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US officials: Iran does not have key nuclear material

March 11, 2009

By PAMELA HESS, Associated Press Writer

SFGate, Tuesday, March 10, 2009

Iran does not yet have any highly enriched uranium, the fuel needed to make a nuclear warhead, two top U.S. intelligence officials told Congress Tuesday, disputing a claim by an Israeli official.

U.S. National Intelligence Director Dennis Blair and Defense Intelligence Agency Director Lt. Gen. Michael Maples said Tuesday that Iran has only low-enriched uranium — which would need to be refined into highly enriched uranium before it can fuel a warhead. Neither officials said there were indications that refining has occurred.

Their comments disputed a claim made last weekend by Israel’s top intelligence military official, who said Iran has crossed a technical threshold and is now capable of producing atomic weapons.

The claim made by Israeli Maj. Gen. Amos Yadlin runs counter to estimates by U.S. intelligence that the earliest Iran could produce a weapon is 2010, with some analysts saying it is more likely that it is 2015.

Maples said the United States and Israel are interpreting the same facts, but arriving at different conclusions.

“The Israelis are far more concerned about it,” Maples told the Senate Armed Services Committee.

The status of Iran’s nuclear program has been the subject of conflicting public statements by top military and intelligence officials recently in the wake of U.N. revelations that Iran has more low-enriched uranium than previously thought.

Earlier this month, Defense Sec. Robert Gates and Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Adm.. Mike Mullen differed over Iran’s capability. While Mullen said Iran has sufficient fission material for a bomb, Gates insisted “they’re not close to a weapon at this point.”

Maples also told the committee that insurgent violence in Afghanistan has gotten more ferocious in the last year even as violence in Iraq declined.

The use of roadside bombs in Afghanistan more than doubled in 2008 over the previous year, and attacks overall increased by 55 percent from 2007 to 2008. Suicide bombings increased by 21 percent and small-arms attacks increased by 33 percent.

Some of these trends reflect more aggressive military operations in Taliban strongholds by U.S. and other NATO forces, Maples said.

Maples said the Somali extremist group al-Shabaab is poised to formally merge with al-Qaida, expanding the terrorist franchise in East Africa. An analysis of the propaganda released by both groups recently highlights their ideological similarities, suggesting a merger is forthcoming, Maples said.

Al-Shabaab conducts almost daily attacks in Somalia. A merger would strengthen al-Qaida’s foothold in East Africa.

The two groups have long been suspected of working together, but they have not yet announced a formal alliance. Al-Qaida has operations in north Africa, Yemen and Iraq.

Blair said National Security Agency is poised to take a lead role in protecting U.S. computer networks from cyber attacks. The NSA — tarnished in the public view by its role in the Bush-era “warrantless wiretapping” program — now conducts clandestine computer attacks on U.S. adversaries, and could use those skills to protect U.S. networks from similar attacks.

He said it must be done under strict oversight to make sure it is not gathering private American information that violates privacy and civil liberties laws.

Blair also stood firm behind former U.S. Ambassador Charles Freeman, his pick for a top analysis job, despite strong congressional criticism.

Freeman, who was U.S. ambassador to Saudi Arabia during the Persian Gulf war, had harshly criticized the Israeli government, the Iraq war and the war on terrorism in general.

A policy council Freeman headed also has been criticized for some ties to foreign governments, including Saudi Arabia and China. Blair’s inspector general is investigating those ties while Freeman works with ethics advisers to scrub his personal finances for potential conflicts of interest.

Blair has tapped Freeman to head the National Intelligence Council, which analyzes critical national security issues drawing from all U.S. intelligence agencies. The National Intelligence Estimates are meant to be unvarnished and apolitical.

Blair said Freeman’s strong opinions are exactly why he wants him to be chairman of the council.

“I think I can do a better job if I am getting strong analytical viewpoints than if I am getting pre-cooked pablum,” Blair said.

