Coming Soon - War with Iran?

[Searcher08]

A really instructive exercise is to read that last report and replace Israel with Russia. Or China.

I'm not sure how many joint Russian-American or Chinese-American dual citizens are at the highest level of the Department of Defence. Or Irish-American or Anglo-American or German-American...

Could someone tell me the names of senior Obama administration officials who have also served in the Russian or Chinese armies?

I'm just curious, ya know...

[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]

Wow. Brilliant, brilliant analysis (well, except for the reference to that little asshole Michael Scheuer near the end, but no biggie):

Syria and Iran: the great game

Regime change in Syria is a strategic prize that outstrips Libya – which is why Saudi Arabia and the west are playing their part

Alastair Crooke
guardian.co.uk, Friday 4 November 2011 17.15 GMT

This summer a senior Saudi official told John Hannah, Dick Cheney's former chief of staff, that from the outset of the upheaval in Syria, the king has believed that regime change would be highly beneficial to Saudi interests: "The king knows that other than the collapse of the Islamic Republic itself, nothing would weaken Iran more than losing Syria."

This is today's "great game" – losing Syria. And this is how it is played: set up a hurried transitional council as sole representative of the Syrian people, irrespective of whether it has any real legs inside Syria; feed in armed insurgents from neighbouring states; impose sanctions that will hurt the middle classes; mount a media campaign to denigrate any Syrian efforts at reform; try to instigate divisions within the army and the elite; and ultimately President Assad will fall – so its initiators insist.

Europeans, Americans and certain Gulf states may see the Syria "game" as the logical successor to the supposedly successful Libya game in moulding the Arab awakening towards a western cultural paradigm. In terms of regional politics however, Syria is strategically more valuable, and Iran knows this. Iran has said that it will respond to any external intervention in Syria.

It is already no "game", as the many killed by both sides attests to. The radical armed elements being used in Syria as auxiliaries to depose Assad run counter to the prospect of any outcome emerging within the western paradigm. These groups may well have a bloody and very undemocratic agenda of their own. I warned of this danger in connection to Afghanistan in the 80s: some of the Afghan mujahideen had real roots in the community, I suggested, but others posed a severe danger to people. A kindly American politician at the time placed his arm around my shoulder and told me not to worry: these were the people "kicking Soviet ass". We chose to look the other way because kicking the Soviets played well to US domestic needs. Today Europe looks the other way, refusing to consider who Syria's combat-experienced insurgents taking such a toll of Syrian security forces truly are, because losing Assad and confronting Iran plays so well, particularly at a time of domestic difficulty.

Fortunately, the tactics in Syria, in spite of heavy investment, seem to be failing. Most people in the region believe that if Syria is pushed further into civil conflict the result will be sectarian violence in Lebanon, Iraq and more widely too. The notion that such conflict will throw up a stable, let alone western-style, democracy, is fanciful at best, an act of supreme callousness at worst.

The origins of the "lose Assad" operation preceded the Arab awakening: they reach back to Israel's failure in its 2006 war to seriously damage Hezbollah, and the post-conflict US assessment that it was Syria that represented Hezbollah's achilles heel – as the vulnerable conduit linking Hezbollah to Iran. US officials speculated as to what might be done to block this vital corridor, but it was Prince Bandar of Saudi Arabia who surprised them by saying that the solution was to harness Islamic forces. The Americans were intrigued, but could not deal with such people. Leave that to me, Bandar retorted. Hannah noted that "Bandar working without reference to US interests is clearly cause for concern. But Bandar working as a partner … against a common Iranian enemy is a major strategic asset." Bandar got the job.

Hypothetical planning, however, only became concrete action this year, with the overthrow of Egypt's President Mubarak. Suddenly Israel seemed vulnerable, and a weakened Syria, mired in troubles, had heightened strategic allure. In parallel, Qatar had stepped to the fore. Azmi Bishara, a pan-Arabist who resigned from the Israeli Knesset and self-exiled to Doha, was according to some local reports involved in a scheme in which al-Jazeera would not just report revolution, but instantiate it for the region – or at least this is what was believed in Doha in the wake of the Tunisian and Egyptian uprisings. Qatar, however, was not merely trying to leverage human suffering into an international intervention, but was also – as in Libya – directly involved as a key operational patron of the opposition.

The next stages were to draw France's President Sarkozy – the arch-promoter of the Benghazi transitional council model that had turned Nato into an instrument of regime change – into the team. Barack Obama followed by helping to persuade Turkey's prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan – already piqued at Assad – to play the transitional council part on Syria's border, and lend his legitimacy to the "resistance". Both of the latter components, however, are not without challenges from their own security arms, who are sceptical of the efficacy of the transitional council model, and opposed to military intervention. Even Bandar is not without challenges: he has no political umbrella from the king, and others in the family are playing other Islamist cards to different ends. Iran, Iraq and Algeria – and occasionally Egypt – co-operate to frustrate Gulf manoeuvres against Syria at the Arab League. The transitional council model, which in Libya has displayed the weakness of leveraging just one faction as the government-in-waiting, is more starkly defective in Syria. Syria's opposition council, put together by Turkey, France and Qatar, is caught out by the fact that the Syrian security structures have remained near rock solid through seven months – defections have been negligible – and Assad's popular support base are intact. Only external intervention could change that equation, but for the opposition to call for it would be political suicide, and they know it.

