for tougher UN sanctions and demands by Israel for world to act to prevent Tehran for getting nuclear weapons.

Romney said the United States "needs a very different policy."

"'Si vis pacem, para bellum.' That is a Latin phrase, but the ayatollahs will have no trouble understanding its meaning from a Romney administration: If you want peace, prepare for war," he said.

He stopped short of advocating military action against Iran, but attacked the Obama administration's diplomatic and sanctions-oriented approach to Tehran's nuclear program as "a case study in botched diplomacy."

"Whether this approach was rooted in naivete or in realistic expectations, can be debated. I believe it was the former," Romney wrote.

He criticized the administration for failing to get Moscow's support for tougher action against Tehran as the price for a "reset" in US-Russian relations, and Obama's refusal to meddle during Iran's Green Revolution of 2009.

"A proper American policy might or might not have altered the outcome; we will never know," he wrote. "But thanks to this shameful abdication of moral authority, any hope of toppling a vicious regime was lost, perhaps for generations."

With the US military tied down in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Obama administration has played down a US military option against Iran, opting instead for diplomacy and sanctions.

Robert Gates, Obama's Republican defense secretary until earlier this year, warned repeatedly against the use of military force, arguing it would only drive the Iranian program deeper underground.

"The reality is there is no military option that does anything more than buy time," Gates told CNN in 2009.

[The Consul]

"The dead men were skinny, all of them, muddy and ragged. One man's face had been blown off. Another lay with the back of his head gone, his brains leaking. Filtered sunlight spilled onto the floor; the smell of death was heavy. An American reporter fell on the ground and lay there crying. I looked at her, and at the corpses. Intellectually, I knew that her reaction was appropriate, but I felt disgusted by her weakness. Staring down at the bodies, I felt numb, light, as if my own body might vaporize, as if I didn't need to breathe.

The dying were worse than the dead. They came down from the hill in rattling caravans, slow as torture over the bone-cracking road of mud and rock, bleeding all over the backseats of rattletrap cars. Three hours, four hours, bright red lives seeping away.

They wound up in the dim wards of Jalalabad's filthy hospital. There weren't enough antibiotics or antisepetics. Little girls who wouldn't live through the night were stacked two to a cot, covered in blood. A baby with its head caked in scab and pus and one eye full of blood cried in the listless arms of a young, young girl. A little boy who had lost his arms, his eyesight, and his family lay motionless in the hot afternoon. The rooms smelled of sweat and infection; flies and woolen blankets. All of it coming down from those American Planes......

Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said..: 'If we cannot know for certain how many people were killed in lower Manhattan, where we have full access to the sit, thousands of reporters, investigators, rescue workers combing the wreckage, and no enemy propaganda to confuse the situation, one ought to be sensitive to how difficult it is to know with certainty, in real time, what may have happened in any situation in Afghanistan, where we lack access and we're dealing with world class liars."

from the book by Megan K. Stack "Every Man In This Village Is A Liar" reporting on an errant B-52 bombing run on Tora Bora.

Imagine this situation (which is all but impossible to do, really) and multiply it by a factor of at least 10. This is what a "strike" on Iran would lead to. Americans only seem to care that it would lead to $400 barrels of oil and a disasterous global economic collapse. All the presidential candidates, including Obama, lack the basic common human decency to fully explore the human cost of war. You know how they always talk about Sally, the middle aged single mother of 5 who's husband died of a heart attack and she held down three jobs till she came down with cancer and how America can't let Sally down... none of them talk about Aliba, the seven year old girl who had her legs blown off as her mother tried to shield her and died on top of her and she had to crawl out from underneath her and over the dead bodies of her extended family who were in various stages of dismemberment from a 500 lb tritonal bomb.

None of them have the courage to do this. Every one of them deserves to be outed as a shameless coward in the service of greedy. bloodthirsty monsters..

[seemslikeadream]

Israeli Officials: ElBaradei Secretly an Iranian Agent
Insists Speculation in New IAEA Report 'Proof'
by Jason Ditz, November 09, 2011

With most of the new International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) report on Iran centering around whether or not officials can start some sort of major war on the flimsy pretexts therein, Israeli officials are using it to condemn former IAEA head Mohammed ElBaradei for not providing a similar report in the past.