The seven Republican members of the Senate Intelligence Committee sent a letter to Blair Monday expressing concerns about Freeman’s suitability for the job. They joined more than a dozen members of the House who over the last two weeks have sent similar letters and requested the IG investigation.

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If Dennis Ross is Appointed as a US Envoy to Iran, He Will Work for Israel, Not the US, Will Work for War, Not Peace

March 10, 2009

DAILY.PK, March 1, 2009

Dennis Ross was the main figure behind dragging the US to war against Iraq in 1991, instead of allowing Iraqis to withdraw from Kuwait without a war. He did that to guarantee the destruction of Iraq, as a strong Arab state, in order to safeguard the hegemonic Israeli position in the oil-rich Middle East region (See The Gulf War: Overreaction & Excessiveness).

Thus doing, he paved the way for the Zionist Israel-firsters Wolfowitz, Pearle, and Feith to plan and execute the disastrous 2003 US invasion and occupation of Iraq, for Israel, which resulted in the destruction of the Iraqi state and the collapse of the US financial system. More than $ 5 trillion have been added to the US national debt, as military spending, in order to achieve the Israeli paramount goal of controlling the Middle East, using the US money and blood. For these Zionist Israel-firsters, it does not matter if the US collapses as a result, and retreats from the world stage defeated and poor.

Today, there’s a lot of talk about an imminent announcement by President Barack Obama appointing the Zionist Israel-firster, AIPAC operative, and agent of Israeli interests, as his envoy to Iran.

If this happens, God forbid, it means that Obama is no different from the two Bushes and Clinton, a figure head. The show is still run completely by the Zionist Israel-firsters, who work only for the Israeli occupation government, in its bid to be the coming world super power, after subjugating the Middle East with US resources and blood.

Zionists want Iran to dismantle its nuclear program, in order to guarantee that only Israeli aggressors have nuclear weapons, which are used as a threat to all nations of the Middle East. Zionists, including Dennis Ross, want to make sure that no Arab or Muslim state in the Middle East attempts to have any deterrence to the Israeli nuclear threat. If they truly want a peaceful solution, then they should put the Israeli nuclear weapons on the table for negotiations.

If the Israeli racist-Zionist state is disarmed of its nuclear weapons, then there is no reason for Iran or any other Middle Eastern state to seek for a deterrent.

Make no mistake about it, Dennis Ross will represent Israel, not the United States, when he goes to Tehran. Ultimately, he will make sure that the United States is going to attack Iran, or at least allows the Israeli occupation government air forces to attack the Iranian nuclear sites and military installations with protection from the US forces stationed in the Middle East. This is a recipe for killing millions of Iranians and other Muslims in the Middle East.

The appointment of Dennis Ross means that there’s no change in the US policy towards the Arab and Muslim worlds, as President Obama wanted to assures Muslims in his interview with Al-Arabiya TV. It will confirm to Arabs and Muslims worldwide that the US is following a policy of systematic invasions and wars against them, on behalf of Israel.

This is not in the national interest of the United States. Period.

Neither Dennis Ross nor any Zionist Israel-firster should be allowed to make decisions on behalf of the United States.

It’s time for American patriots in the US Department of Justice to make their move and stop the systematic destruction of the United States by these Zionist  Israel-firsters.

Dennis Ross should not be allowed to occupy any position in the US government. He is an agent of a foreign government.

Appointment of Dennis Ross as Presidential Envoy to Iran

President Obama told Al-Arabiya that the US would in the next few months lay out a general framework of policy towards Tehran. “It is very important for us to make sure that we are using all the tools of US power, including diplomacy, in our relationship with Iran…. As I said in my inauguration speech, if countries like Iran are willing to unclench their fist, they will find an extended hand from us.  ”

Obama had been expected to appoint former ambassador Dennis Ross, president Bill Clinton’s special Middle East envoy, to a third post that would handle US relations with Iran. But Ross’s aggressive campaign for the post, as well as his close association with key groups that make up the Israel Lobby, appears to have incited a backlash among key Obama advisers, reportedly including Clinton herself, that may have delayed his appointment, according to Jim Lob.