The internal opposition gathering in Istanbul demanded a statement refusing external intervention and armed action, but the Syrian national council was announced even before the intra-opposition talks had reached any agreement – such was the hurry on the part of external parties.

The external opposition continues to fudge its stance on external intervention, and with good reason: the internal opposition rejects it. This is the flaw to the model – for the majority in Syria deeply oppose external intervention, fearing civil conflict. Hence Syrians face a long period of externally mounted insurgency, siege and international attrition. Both sides will pay in blood.

But the real danger, as Hannah himself noted, is that the Saudis might "once again fire up the old Sunni jihadist network and point it in the general direction of Shiite Iran", which puts Syria first in line. In fact, that is exactly what is happening, but the west, as before in Afghanistan, prefers not to notice – so long as the drama plays well to western audiences.

As Foreign Affairs reported last month, Saudi and its Gulf allies are firing up the radical Salafists (fundamentalist Sunnis), not only to weaken Iran, but to do what they see is necessary to survive – to disrupt and emasculate the awakenings that threaten absolute monarchism. This is happening in Syria, Libya, Egypt Lebanon, Yemen and Iraq.

This Islamically assertive, literalist orientation of Islam may be generally viewed as nonpolitical and pliable, but history is far from comforting. If you tell people often enough that they can be king-makers and throw buckets of money at them, do not be surprised if they metamorphose – yet again – into something very political. It may take some months, but the fruits of this new attempt to use radical forces for western ends will yet again backfire. Michael Scheuer, the former head of the CIA's Bin Laden unit, recently warned that the Hillary Clinton-devised response to the Arab awakening, of implanting western paradigms, by force if necessary, into the void of fallen regimes, will be seen as a "cultural war on Islam", and will sow the seeds of a further round of radicalisation.

One of the sad paradoxes is the undercutting of moderate Sunnis, who now find themselves caught between the rock of being seen as a western tool, and the hard place of radical Sunni Salafists waiting for the opportunity to displace them and to dismantle the state. What a strange world: Europe and the US think it is OK to "use" precisely those Islamists (including al-Qaida) who absolutely do not believe in western-style democracy in order to bring it about. But then, why not just look the other way and gain the benefit of the public enjoying Assad's kicking? Link

Lebanon is Israel's real, urgent, target, not Iran. Why? Because Hizbullah is the only power that can stop Israel from grabbing one of the richest untapped gas fields on the planet, among other reasons (as though other reasons were needed):

...Last year, the U.S. Geological Survey estimated that the Levant Basin Province, encompassing parts of Israel, Lebanon, Syria and Cyprus, could contain as much as 122 trillion cu. ft. (3.4 trillion cu m) of gas and 1.7 billion barrels of recoverable oil. (For comparison, Libya has gas reserves of 53 trillion cu. ft. [1.5 trillion cu m] and oil reserves of 60 billion barrels.)

The Israelis have a head start in the race to extract gas, having awarded the concessions to a joint U.S.-Israeli firm. Tamar is expected to go online in 2012 and Leviathan three years later.

...

Beirut has asked the U.N. to help mark a temporary sea boundary between Lebanon and Israel, a maritime equivalent of the "blue line" established by the U.N. in 2000, which corresponds to Lebanon's southern land border. The U.N. has agreed to assist and the Israelis are studying the proposal.

...

It is perhaps no surprise then that the sudden interest in the potential fossil-fuel wealth off the Israeli and Lebanese coastline has turned the Mediterranean into a potential new theater of conflict between the Israelis and Hizballah. The Lebanese group already boasts an amphibious warfare unit trained in underwater sabotage and coastal infiltrations. Hizballah's ability to target shipping — and possibly offshore oil-and-gas platforms — was demonstrated in the month long war with Israel in 2006 when the militants came close to sinking an Israeli naval vessel with an Iranian version of the Chinese C-802 missile. Hizballah fighters have since hinted that they have acquired larger antiship missiles with double the 72-mile (116 km) range of the C-802 variant. Last year, Hizballah chief Sheik Hassan Nasrallah warned that his organization now possesses the ability to target shipping along the entire length of Israel's coastline.

In January, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu described the offshore gas fields as a "strategic objective that Israel's enemies will try to undermine" and vowed that "Israel will defend its resources." The Israeli navy has since reportedly presented to the government a maritime-security plan costing between $40 million and $70 million to defend the gas fields.

Upping the ante even further, Nasrallah promised that if Israel threatens future Lebanese plans to tap its oil and gas reserves, "only the Resistance [Hizballah] would force Israel and the world to respect Lebanon's right." Link

The Iranian Labor News Agency quoted [Iranian ambassador to Lebanon] Roknabadi as saying, "Lebanon has [an] oil field shared with Israel. Three-quarters of this field belongs to Lebanon and a quarter of the field belongs to the occupying regime [Israel]," He added, "This country is about to exploit oil soon, but the Lebanese have not done anything in the field yet."