One official said the report “proves he was an Iranian agent,” while others insisted that he would be condemned by history as “the person who helped Iran obtain a nuclear weapon.”

ElBaradei was quick to deny the charges, of course. In the past he has commented on his time in the IAEA and expressed concern that idle speculation inside reports might be used to start a major war, as was done in Iraq.

His replacement, Amano Yukiya, is seen as a “US ally” and has been far more willing to include random guesses about what might be happening in reports than his predecessor. Needless to say, this sits much better with Israeli officials than the “lets not start a war over nothing” position.

[AlicetheKurious]

El Baradei's real crime was refusing to bend over and drop his pants like his successor Amano has, so the Israel-firsters could pretend a legal fig-leaf existed for their invasion of Iraq. Instead, they and their co-conspirators had to settle for arm-twisting other countries into "bilateral immunity agreements" so the sociopaths responsible could avoid prosecution for their war crimes.

I still think things were very different in 2003 than they are today, and they're different in a way that makes the launching of a new war, against a far more powerful country than Iraq and Afghanistan combined, very unlikely, if not impossible.

That's not to say that Israel and its agents aren't pulling out all the stops to get the US to, once again, do their dirty work. It has nothing to do with nuclear weapons anyway. This is about Israel's ambition to control the flow of oil to Asia and perhaps even Europe. I actually blame the American public that we're even discussing all this, I really do. After Iraq and Afghanistan, there was no accountability at all, on any level, so one thing that hasn't changed is that the same perps are strutting and lying and raking in the cash and, hey, why not? going back for seconds.

IAEA on Iran: A ‘Colossal Non-Event’ As Casus Belli
John Glaser, November 08, 2011

Flynt Leverett, professor of International Affairs at Pennsylvania State University and Senior Research Fellow at the New America Foundation, and his wife Hillary Mann Leverett, CEO of Strategic Energy and Global Analysis, write of the IAEA report on Iran:

Ever since Nobel laureate Mohamed ElBaradei stepped down as head of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in late 2009, the United States and some of its allies have pushed Baradei’s successor, Yukiya Amano, to ratify Western arguments that Iran is trying to acquire nuclear weapons. Today, Amano authorized the release of an IAEA report, see here, purporting to do just that.

…But the report—arguably the most anticipated document of its kind since the NPT was first advanced in 1968—does not in any way demonstrate that Iran is “developing a nuclear weapon”. Rather, it once again affirms, as the IAEA has for decades, Iran’s “non-diversion” of nuclear material. In other words, even if the Islamic Republic wanted to build nuclear weapons (and Tehran continues to deny, at the highest levels of authority, that it wishes to do so) it does not have the weapons-grade material essential to the task.

Nevertheless, Amano chose to focus the report on unsubstantiated intelligence reports, provided almost entirely by the United States, Israel, and other Western governments, alleging that the Islamic Republic is working on a nuclear weapons program…

…There are many reasons to question virtually every detail in the IAEA’s accounting of the “possible military dimensions” to Iran’s nuclear program. But, more importantly, the stories do not indicate that Tehran is currently trying to produce nuclear weapons. (And, remember, Iran does not have the weapons-grade fissile material needed to build a nuclear bomb.) In fact, no one has ever produced a shred of evidence that Iran has ever actually tried to build a nuclear weapon or taken a decision to do so. And that is why—notwithstanding the efforts of the Obama Administration, some allied governments, neoconservative and pro-Israel constituencies in Washington, and others to hype IAEA report to the maximum extent possible—the new IAEA report is, substantively, a colossal non-event.