Dennis Ross, an Iran baiter, has supported the war on Iraq which Obama has opposed. Ross has also served with the pro-Israel think tank, Washington Institute for Near East Policy (WINEP) as well as with the Jerusalem-based “Jewish People Policy Planning Institute” (JPPPI).

Dennis Ross has co-authored the report “Meeting the Challenge: US Policy towards Iranian Nuclear Development”. This report alludes to an Iranian nuclear program that has been debunked by the CIA National Intelligence Report (Nov 2007) that said that the Iran nuclear program was on hold. The report calls for the military encirclement of Iran, pressure on Iran to abrogate its nuclear programme and thus leading to its logical extension where “war becomes inevitable”.

To borrow Prof. Gary Leupp, “by appointing Dennis Ross, Obama is sending the Iranian leaders a clear message. He is associating himself with the most extreme alarmist positions currently articulated, including those of Norman Podhoretz.”

Ross co-authored an op-ed with Richard Holbrooke, R. James Woolsey, and Mark D. Wallace entitled, “Everybody Needs to Worry About Iran.”  The op-ed published in the Wall Street Journal Sept. 22, 2008, stated: “Iran is now edging closer to being armed with nuclear weapons, and it continues to develop a ballistic-missile capability.” As Prof Gary Leupp stated:

“This contradicts the conclusion of all 16 U.S. intelligence agencies (Central Intelligence Agency, Army Military Intelligence, the Defense Intelligence Agency, the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, the National Reconnaissance Office, the National Security Agency, etc.) as of November 2007. Those authors reported: “We judge with high confidence that in fall 2003, Tehran halted its nuclear weapons program.” In other words, in the world of empirical methods, critical thinking and analysis–the world of hundreds of trained professionals who’ve actually researched Iran’s nuclear program, with access to spy satellite data, reports from agents in the field, electronic surveillance–Iran has no nuclear program. Mohamed El-Barade’i and IAEA staffers on the ground have consistently said that Iran has been thoroughly cooperative and that there are no signs of any diversion for a military program But in the world of this Chicken Little group Iran is edging ever nearer to nukes.”

The editorial describes the nuclear program as “destabilizing” (while noting that Russia, China, India, Pakistan and Israel all have nuclear weapons) and repeats the old Cheneyism that since Iran has so much oil it can’t have any possible real need for a civilian program. (The Iranian nuclear program was encouraged by the Nixon, Ford and Carter administrations when the Shah was in power and supported by General Electric and other U.S. firms.) It repeats the old charge that Iran’s President Ahmadinejad has threatened to wipe Israel off the map (adding that he’s said it could be done with one nuke) and generally assembles all the Bush-era anti-Iran talking-points: Iran sponsors Hizbollah and Hama terrorism, the regime’s repressive towards women and homosexuals, Iran could shut off the Strait of Hormuz, etc.

In conclusion the authors announce their establishment “along with other policy advocates from across the political spectrum” of the nonpartisan group United Against Nuclear Iran.

Prof. Gary Leupp says Ross is known to favor the recommendations of a September 2008 report by something called the Bipartisan Policy Center. These include forcing Iran to suspend uranium enrichment and meet other demands by imposing blockades on Iranian gas imports and oil exports (acts of war) as well as striking “not only Iran’s nuclear infrastructure, but also its conventional military infrastructure in order to suppress an Iranian response.” So it looks like the official Obama line towards Iran, at least for the beginning, will be the Cheney-neocon line. And that is worrisome.

Hassan El-Najjar

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See  also Veteran Mideast Envoy Ross Named as Clinton’s Adviser on Iran

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Here We Go Again With the Iranian Nuclear Scare

March 10, 2009

Eric Margolis | Khaleej Times, March 9, 2009

While the United States was fighting for its economic life, Obama administration officials and the media issued a blizzard of contradictory claims over Iran’s alleged nuclear threat, leaving one wondering who is really charge of US foreign policy?