Roknabadi said, "Even when we expressed readiness to help the Lebanese in this field, the parliament of [Israel] voiced objection and said that Iran should not do this. But Lebanese officials have much welcomed our participation in oil exploration in this country."

Lebanon has a delineation agreement with Cyprus. It hopes to start offshore gas and oil exploration in its waters by early 2012. Link

Nasrallah: Hands off our waters
July 27, 2011 02:01 AM
By Hussein Dakroub
The Daily Star

BEIRUT: Hezbollah leader Sayyed Hasan Nasrallah warned Israel Tuesday against any attempt to plunder Lebanon’s offshore gas and oil reserves in its territorial waters as a dispute over the demarcation of maritime borders with the Jewish state worsens.

It was Nasrallah’s first public threat to fight Israel since a long-simmering dispute over offshore gas and oil deposits in the eastern Mediterranean burst out into the open earlier this month following the Israeli government’s approval of a map of its proposed maritime borders which Lebanon deemed an aggression and an infringement on its right to an Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ).

...

Nasrallah said when Israel demarcated its maritime borders with Cyprus, it infringed on 850 square kilometers in Lebanon’s territorial waters by adding them to its border. He said the area’s oil wealth is worth billions of dollars.

“With regard to the 850 square kilometer zone, as long as the state considers it Lebanese [territory], it is Lebanese in the resistance’s eye and there is no disputed area. There is an area that has been infringed on. Lebanon has a diplomatic opportunity to recover it through the [UN] border demarcation,” Nasrallah said.

However, he had a warning to Israel if it attempted to capture Lebanon’s sea resources.

“We warn Israel against extending its hands to this area and steal Lebanon’s resources from Lebanese waters,” Nasrallah said. “Until Lebanon decides to exploit this area, Israel must be warned against extending its hands to it.”

Nasrallah also threatened to target Israel’s oil installations if Lebanon’s oil facilities were attacked.

“Whoever harms our future oil facilities in Lebanese territorial waters, its own facilities will be targeted,” he said. Link

[Elvis]

I was convinced that Cheney would bomb Iran while he had the chance, but it never happened, so I'll shy away from predictions. There are those with the motive and maybe the means, but will they get the right opportunity?

Specifically, I keep thinking I see the "PNAC plan" proceeding apace, as set out in their notorious 1999 keystone report, Rebuilding America’s Defenses: Strategy, Forces and Resources for a New Century. The aim of course is "to maintain American military preeminence, to secure American geopolitical leadership" and "a larger U.S. security perimeter."

The paper mentions Iran seven times:

"...adversaries like Iran, Iraq and North Korea are rushing to develop ballistic missiles and nuclear weapons as a deterrent to American intervention in regions they seek to dominate." (p.4)


"U.S...policies must take account of a larger set of variables than in the past, including the growing number of small nuclear arsenals – from North Korea to Pakistan to, perhaps soon, Iran..." (p.20)


"Over the long term, Iran may well prove as large a threat to U.S. interests in the Gulf as Iraq has. And even should U.S.-Iranian relations improve, retaining forward-based forces in the region would still be an essential element in U.S. security strategy given the longstanding American interests in the region." (p.29)


"...a number of regimes deeply hostile to America – North Korea, Iraq, Iran, Libya and Syria – “already have or are developing ballistic missiles” that could threaten U.S allies and forces abroad." (p.64)


"In the post-Cold War era, America and its allies, rather than the Soviet Union, have become the primary objects of deterrence and it is states like Iraq, Iran and North Korea who most wish to develop deterrent capabilities." (p.66)


"Already potential adversaries from China to Iran are investing in quiet diesel submarines, tactical ballistic missiles, cruise and other shore- and sea-launched anti-ship missiles, and other weapons that will complicate the operations of U.S. fleets in restricted, littoral waters." (p.77)


"We cannot allow North Korea, Iran, Iraq or similar states to undermine American leadership, intimidate American allies or threaten the American homeland itself." (p.87)

Stitched together, focus on Iran, and it sounds like an AEI press release:

"Adversaries like Iran are rushing to develop ballistic missiles and nuclear weapons as a deterrent to American intervention in regions they seek to dominate. U.S. policies must take account of the growing number of small nuclear arsenals –from North Korea to Pakistan to, perhaps soon, Iran. Over the long term, Iran may well prove as large a threat to U.S. interests in the Gulf as Iraq has. And even should U.S.-Iranian relations improve, retaining forward-based forces in the region would still be an essential element in U.S. security strategy.

Iran – a regime deeply hostile to America – already has or is developing ballistic missiles that could threaten U.S allies and forces abroad. America and its allies have become the primary objects of deterrence and it is states like Iran who most wish to develop deterrent capabilities. Already Iran is investing in quiet diesel submarines, tactical ballistic missiles, cruise and other shore- and sea-launched anti-ship missiles, and other weapons that will complicate the operations of U.S. fleets in restricted, littoral waters.