…Even if every single point in the IAEA’s report were absolutely, 100 percent true, it would mean that Iran is working systematically to master the skills it would need to fabricate nuclear weapons at some hypothetical point down the road, should it ever decide to do so. This is how we ourselves have long interpreted the strategic purposes of the Islamic Republic’s nuclear program—to create perceptions on the part of potential adversaries that Tehran is capable of building nuclear weapons in a finite period of time, without actually building them. As Baradei himself has pointed out, see here, having a “nuclear weapons capability” is not the same as having nuclear weapons. Link

[seemslikeadream]

U.S. Plans Bomb Sales in Gulf to Counter Iran

By ADAM ENTOUS, JAY SOLOMON and JULIAN E. BARNES

WASHINGTON—The Obama administration has quietly drawn up plans to provide a key Persian Gulf ally with thousands of advanced "bunker-buster" bombs and other munitions, part of a stepped-up U.S. effort to build a regional coalition to counter Iran.

Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, in black, joins military officials for a graduation ceremony on Thursday.

The proposed sale to the United Arab Emirates would vastly expand the existing capabilities of the country's air force to target fixed structures, which could include bunkers and tunnels—the kind of installations where Iran is believed to be developing weapons.

The move represents one way the Obama administration intends to keep Iran in check, as it struggles to find adequate backing for new United Nations sanctions—even after a report by the U.N. nuclear watchdog concluded this week that Tehran has been developing the technologies needed to produce a nuclear weapon.

The oil-rich U.A.E. traditionally has had strong trade relations with Iran. But the ruling al Nahyan family in Abu Dhabi, the Emerati capital, is seen as one of the most hawkish against Iran among the monarchies in the Persian Gulf, and the country's leadership has openly expressed fear of an Iranian nuclear weapon.

Tehran also has regularly claimed sovereignty over three of the U.A.E.'s Persian Gulf islands, though it denies its nuclear program is for anything but peaceful purposes.

The proposed package for U.A.E. is expected to be formally presented to Congress in the coming days and would authorize the sale of up to 4,900 joint direct attack munitions, or JDAMs, along with other weapons systems.

The sale reflects the Obama administration's focus on curbing Iranian influence as it pulls the last U.S. troops out of Iraq by the end of the year. U.S. defense officials say the U.S. will have an estimated 40,000 troops in the region after the pullout.

The U.N.'s International Atomic Energy Agency in a report this week concluded Iran has conducted research on developing nuclear weapons, a finding putting pressure on the Obama administration to take new steps against the country's rulers.
[USIRANjp2] Associated Press

JDAM 'bunker-buster' bombs being prepared for use by the U.S. over Iraq in 2003.

Iranian officials have acknowledged that international sanctions are hurting the local economy and Tehran's ability to access the international financial system. Still, U.S. officials acknowledged there are no signs this financial pain is causing Tehran to rethink its pursuit of nuclear technologies.

With many U.S. sanctions already in place and U.N. Security Council permanent members Russia and China opposed to new sanctions, the administration has few other levers.

The Obama administration is trying to build up the six members of the Gulf Cooperation Council, which comprises Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Oman, Qatar, U.A.E. and Kuwait, as a unified counterweight to Iran.

In recent months, the U.S. has begun holding a regular strategic dialogue with the GCC bloc. And the Pentagon has been trying to improve intelligence-sharing and military compatibility among the six countries.

"For them to be a regional leader, you have to have that capacity, you have to enable them, they have to have credibility," a U.S. military official said.

Recent arms deals include a record $60 billion plan to sell Saudi Arabia advanced F-15 aircraft, some to be equipped 2,000-pound JDAMs and other powerful munitions. The Pentagon recently notified Congress of plans to sell Stinger missiles and medium-range, air-to-air missiles to Oman.

The U.S. has also sought to build up missile-defense systems across the region, with the goal of building an integrated network to defend against short- and intermediate-range ballistic missiles from Iran.

Tehran has responded to the recent IAEA report, and to discussions in Israel about the possibility of an attack on Iran, with harsh warnings. "Anybody who has an idea to attack Iran should be prepared to receive a strong slap and an iron fist," Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said on Thursday.

It is unclear how effective the U.A.E.'s new bombs would be, in the event of a conflict, at breaching Iranian fortifications, some of which are believed to be deep enough to withstand many direct strikes. The Pentagon has been developing larger guided bombs that officials say could do more damage.