Much of the uproar over Iran’s so-far non-existent nuclear weapons must be seen as part of efforts by the Israeli lobby to block President Barack Obama’s proposed opening to Teheran, and to keep pressing the US to attack Iran’s nuclear infrastructure.

Israel’s supporters and most Israeli military experts insist Iran has secret weapons programmes. Israel knows about covert nuclear programs, having run one of the world’s largest and most productive.

The hawkish Hillary Clinton’s naming of veteran Israel supporter Dennis Ross as her special adviser on Iran and the Gulf suggest she is more interested in building future domestic political support than securing balanced advice.

Meanwhile, confusion over Iran grew sharply.  New CIA director, Leon Panetta, said ‘there is no question, they (Iran) are seeking that (nuclear weapons) capability.’

Pentagon chief Adm. Mike Mullen claimed Iran had ‘enough fissile material to build a bomb.’ Fox News claimed Iran already had 50 nuclear weapons.  While the American Rome burns, here we go again with renewed hysteria over MWMD’s –  Muslim Weapons of Mass Destruction. Wars drums are again beating over Iran.

The czar of all 16 US intelligence agencies, Adm. Dennis Blair, stated Iran could have enough enriched uranium for one atomic weapon by 2010-2015. But he reaffirmed the 2007 US National Intelligence Estimate that Iran does not have nuclear weapons and is not pursuing them.  Defence Secretary William Gates backed up Blair. So does the UN nuclear agency.  Some of the confusion over Iran comes from misunderstanding nuclear enrichment, and lurid scare stories.

Iran is producing low-grade uranium-235 (LEU), enriched to only 2.5 per cent, to generate electricity. Teheran has this absolute right under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. Its centrifuge enrichment process at Natanz is under 24-hour international inspection.  Iran’s soon to open nuclear plant at Bushehr cannot produce nuclear weapons fuel.  Its spent fuel will be returned to Russia.

Today, some 15 nations produce LEU U-235, including Brazil, Argentina, Germany, France, and Japan.  Israel, India and Pakistan, all covert nuclear weapons powers, refused to sign the non-proliferation treaty.  North Korea abrogated it. UN inspectors report Iran has produced 1,010 kg of 2-3 per cent enriched uranium for energy generation, insists Iran. Theoretically that is enough for one atomic bomb.

But to make a nuclear weapon, U-235 must be enriched to over 90 per cent in an elaborate, costly process. Iran is not doing so, say UN inspectors.

Highly enriched U-235 or plutonium must then be milled and shaped into a perfect ball or cylinder. Any surface imperfections will prevent achieving critical mass.  Next, high explosive lenses must surround the core, and detonate at precisely the same millisecond. In the gun system, two cores must collide at very high speed.  In some cases, a stream of neutrons are pumped into the device as it explodes.

This process is highly complex.  Nuclear weapons cannot be deemed reliable unless they are tested. North Korea recently detonated a device that fizzled.  Iran has never built or tested a nuclear weapon.  Israel and South Africa jointly tested a nuclear weapon in 1979.

Even if Iran had the capability to fashion a complex nuclear weapon, it would be useless without delivery. Iran’s sole medium-range delivery system is its unreliable, inaccurate 1,500 km ranged Shahab-3. Miniaturizing and hardening nuclear warheads capable of flying atop a Shahab missile is another complex technological challenge.

It is inconceivable that Iran or anyone else would launch a single nuclear weapon.  What if it didn’t go off? Imagine the embarrassment and the retaliation.  Iran would need at least ten warheads and a reliable delivery system to be a credible nuclear power.

Israel, the primary target for any Iranian nuclear strike, has an indestructible triad of air, missile and sea-launched nuclear weapons pointed at Iran.  An Israeli submarine with nuclear cruise missiles is on station off Iran’s coast. Iran would be wiped off the map by even a few of Israel’s 200 nuclear weapons.  Iran is no likelier to use a nuke against its Gulf neighbours. The explosion would blanket Iran with radioactive dust and sand.