We cannot allow Iran to undermine American leadership, intimidate American allies or threaten the American homeland itself."

The neocon/PNAC gang might be (mostly) out of executive power, but they're still busy, and Iran seems second on their list after Iraq.


Edited to add the contributors listed in Rebuilding America’s Defenses to put some names to it:

Roger Barnett
U.S. Naval War College

Alvin Bernstein
National Defense University

Stephen Cambone
National Defense University

Eliot Cohen
Nitze School of Advanced International Studies, Johns Hopkins University

Devon Gaffney Cross
Donors' Forum for International Affairs

Thomas Donnelly
Project for the New American Century

David Epstein
Office of Secretary of Defense, Net Assessment

David Fautua
Lt. Col., U.S. Army

Dan Goure
Center for Strategic and International Studies

Donald Kagan
Yale University

Fred Kagan
U. S. Military Academy at West Point

Robert Kagan
Carnegie Endowment for International Peace

Robert Killebrew
Col., USA (Ret.)

William Kristol
The Weekly Standard

Mark Lagon
Senate Foreign Relations Committee

James Lasswell
GAMA Corporation

I. Lewis Libby
Dechert Price & Rhoads

Robert Martinage
Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessment

Phil Meilinger
U.S. Naval War College

Mackubin Owens
U.S. Naval War College

Steve Rosen
Harvard University

Gary Schmitt
Project for the New American Century

Abram Shulsky
The RAND Corporation

Michael Vickers
Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessment

Barry Watts
Northrop Grumman Corporation

Paul Wolfowitz
Nitze School of Advanced International Studies, Johns Hopkins University

Dov Zakheim
System Planning Corporation

[AlicetheKurious]

I was convinced that Cheney would bomb Iran while he had the chance, but it never happened, so I'll shy away from predictions. There are those with the motive and maybe the means, but will they get the right opportunity?

Specifically, I keep thinking I see the "PNAC plan" proceeding apace, as set out in their notorious 1999 keystone report, Rebuilding America’s Defenses: Strategy, Forces and Resources for a New Century. The aim of course is "to maintain American military preeminence, to secure American geopolitical leadership" and "a larger U.S. security perimeter."

They're dying to, they want it so badly they can taste it, but they can't. They're a victim of their own "success" -- all those wars have only served to undermine the stated objectives for which they were launched: America's military preeminence and geopolitical leadership are being questioned (if not actively opposed) now more than ever before, and in terms of concrete, measurable gains, America's rivals have benefited from these wars far more than the Americans have.

In fact, I just heard one political analyst on Germany's Deutsche Welle suggest that America's rivals such as China and Russia may not necessarily oppose an American military attack against Iran too much, for the simple reason that it would drive the final nail into the US' coffin and remove it once and for all from the global arena, leaving the way clear for themselves to reap the spoils.

Note that while all these wars have served Israel's stated objectives, in contrast to the US, they have cost the Israelis nothing -- on the contrary, Israel has been a major beneficiary, both economically and militarily. Should the Americans burn themselves out by launching a new war with Iran, the loss of their American patron will mean little to the Israelis, who have far bigger fish to fry. All they care about is cutting off Hizbullah from its supply route through Syria and from its military backer Iran, so they will have a free hand grabbing all those rich gas supplies off the shores of Gaza, Lebanon and Syria.

There are other, even bigger, long term objectives, but free, unopposed access to the massive gas fields of the Mediterranean will do very well in the meantime.

So, that's what it boils down to. Either way, the Israelis don't really lose, but for them to win big, they really want the US to militarily attack Iran, though they're reluctantly willing to settle for sanctions and isolation on condition that Hizbullah is thereby neutralized, especially if sanctions will soften up Iran and Syria enough for later.

But the Israelis don't really care how badly it costs the US to attack Iran militarily now, which is what they'll push and push and pull out all the stops for. The question is, is the US really prepared to commit suicide to serve Israel's greed?

[Elvis]

Thanks, Alice---makes sense, and I hope you're right.

I also get the feeling that a higher "Bilderberg level' circle might be putting the kibosh on such an attack, by the US, anyway.

[Sounder]

Elvis wrote...

I also get the feeling that a higher "Bilderberg level' circle might be putting the kibosh on such an attack, by the US, anyway.

I do not care much for this site but these folk at least would seem to dispute your opinion.

http://theintelhub.com/2011/11/12/why-w ... overnment/

There is a mistaken belief held by many people that the U.S. government won’t attack Iran or allow Israel to attack because of the economic repercussions that will follow.

Oil prices will rise to astronomical levels, global trade will diminish, and world poverty rates will increase rapidly as the global economy comes to a standstill.

People ask: Who wants to see this nightmare scenario unfold?

The answer is clear: The Western plutocratic elite.

Journalist Jim Tucker reported in June 2010 that the secret attendees at the annual Bilderberg Conference wanted America to attack Iran.