The Pentagon and the State Department have been laying the groundwork for the U.A.E. deal in private discussions with Congress, where the size of the proposed sale has taken some by surprise.

The U.A.E. has a large fleet of advanced U.S.-made F-16 fighters that could carry the bunker-busters. The U.A.E. currently has several hundred JDAMs in its arsenal, and the 4,900 in the new proposal would represent a massive buildup, officials said.

Administration officials said that the "augmented" U.A.E. stockpile would allow the country to meet its projected training needs, assume an expanded security role in the region and beyond, and deter Iran, according to people familiar with the discussions with lawmakers.

The U.A.E.'s fighters, equipped with JDAMs and other munitions, would have "a decisive edge" over Iran's fleet of aged planes, said Anthony Cordesman of the Center for Strategic and International Studies. "Iran has to take the U.A.E. seriously," Mr. Cordesman said.

JDAMs are made by Boeing Co., though such a sale would be facilitated by the U.S. government. Major proposed arms deals aren't made public until after Congress receives formal written notification from the administration that includes estimated cost and specific systems that would be included. A Pentagon spokesman declined to comment on the proposed sale. The U.A.E.'s U.S. ambassador also refused to comment.

Once the administration announces the proposed sale, lawmakers can try to block the deal by passing legislation. A serious congressional challenge isn't expected in this case, according to people involved in the discussions, though in 2008, a proposed $123 million sale of 900 JDAMs to Saudi Arabia ran into months of congressional objection before clearing.

Officials said the U.A.E. package is seen as less controversial because the country is viewed as less hostile toward Israel. The deal would include other types of advanced munitions in addition to the JDAMs. Details have been closely held because of the sensitivities in the region.

Proponents of the deal point to the U.A.E.'s support for U.S. efforts to isolate Iran, and its critical backing to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization air campaign in Libya. Officials said providing JDAMs and other U.S. weapons systems to the U.A.E. will make it easier for the country to participate in similar missions in the future.

The pace of U.S. arms deals around the Middle East slowed after the outbreak of pro-democracy protests earlier this year, as President Barack Obama sought to balance calls for democratic reforms with the need to keep a unified front against Iran.

Last month, the State Department put a proposed $53 million arms sale to Bahrain on hold after some lawmakers and human-rights groups protested the monarchy's violent crackdown on protesters earlier this year.

Some lawmakers recently also have threatened to block the proposed sale of attack helicopters to Turkey, citing the breakdown in Ankara's relationship with Israel and its threats against Cyprus.

But arms sales to key allies are once again being fast-tracked by the administration, despite the potential for controversy, officials say. "We in the military are poised to get back to normalcy," the U.S. military official said of sales to key allies.

Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said on Thursday that a nuclear-armed Iran was unacceptable to the U.S. and its allies. But he said using force was "a last resort" that could have unintended consequences—casting some doubt on the U.S. willingness to launch a military strike on Iran.

A strike on Iran "could have a serious impact in the region and it could have a serious impact on U.S. forces in the region," he said.

Panetta sounds warning on military action against Iran over its growing nuclear ambitions
By Associated Press, Updated: Thursday, November 10, 5:20 PM

WASHINGTON — Military action against Iran could have unintended consequences, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said Thursday, sounding the administration’s strongest reservations about a strike since the release of a new report on Tehran’s escalating nuclear ambitions.

Panetta told Pentagon reporters that he agrees with earlier assessments that a strike would only set Iran’s nuclear program back by three years at most.

“You’ve got to be careful of unintended consequences here. And those consequences could involve not only not really deterring Iran from what they want to do, but more importantly, it could have a serious impact in the region and it could have a serious impact on U.S. forces in the region,” Panetta said.

The International Atomic Energy Agency said this week for the first time that Iran was suspected of conducting secret experiments whose sole purpose was the development of nuclear arms.

In response, the State Department said Thursday that the U.S. was looking at ways to increase economic pressure on Iran. Israeli leaders have said that without effective sanctions, they will not take any other options off the table.