Washington would do better to stop worrying about Iran and focus on its economic meltdown.

Eric S Margolis is a veteran US journalist who has reported from the Middle East, Pakistan and Afghanistan for several years

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Return of the War Party

February 28, 2009
Patrick J. Buchanan
by  Patrick J. Buchanan
Human Events.com, Feb 27, 2009

“Real men go to Tehran!” brayed the neoconservatives, after the success of their propaganda campaign to have America march on Baghdad and into an unnecessary war that has forfeited all the fruits of our Cold War victory.

Now they are back, in pursuit of what has always been their great goal: an American war on Iran. It would be a mistake to believe they and their collaborators cannot succeed a second time. Consider:

On being chosen by Israel’s President Shimon Peres to form the new regime, Likud’s “Bibi” Netanyahu declared, “Iran is seeking to obtain a nuclear weapon and constitutes the gravest threat to our existence since the war of independence.”

Echoing Netanyahu, headlines last week screamed of a startling new nuclear breakthrough by the mullahs. “Iran ready to build nuclear weapon, analysts say,” said CNN. “Iran has enough uranium to make a bomb,” said the Los Angeles Times. Armageddon appeared imminent.

Asked about Iran’s nukes in his confirmation testimony, CIA Director Leon Panetta blurted, “From all the information I’ve seen, I think there is no question that they are seeking that capability.”

Tuesday, Dennis Ross of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, a front spawned by the Israeli lobby AIPAC, was given the Iranian portfolio. AIPAC’s top agenda item? A U.S. collision with Iran.

In the neocon Weekly Standard, Elliot Abrams of the Bush White House parrots Netanyahu, urging Obama to put any land-for-peace deals with the Palestinians on a back burner. Why?

“The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is now part of a broader struggle in the region over Iranian extremism and power. Israeli withdrawals now risk opening the door not only to Palestinian terrorists but to Iranian proxies.”

The campaign to conflate Hamas, Hezbollah and Syria as a new axis of evil, a terrorist cartel led by Iranian mullahs hell-bent on building a nuclear bomb and using it on Israel and America, has begun. The full-page ads and syndicated columns calling on Obama to eradicate this mortal peril before it destroys us all cannot be far off.

But before we let ourselves be stampeded into another unnecessary war, let us review a few facts that seem to contradict the war propaganda.

First, last week’s acknowledgement that Iran has enough enriched uranium for one atom bomb does not mean Iran is building an atom bomb.

To construct a nuclear device, the ton of low-enriched uranium at Natanz would have to be run through a second cascade of high-speed centrifuges to produce 55 pounds of highly enriched uranium (HUE).

There is no evidence Iran has either created the cascade of high-speed centrifuges necessary to produce HUE or that Iran has diverted any of the low-enriched uranium from Natanz. And the International Atomic Energy Agency inspectors retain full access to Natanz.

And rather than accelerating production of low-enriched uranium, only 4,000 of the Natanz centrifuges are operating. Some 1,000 are idle. Why?

Dr. Mohamed El-Baradei, head of the IAEA, believes this is a signal that Tehran wishes to negotiate with the United States, but without yielding any of its rights to enrich uranium and operate nuclear power plants.

For, unlike Israel, Pakistan and India, none of which signed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and all of which ran clandestine programs and built atom bombs, Iran signed the NPT and has abided by its Safeguards Agreement. What it refuses to accept are the broader demands of the U.N. Security Council because these go beyond the NPT and sanction Iran for doing what it has a legal right to do.

Moreover, Adm. Dennis Blair, who heads U.S. intelligence, has just restated the consensus of the 2007 National Intelligence Estimate that Iran does not now possess and is not now pursuing a nuclear weapons program.

Bottom line: Neither the United States nor the IAEA has conclusive evidence that Iran either has the fissile material for a bomb or an active program to build a bomb. It has never tested a nuclear device and has never demonstrated a capacity to weaponize a nuclear device, if it had one.