Paul Joseph Watson wrote in his article, “Bilderbergers Green Light Attack On Iran”:

Turning to Iran, Tucker said that many Bilderberg members, including Brzezinski, were in favor of U.S. air strikes on Iran and were “leaning towards war,” although 100 per cent of members were not supportive of an attack.

“Some of them in Europe are saying no we shouldn’t do it but most of them are in favor of American air strikes on Iran,” said Tucker, adding, “They’re tilting heavily towards green lighting a U.S. attack on Iran.”

An attack on Iran would provide a welcome distraction to the globalists’ failings in other areas and would also allow them to war profiteer, pointed out Tucker.

The sociopathic elite who hold secret conferences to discuss their evil plans desire the destruction of the global economy because destruction and chaos will help them achieve many of their long-term political objectives and global goals:

+enumeration of goals etc....

[AlicetheKurious]

I do not care much for this site...

You should have gone with your instincts and not bothered with it.

Turning to Iran, Tucker said that many Bilderberg members, including Brzezinski, were in favor of U.S. air strikes on Iran and were “leaning towards war...”

Brzezinski has been one of the most outspoken, most undiplomatic and blunt opponents of an attack against Iran by either Israel or the US. In fact, he's even implied that if Israel tried to fly over Iraq to get to Iran, the US air force should militarily intercept their planes, even describing the confrontation as "a Liberty in reverse" -- referring to the USS Liberty, an American surveillance ship that the Israelis bombed and napalmed in 1967. I'd need waaaay more than this website's claim to believe that Brzezinski has made such an abrupt about-face, not to mention that such a change of heart would have been big news.

[norton ash]

With the controversy discussed every day by the Nittany faithful and a fractured offense, President Paterno's rebuilding strategy may not fly. Already we're seeing an erosion of traditional fan support.

[seemslikeadream]

Israeli secret service the Mossad linked to Iran military blast

Israeli media report claims the Mossad was behind 'huge blast' at Bid Ganeh base that killed leading Iranian missile researcher

guardian.co.uk, Monday 14 November 2011 08.20 EST

Iran's suspected nuclear enrichment facility under construction at Qom. Reports claim the Mossad was behind a huge blast at a facility which killed a missile development pioneer. Photograph: AP

A series of news reports linking Israel's intelligence agency the Mossad to a blast at a military facility in Iran, in which 17 people were killed and a further 15 wounded, has gained widespread coverage in the Israeli media on Monday.

While Iranian officials insist the explosion at the Bid Ganeh base was accidental, caused by the movement of ammunition, claims from anonymous western and Israeli officials that Saturday's blast was a covert Israeli operation have gained momentum.

Leading Israeli daily Yediot Ahronot picked up a post by US blogger Richard Silverstein claiming the Mossad had teamed up with Iranian militant group Mujahideen e-Khalq (MEK) to execute the alleged attack.

The article quotes Silverstein's unsubstantiated assertion that Israel's use of the MEK for acts of espionage and "terror" is common knowledge among intelligence circles, "ranging from fraudulent Iranian memos alleging work on nuclear trigger devices to assassinations of nuclear scientists and bombings of sensitive military installations".

Leftwing broadsheet Ha'aretz also led with reports that a western intelligence source quoted in Time magazine had claimed the Mossad carried out the attack in an attempt to stall Iran's development of a nuclear weapon. The official is said to have warned: "There are more bullets in the magazine."

The blast at the base, which is reported to have been a storage facility for long-range missiles, was so powerful that it was said to have been felt 30 miles away in the capital, Tehran.

Among those killed was Major General Hassan Moghaddam, the Revolutionary Guard Commander charged with "ensuring self-sufficiency" in armaments, and described by Iranian media as a pioneer in Iranian missile development.

Israel's defence minister, Ehud Barak, responded to news of Moghaddam's death by saying: "May there be more like it."

Prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu's office refused to comment on growing speculation of the Mossad's involvement. Ilan Mizrahi, former head of the national security council and former deputy head of the Mossad, also would not be drawn into substantiating the claims: "I have no idea whether this blast was accidental or whether it was sabotage. But I will say God bless those who were behind it, because the free world should be doing its best to prevent Iran from achieving nuclear military capability."

A recent International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) report, based on the intelligence of 10 governments, presented images, letters and diagrams that suggested Iran was secretly working on nuclear weaponry.

Both the US and France have offered close co-operation with Israel, threatening increased sanctions unless Iran responds with transparency to the nuclear watchdog report. Earlier this month, the Knesset debated the bombing of Iran to prevent further nuclear development, with Netanyahu and Barak said to supporting military strikes.

"There is nothing in this latest IAEA report that Israel hasn't known for a long time. Their arsenal of long-range missiles is also too often overlooked. I believe a military strike is an option that should be put clearly on the table," Mizrahi said. "Something should be done to stop Iran. I think in the end [Israel] will stand alone."

Iran's envoy to the IAEA says any nuclear development is for peaceful means and that the material evidence against has been fabricated by the US.