Tehran, meanwhile, warned that any strike by the U.S. or Israel would trigger a strong response from Iranian forces. Iran insists it is pursuing nuclear energy for peaceful purposes.

Panetta, a former CIA director, said the IAEA report is in line with intelligence assessments that suggest Tehran is trying to develop its nuclear capabilities, but that there continues to be divisions within Iran over whether to build a bomb.

Asked what will happen if sanctions don’t work, Panetta said, “I think our hope is that we don’t reach that point and that Iran decides that it should join the international family.” He said, however, that the U.S. agrees that military action ought to be the last resort.

State Department spokesman Mark Toner said the U.S. is consulting with international allies over what the next steps should be.

“Certainly we’re going to look at ways that we can ramp up economic pressure on Iran,” to persuade the Islamic republic to return to negotiations on its nuclear program and come clean about its intent, Toner said.

He added that all six countries that negotiate with Iran on nuclear issues — the U.S., Britain, China, France, Germany and Russia — “are united in their recognition that Iran’s nuclear program raises ... serious questions that need to be addressed.”

He said the United Nations already has put in place “very stringent” sanctions against Iran that are hampering the Iranian economy. But the U.S. still wanted those to be better enforced.

“We’re going to look at unilateral actions as well,” he added. “We’re looking at the broad gamut of possibilities, how we can increase pressure on Iran.”

[DrVolin]

U.S. Plans Bomb Sales in Gulf to Counter Iran

The Obama administration has quietly drawn up plans to provide a key Persian Gulf ally with thousands of advanced "bunker-buster" bombs and other munitions

Where I come from, we call that prepositioning.

[vanlose kid]

U.S. Plans Bomb Sales in Gulf to Counter Iran

The Obama administration has quietly drawn up plans to provide a key Persian Gulf ally with thousands of advanced "bunker-buster" bombs and other munitions

Where I come from, we call that prepositioning.

and the word is already out on the street.



*

[seemslikeadream]

New claims emerge involving scientist in Iran nuke report

VIENNA (AP) – A former Soviet nuclear scientist's son-in-law has told the U.N. atomic agency that the scientist's involvement in alleged Iranian efforts to develop nuclear arms is broader than originally thought, diplomats have told The Associated Press

The International Atomic Energy Agency is trying to probe Iran for purportedly trying to develop such weapons and has implicated a "foreign expert" in a report as helping Iran work on ways to set off a nuclear blast through a sophisticated multipoint explosives trigger.

Diplomats and media have identified the expert as Vyacheslav Danilenko but say he has told IAEA investigators he was not involved in developing such a device, or in other aspects of Iran's suspected covert work on nuclear weapons.

But the diplomats — who asked for anonymity because their information was privileged — said Danilenko's son-in-law has further implicated the scientist, telling the agency the expert also helped Iran build a related project, a large steel chamber to contain the force of the blast set off by such explosives testing.

Diplomats first told the AP last week that the IAEA had evidence of such a chamber, set up at Iran's Parchin military complex. The confidential IAEA report obtained by the AP on Wednesday confirmed their statements.

It said Iran constructed "a large explosives containment vessel" in which to conduct experiments on triggering a nuclear explosion, apparently 11 years ago, adding that it had satellite images "consistent with this information."

IAEA experts are expected to show those images and detail other information in the IAEA report in a closed meeting Friday for board members. Next week, a board session will focus on concerns that Iran may be seeking to develop nuclear weapons — something Tehran vehemently denies.

The diplomats said they would be expressing their concerns Friday about another worrying issue —indications that nearly 20 kilograms (about 45 pounds) of a component used to arm nuclear warheads was unaccounted for in Iran.

The IAEA has long known that Iran has drawings of how to form uranium metal into the fissile core of warheads. But the diplomats pointed to an inconspicuous section of Wednesday's report — near the end, under "Other Matters" — revealing that an IAEA inspection in August came up 19.8 kilograms, or 43.56 pounds, short of what Iran says it had stored.