Israel has been linked to several previous incidents in Iran similar to Saturday's explosion, including an explosion at a Shahab facility in south-western Iran in 2010 and a bomb attack earlier that year in Tehran, in which Iranian physicist Masoud Ali Mohammadi was killed.

[eyeno]

Pretty good size piece of shock n awe. A new 30,000 pound bomb.

The Air Force could not say how many of the conventional bombs have been delivered so far, but the MOP is seen as a weapon made for going after underground bunkers and tunnels in North Korea or Iran.

http://www.activistpost.com/2011/11/wei ... -bomb.html

[seemslikeadream]

Cracks Open in Iran Nuke Charges
November 19, 2011

Many Washington pundits who championed the false tales about Iraq’s WMD have returned to center stage in the new accusations about Iran’s alleged nuclear weapons program. And some of the Iran charges are falling apart just like the Iraq ones, as Gareth Porter reports.

By Gareth Porter

A former inspector for the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has repudiated its major new claim that Iran built an explosives chamber to test components of a nuclear weapon and carry out a simulated nuclear explosion.

The IAEA claim that a foreign scientist – identified in news reports as Vyacheslav Danilenko – had been involved in building the alleged containment chamber also has now been denied firmly by Danilenko himself in an interview with Radio Free Europe published on Friday.

The latest report by the IAEA cited “information provided by Member States” that Iran had constructed “a large explosives containment vessel in which to conduct hydrodynamic experiments” – meaning simulated explosions of nuclear weapons – in its Parchin military complex in 2000.

Iranian flag

The report said it had “confirmed” that a “large cylindrical object” housed at the same complex had been “designed to contain the detonation of up to 70 kilograms of high explosives”. That amount of explosives, it said, would be “appropriate” for testing a detonation system to trigger a nuclear weapon.

But former IAEA inspector Robert Kelley has denounced the agency’s claims about such a containment chamber as “highly misleading”.

Kelley, a nuclear engineer who was the IAEA’s chief weapons inspector in Iraq and is now a senior research fellow at the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, pointed out in an interview with the Real News Network that a cylindrical chamber designed to contain 70 kg of explosives, as claimed by the IAEA, could not possibly have been used for hydrodynamic testing of a nuclear weapon design, contrary to the IAEA claim.

“There are far more explosives in that bomb than could be contained by this container,” Kelley said, referring to the simulated explosion of a nuclear weapon in a hydrodynamic experiment.

Kelley also observed that hydrodynamic testing would not have been done in a container inside a building in any case. “You have to be crazy to do hydrodynamic explosives in a container,” he said. “There’s no reason to do it. They’re done outdoors on firing tables.”

Kelley rejected the IAEA claim that the alleged cylindrical chamber was new evidence of an Iranian weapons program. “We’ve been led by the nose to believe that this container is important, when in fact it’s not important at all,” Kelley said.

The IAEA report and unnamed “diplomats” implied that a “former Soviet nuclear weapons scientist”, identified in the media as Danilenko, had helped build the alleged containment vessel at Parchin. But their claims conflict with one another as well as with readily documented facts about Danilenko’s work in Iran.

The IAEA report does not deny that Danilenko – a Ukrainian who worked in a Soviet-era research institute that was identified mainly with nuclear weapons – was actually a specialist on nanodiamonds. The report nevertheless implies a link between Danilenko and the purported explosives chamber at Parchin by citing a publication by Danilenko as a source for the dimensions of the alleged explosives chamber.

Associated Press reported on Nov. 11 that unnamed diplomats suggested Volodymyr Padalko, a partner of Danilenko in a nanodiamond business who was described as Danilenko’s son-in-law, had contradicted Danilenko’s firm denial of involvement in building a containment vessel for weapons testing.

The diplomats claimed Padalko had told IAEA investigators that Danilenko had helped build “a large steel chamber to contain the force of the blast set off by such explosives testing.”

But that claim appears to be an effort to confuse Danilenko’s well- established work on an explosives chamber for nanodiamond synthesis with a chamber for weapons testing, such as the IAEA now claims was built at Parchin.

One of the unnamed diplomats described the steel chamber at Parchin as “the size of a double-decker bus” and thus “much too large” for nanodiamonds.

But the IAEA report itself made exactly the opposite argument, suggesting that the purported steel chamber at Parchin was based on the design in a published paper by Danilenko. The report said the alleged explosives chamber was designed to contain “up to 70 kg of high explosives” which it claims would be “suitable” for testing what it calls a “multipoint initiation system” for a nuclear weapon.

But a 2008 slide show on systems for nanodiamond synthesis posted on the Internet by the U.S.-based nanotechnology company NanoBlox shows that the last patented containment chamber built by Danilenko and patented in 1992, with a total volume of 100 cubic meters, was designed for the use of just 10 kg of explosives.

An unnamed member state had given the IAEA a purported Iranian document in 2008 describing a 2003 test of what the agency interpreted to be a possible “high explosive implosion system for a nuclear weapon.” David Albright, director of a Washington, D.C. think tank who frequently passes on information from IAEA officials to the news media, told this writer in 2009 that the member state in question was “probably Israel.”