One diplomat said that amount of the metal — which can also be used to make uranium fuel — would be enough to arm a nuclear bomb.

On Danilenko, one of the diplomats who is familiar with the IAEA's Iran probe said the scientist told the agency that he did not work on such a chamber. That, said the diplomat, directly contradicts a statement by his son-in-law, who said the container was built under Danilenko's direct supervision.

The diplomat — who, like the others, asked for anonymity because his information is confidential — did not name the son-in-law, but a nuclear expert familiar with the issue identified him as Vladimir Padalko.

Danilenko, 76, pioneered the process that uses explosions to create tiny diamonds for a range of industrial uses — technology similar to the multipoint explosives trigger the IAEA suspects him of working on in the 1990s.

Padalko is the director of Alit, a Ukrainian company that produces such diamonds. The Russian daily Kommersant said after the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union, Danilenko was employed for several years by Alit. It cited Padalko as saying that experts from the IAEA and the U.S. State Department had met with Danilenko several times in recent years.

Efforts to reach the two men Friday were unsuccessful.

Danilenko went public with his denial Thursday, telling Kommersant: "I am not a nuclear scientist and I am not the founder of the Iranian nuclear program."

The diplomat said he told IAEA experts that he thought his work was limited to assisting civilian engineering projects.

The IAEA report cited intelligence from a nation it did not name, saying the "foreign expert" worked "for much of his career" in developing explosive triggers for a nuclear blast in his home country.

It said the expert was in Iran from about 1996 to about 2002, ostensibly to help Iran develop a technique to make the tiny industrial diamonds. The process also uses steel chambers, but the diplomat said the one at Parchin — described as the size of a double-decker bus — was much too large for this use.

Kommersant said starting in the 1950s and until Danilenko's retirement, he had worked at one of the Soviet Union's top nuclear weapons research centers, known as Chelyabinsk-70.

[AlicetheKurious]

Really good discussion of the IAEA report here:

IAEA report is a dud, and ‘Moon of Alabama’ busted it wide open with “Nanodiamonds”

Prior to the report's release, speculation mounted in Israel and Washington that new revelations might prompt military strikes to prevent Iran from acquiring a weapon. Instead, experts say, much of the information is years old, inconclusive – and perhaps not entirely real. Christian Science Monitor

Apparently several mainstream news sources were shamed into picking up some of the revelations posted by the Moon of Alabama blog. I had no idea Moon of Alabama was back. Great news!

On Edit: you can find all the stuff about the IAEA report at Moon of Alabama.

[slimmouse]

Nukular, Nuclear, Nukular, spell it how you like or however you wish to frame it.

One thing always fascinates me about this "discussion".

As a guestimate, I would suggest that the payloads of what might be considered "conventional" weaponary currently stockpiled in the ME are more than sufficient to blow the world up at least once. A country the size of Israel could easily be blasted to crap in the event of any war. Israel could of course send its nukes I guess and find its citizens in a slow fall-out death - In due time ,Iran vice versa

Does anybody else around here even think about that ?

War is a fucking reptilian racket - mass fear/ murder/ death /and sacrifice on- a -stick.

And thats about the top and bottom of it.

When will people get it ?

[Skunkboy]

slimmouse wrote:

War is a fucking reptilian racket - mass fear/ murder/ death /and sacrifice on- a -stick.

And thats about the top and bottom of it.

When will people get it ?

That about says it.

[seemslikeadream]

"Israel's Inside Advocate" to Leave White House for Pro-Israel Think Tank
by Jim Lobe

WASHINGTON - Dennis Ross, President Barack Obama's top Middle East aide who has attracted criticism for his allegedly strong pro-Israel sympathies, will leave his post at the end of this month, the White House announced here Thursday.

Dennis Ross and Binyamin Netanyahu He will rejoin the Washington Institute for Near East Policy (WINEP), an Israel-centered think tank that was spun off in 1985 from the powerful lobby group, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC). Ross served as WINEP's counselor and a fellow during the George W. Bush administration from 2001 to 2009.