Although the process of making “detonation nanodiamonds” uses explosives in a containment chamber, the chamber would bear little resemblance to one used for testing a nuclear bomb’s initiation system.

The production of diamonds does not require the same high degree of precision in simultaneous explosions as the initiator for a nuclear device. And unlike the explosives used in a multipoint initiation system, the explosives used for making synthetic nanodiamonds must be under water in a closed pool, as Danilenko noted in a 2010 PowerPoint presentation.

Having endorsed the IAEA’s claims, Albright concedes in a Nov. 13 article that the IAEA report “did not provide [sic] Danilenko’s involvement, if any, in this chamber.”

In an interview with Radio Free Europe on Friday, Danilenko denied that he has any expertise in nuclear weapons, saying, “I understand absolutely nothing in nuclear physics.” He also denied that he participated in “modeling warheads” at the research institute in Russia where he worked for three decades.

Danilenko further denied doing any work in Iran that did not relate to “dynamic detonation synthesis of diamonds” and said he has “strong doubts” that Iran had a nuclear weapons program during those years.

Albright and three co-authors published an account of Danilenko’s work in Iran this week seeking to give credibility to the IAEA suggestion that he worked on the containment chamber for a nuclear weapons program.

The Albright article, published on the website of the Institute for Science and International Security, said that Danilenko approached the Iranian embassy in 1995 offering his expertise on detonation diamonds, and later signed a contract with Syed Abbas Shahmoradi who responded to Danilenko’s query.

Albright identifies Shahmoradi as the “head of Iran’s secret nuclear sector involved in the development of nuclear weapons,” merely because Shahmoradi later headed the Physics Research Center, which the IAEA argues has led Iran’s nuclear weapons research.

But in late 1995, Shahmoradi was at the Sharif University of Technology, which is a leading center for nanodiamonds in Iran. Albright argues that this is evidence supporting his suspicion that nanodiamonds were a cover for his real work, because the main center for nanodiamond research is at Malek Ashtar University of Technology rather than at Sharif University.

However, Sharif University had just established an Institute of Nanoscience and Nanotechnology in 2005 that was intended to become the hub for nanotechnology research activities and strategy planning for Iran. So Sharif University and Shahmoradi would have been the logical choice to contract one of the world’s leading specialists on nanodiamonds.

[seemslikeadream]

Iran and the I.A.E.A.
Posted by Seymour M. Hersh


The first question in last Saturday night’s Republican debate on foreign policy dealt with Iran, and a newly published report by the International Atomic Energy Agency. The report, which raised renewed concern about the “possible existence of undeclared nuclear facilities and material in Iran,” struck a darker tone than previous assessments. But it was carefully hedged. On the debate platform, however, any ambiguity was lost. One of the moderators said that the I.A.E.A. report had provided “additional credible evidence that Iran is pursuing a nuclear weapon” and asked what various candidates, upon winning the Presidency, would do to stop Iran. Herman Cain said he would assist those who are trying to overthrow the government. Newt Gingrich said he would coördinate with the Israeli government and maximize covert operations to block the Iranian weapons program. Mitt Romney called the state of Iran’s nuclear program Obama’s “greatest failing, from a foreign-policy standpoint” and added, “Look, one thing you can know … and that is if we reëlect Barack Obama Iran will have a nuclear weapon.” The Iranian bomb was a sure thing Saturday night.

I’ve been reporting on Iran and the bomb for The New Yorker for the past decade, with a focus on the repeatedly inability of the best and the brightest of the Joint Special Operations Command to find definitive evidence of a nuclear-weapons production program in Iran. The goal of the high-risk American covert operations was to find something physical—a “smoking calutron,” as a knowledgeable official once told me—to show the world that Iran was working on warheads at an undisclosed site, to make the evidence public, and then to attack and destroy the site.

The Times reported, in its lead story the day after the report came out, that I.A.E.A. investigators “have amassed a trove of new evidence that, they say, makes a ‘credible’ case” that Iran may be carrying out nuclear-weapons activities. The newspaper quoted a Western diplomat as declaring that “the level of detail is unbelievable…. The report describes virtually all the steps to make a nuclear warhead and the progress Iran has achieved in each of those steps. It reads likes a menu.” The Times set the tone for much of the coverage. (A second Times story that day on the I.A.E.A. report noted, more cautiously, that “it is true that the basic allegations in the report are not substantially new, and have been discussed by experts for years.”)

But how definitive, or transformative, were the findings? The I.A.E.A. said it had continued in recent years “to receive, collect and evaluate information relevant to possible military dimensions of Iran’s nuclear program” and, as a result, it has been able “to refine its analysis.” The net effect has been to create “more concern.” But Robert Kelley, a retired I.A.E.A. director and nuclear engineer who previously spent more than thirty years with the Department of Energy’s nuclear-weapons program, told me that he could find very little new information in the I.A.E.A. report. He noted that hundreds of pages of material appears to come from a single source: a laptop computer, allegedly supplied to the I.A.E.A. by a Western intelligence agency, whose provenance could not be established. Those materials, and others, “were old news,” Kelley said, and known to many journalists. “I wonder why this same stuff is now considered ‘new information’ by the same reporters.”