"An institution that believes sound policy lies at the intersection of scholarship with statesmanship is especially proud that Dennis is returning to his intellectual home," said WINEP's executive director Dr. Robert Satloff.

Despite the generally hawkish views of WINEP's fellows and their frequent criticism of Obama's approach to the Middle East, Ross said in a statement that his departure from the White House was due to family reasons. It offered no hint of major policy differences between him and Obama or his colleagues on the National Security Council.

"Obviously, there is still work to do but I promised my wife I would return to government for only two years and we both agreed it is time to act on my promise," added Ross.

"I am grateful to President Obama for having given me the opportunity once again to work on a wide array of Middle Eastern issues and challenges and to support his efforts to promote peace in the region," he said.

But coming as it does as Republicans in the 2012 presidential primary race and in Congress have been hammering away at what they have characterized as Obama's "hostility" toward Israel and its prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, Ross's departure could give them more ammunition.

Because of Ross's unusually close ties to leaders in the Jewish community and the Israel lobby, his presence in the White House has acted as a shield against those attacks.

"…(W)ith the diplomacy frozen, Ross’s departure is not a diplomatic problem for the White House; it is instead a problem for the Obama re-election campaign," wrote Elliott Abrams, Ross's counterpart in the George W. Bush White House, who, as a neo-conservative Republican, has been relentlessly critical of Obama's Mideast policies.

"For Ross was the only official in whom most American Jewish leaders had confidence. As most of them are Democrats who have long accepted Ross's faith in the 'peace process,' they viewed his role as the assurance that a steady, experienced, pro-Israel hand was on or near the tiller," Abrams, now with the Council on Foreign Relations, wrote on his cfr.org blog early Friday morning.

A former Soviet specialist who served in top Middle East positions under former presidents George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton, Ross was initially brought into the Obama administration as the State Department's special advisor for the Gulf and Southwest Asia, a post he held from February to June 2009.

He then moved over to the White House where he has served as special assistant to the president and senior director for the "Central Region" at the National Security Council, making him the civilian counterpart of the chief of the Pentagon's Central Command (CentCom), covering a region stretching from Egypt to Afghanistan.

While adept at keeping a low profile, Ross has focused in particular on U.S. policy toward Iran, about which he has long-held hawkish views, and on Israel-Arab relations, especially the U.S.-led Israel- Palestinian "peace process" which appears to have reached a dead end under his supervision.

Indeed, Palestinian leaders, who have often referred to Ross as "Israel's lawyer", have refused to meet with him formally since shortly after the resignation of Obama's first special envoy for the Middle East, Sen. George Mitchell, last May.

Indeed, one senior U.S. diplomat, Amb. Daniel Kurtzer, who took part in the Clinton-era negotiations, cited a number of anonymous officials who were critical of Ross's mediation in the 1990s in his book co-authored with Scott Lasensky, entitled "Negotiating Arab- Israeli Peace".

"The perception was always that Dennis started from the Israeli bottom line, that he listened to what Israel wanted and then tried to sell it to the Arabs," one Arab negotiator told them. "…He was never looked at …as a trusted world figure or as an honest broker."

Similarly, Abraham Foxman, the long-time head of the strongly pro- Israel Anti-Defamation League, once referred to Ross as "the closest thing you'll find to a melitz yosher, as far as Israel is concerned". Melitz yosher is the ancient Hebrew word for "advocate".

Mitchell, who was replaced by a career State Department official, David Hale, reportedly left out of frustration over Obama's failure to take a harder line toward Netanyahu's rejection of U.S. appeals to resume a partial moratorium on Israeli settlement activity and take other measures that would bolster Palestinian Authority (PA) President Mahmoud Abbas and induce him to return to direct negotiations. Mitchell considered Ross his main antagonist in internal policy debates, according to a number of sources.

Ross also strongly and successfully opposed suggestions by Mitchell and others that the U.S. put forward its own proposals on a final settlement of the conflict.

While Ross has long been critical of Israeli settlement expansion, he reportedly argued, as he did under Clinton, that exerting serious pressure on Israeli leaders would prove counterproductive.