A nuanced assessment of the I.A.E.A. report was published by the Arms Control Association (A.C.A.), a nonprofit whose mission is to encourage public support for effective arms control. The A.C.A. noted that the I.A.E.A. did “reinforce what the nonproliferation community has recognized for some times: that Iran engaged in various nuclear weapons development activities until 2003, then stopped many of them, but continued others.” (The American intelligence community reached the same conclusion in a still classified 2007 estimate.) The I.A.E.A.’s report “suggests,” the A.C.A. paper said, that Iran “is working to shorten the timeframe to build the bomb once and if it makes that decision. But it remains apparent that a nuclear-armed Iran is still not imminent nor is it inevitable.” Greg Thielmann, a former State Department and Senate Intelligence Committee analyst who was one of the authors of the A.C.A. assessment, told me, “There is troubling evidence suggesting that studies are still going on, but there is nothing that indicates that Iran is really building a bomb.” He added, “Those who want to drum up support for a bombing attack on Iran sort of aggressively misrepresented the report.”

Joseph Cirincione, the president of the Ploughshare Fund, a disarmament group, who serves on Hillary Clinton’s International Security Advisory Board, said, “I was briefed on most of this stuff several years ago at the I.A.E.A. headquarters in Vienna. There’s little new in the report. Most of this information is well known to experts who follow the issue.” Cirincione noted that “post-2003, the report only cites computer modelling and a few other experiments.” (A senior I.A.E.A. official similarly told me, “I was underwhelmed by the information.”)

The report did note that its on-site camera inspection process of Iran’s civilian nuclear enrichment facilities—mandated under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, to which Iran is a signatory—“continues to verify the non-diversion of declared nuclear material.” In other words, all of the low enriched uranium now known to be produced inside Iran is accounted for; if highly enriched uranium is being used for the manufacture of a bomb, it would have to have another, unknown source.

The shift in tone at the I.A.E.A. seems linked to a change at the top. The I.A.E.A.’s report had extra weight because the Agency has had a reputation for years as a reliable arbiter on Iran. Mohammed ElBaradei, who retired as the I.A.E.A.’s Director General two years ago, was viewed internationally, although not always in Washington, as an honest broker—a view that lead to the awarding of a Nobel Peace Prize in 2005. ElBaradei’s replacement is Yukiya Amano of Japan. Late last year, a classified U.S. Embassy cable from Vienna, the site of the I.A.E.A. headquarters, described Amano as being “ready for prime time.” According to the cable, which was obtained by WikiLeaks, in a meeting in September, 2009, with Glyn Davies, the American permanent representative to the I.A.E.A., said, “Amano reminded Ambassador on several occasions that he would need to make concessions to the G-77 [the group of developing countries], which correctly required him to be fair-minded and independent, but that he was solidly in the U.S. court on every strategic decision, from high-level personnel appointments to the handling of Iran’s alleged nuclear weapons program.” The cable added that Amano’s “willingness to speak candidly with U.S. interlocutors on his strategy … bodes well for our future relationship.”

It is possible, of course, that Iran has simply circumvented the reconnaissance efforts of America and the I.A.E.A., perhaps even building Dick Cheney’s nightmare: a hidden underground nuclear-weapons fabrication facility. Iran’s track record with the I.A.E.A. has been far from good: its leadership began construction of its initial uranium facilities in the nineteen-eighties without informing the Agency, in violation of the nonproliferation treaty. Over the next decade and a half, under prodding from ElBaradei and the West, the Iranians began acknowledging their deceit and opened their enrichment facilities, and their records, to I.A.E.A. inspectors.

The new report, therefore, leaves us where we’ve been since 2002, when George Bush declared Iran to be a member of the Axis of Evil—with lots of belligerent talk but no definitive evidence of a nuclear-weapons program.

[ninakat]

Sickening....

Aircraft Carrier CVN-77 Parks Next Door To Syria Just As US Urges Americans To Leave Country "Immediately"
Zero Hedge, 11/23/2011

Yesterday we reported that the Arab League (with European and US support) are preparing to institute a no fly zone over Syria. Today, we get an escalation which confirms we may be on the edge. Just out from CBS: "The U.S. Embassy in Damascus urged its citizens in Syria to depart "immediately," and Turkey's foreign ministry urged Turkish pilgrims to opt for flights to return home from Saudi Arabia to avoid traveling through Syria." But probably the most damning evidence that the "western world" is about to do the unthinkable and invade Syria, and in the process force Iran to retaliate, is the weekly naval update from Stratfor, which always has some very interesting if always controversial view on geopolitics, where we find that for the first time in many months, CVN 77 George H.W. Bush has left its traditional theater of operations just off the Straits of Hormuz, a critical choke point, where it traditionally accompanies the Stennis, and has parked... right next to Syria.

. . .

[AlicetheKurious]

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