According to various reports, he was privately critical of Obama's demand in 2009 that Israel halt all settlement activity in the Occupied Territories and East Jerusalem as a precondition for re- launching negotiations with the Palestinians.

Despite those differences, Ross's early endorsement of Obama as president – as well as his role during the 2008 campaign as a liaison to AIPAC and other Israel Lobby groups – earned him entrée into the incoming administration's top foreign policy ranks.

Ross stance on Iran was also considerably more hawkish than Obama's public position of "engagement" with the Islamic Republic, at least during the campaign and at the outset of the administration.

In the run-up to the 2008 elections, Ross participated in two task forces on Iran policy, including one by the Bipartisan Policy Center, which called for military strikes against Tehran if it did not agree to abandon its uranium enrichment program. Other task force members included prominent neo-conservatives who championed the 2003 invasion of Iraq.

Ross was also a founding member in 2008 of United Against Iran (UANI), another hawkish group that has mounted an aggressive public campaign to highlight the alleged threat posed by Iran to Israel and the U.S.

And, in a book co-written by WINEP fellow David Makovsky and published just after the 2008 election, Ross called for using diplomatic engagement primarily as a means to rally international support behind "tougher policies – either militarily or meaningful containment" – an approach that has been largely adopted by the administration.

Indeed, the fact that Ross has largely prevailed in setting the basic policy parameters on both the "peace process" and on Iran, at least for through next year's election, makes it unlikely that Obama will make any major policy changes in the interim.

"The administration does not need Dennis Ross anymore," said M.J. Rosenberg, a Mideast expert at Media Matters, who used to work for AIPAC and the more dovish Israel Policy Forum. "It's on automatic pilot, enhanced by direct demands from AIPAC and Netanyahu that will invariably get a positive response. Ross was a middle man and a middle man is no longer necessary."

"Dennis Ross is returning to the outpost of the Israel Lobby whence he came, leaving a diplomatic shambles behind him," according to Amb. Chas Freeman (ret.), former head of the Middle East Policy Council here.

"None of the issues in his charge prospered during his tenure, which saw the collapse of any pretense of a peace process between Israel and the Arabs, a deepening of the Iranian conviction that a nuclear deterrent is necessary to deter Israeli or American attack, and the collapse of American prestige and influence among the Arabs and in the Islamic world more generally," he wrote in an email exchange with IPS.

[AlicetheKurious]

"…(W)ith the diplomacy frozen, Ross’s departure is not a diplomatic problem for the White House; it is instead a problem for the Obama re-election campaign," wrote Elliott Abrams, Ross's counterpart in the George W. Bush White House, who, as a neo-conservative Republican, has been relentlessly critical of Obama's Mideast policies.

"For Ross was the only official in whom most American Jewish leaders had confidence. As most of them are Democrats who have long accepted Ross's faith in the 'peace process,' they viewed his role as the assurance that a steady, experienced, pro-Israel hand was on or near the tiller," Abrams, now with the Council on Foreign Relations, wrote on his cfr.org blog early Friday morning.

...

Abraham Foxman, the long-time head of the strongly pro- Israel Anti-Defamation League, once referred to Ross as "the closest thing you'll find to a melitz yosher, as far as Israel is concerned". Melitz yosher is the ancient Hebrew word for "advocate".

...

Ross also strongly and successfully opposed suggestions by Mitchell and others that the U.S. put forward its own proposals on a final settlement of the conflict.

...

Indeed, the fact that Ross has largely prevailed in setting the basic policy parameters on both the "peace process" and on Iran, at least for through next year's election, makes it unlikely that Obama will make any major policy changes in the interim.

"The administration does not need Dennis Ross anymore," said M.J. Rosenberg, a Mideast expert at Media Matters, who used to work for AIPAC and the more dovish Israel Policy Forum. "It's on automatic pilot, enhanced by direct demands from AIPAC and Netanyahu that will invariably get a positive response. Ross was a middle man and a middle man is no longer necessary."

You're allowed to say that agents for the state of Israel are making policy for the US, but only if you make it clear that it's a good thing.