Why, then, the hype, the hysteria, the clamor for “Action This Day!”? It is to divert America from her true national interests and stampede her into embracing as her own the alien agenda of a renascent War Party.

None of this is to suggest the Iranians are saintly souls seeking only peace and progress. Like South Korea, Japan and other nations with nuclear power plants, they may well want the ability to break out of the NPT, should it be necessary to deter, defend against or defeat enemies.

But that is no threat to us to justify war. For decades, we lived under the threat that hundreds of Russian warheads could rain down upon us in hours, ending our national existence. If deterrence worked with Stalin and Mao, it can work with an Iran that has not launched an offensive war against any nation within the memory of any living American.

Can we Americans say the same?

Mr. Buchanan is a nationally syndicated columnist and author of Churchill, Hitler, and “The Unnecessary War”: How Britain Lost Its Empire and the West Lost the World, “The Death of the West,”, “The Great Betrayal,” “A Republic, Not an Empire” and “Where the Right Went Wrong.”

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Israel launches covert war against Iran

February 18, 2009

Israel has launched a covert war against Iran as an alternative to direct military strikes against Tehran’s nuclear programme, US intelligence sources have revealed.

By Philip Sherwell in New York  | Telegraph.co.uk

Last Updated: 10:38PM GMT 16 Feb 2009

Tzipi Livni: Israel launches covert war against Iran

Israel foreign minister Tzipi Livni Photo: EPA

It is using hitmen, sabotage, front companies and double agents to disrupt the regime’s illicit weapons project, the experts say.

The most dramatic element of the “decapitation” programme is the planned assassination of top figures involved in Iran’s atomic operations.

Despite fears in Israel and the US that Iran is approaching the point of no return in its ability to build atom bomb, Israeli officials are aware of the change in mood in Washington since President Barack Obama took office.

They privately acknowledge the new US administration is unlikely to sanction an air attack on Iran’s nuclear installations and Mr Obama’s offer to extend a hand of peace to Tehran puts any direct military action beyond reach for now.

The aim is to slow down or interrupt Iran’s research programme, without the gamble of a direct confrontation that could lead to a wider war.

A former CIA officer on Iran told The Daily Telegraph: “Disruption is designed to slow progress on the programme, done in such a way that they don’t realise what’s happening. You are never going to stop it.

“The goal is delay, delay, delay until you can come up with some other solution or approach. We certainly don’t want the current Iranian government to have those weapons. It’s a good policy, short of taking them out militarily, which probably carries unacceptable risks.”

Reva Bhalla, a senior analyst with Stratfor, the US private intelligence company with strong government security connections, said the strategy was to take out key people.

“With co-operation from the United States, Israeli covert operations have focused both on eliminating key human assets involved in the nuclear programme and in sabotaging the Iranian nuclear supply chain,” she said.

“As US-Israeli relations are bound to come under strain over the Obama administration’s outreach to Iran, and as the political atmosphere grows in complexity, an intensification of Israeli covert activity against Iran is likely to result.”

Mossad was rumoured to be behind the death of Ardeshire Hassanpour, a top nuclear scientist at Iran’s Isfahan uranium plant, who died in mysterious circumstances from reported “gas poisoning” in 2007.

Other recent deaths of important figures in the procurement and enrichment process in Iran and Europe have been the result of Israeli “hits”, intended to deprive Tehran of key technical skills at the head of the programme, according to Western intelligence analysts.

“Israel has shown no hesitation in assassinating weapons scientists for hostile regimes in the past,” said a European intelligence official, speaking on condition of anonymity. They did it with Iraq and they will do it with Iran when they can.”

Mossad’s covert operations cover a range of activities. The former CIA operative revealed how Israeli and US intelligence co-operated with European companies working in Iran to obtain photographs and other confidential material about Iranian nuclear and missile sites.

“It was a real company that operated from time to time in Iran and in the nature of their legitimate business came across information on various suspect Iranian facilities,” he said.

Israel has also used front companies to infiltrate the Iranian purchasing network that the clerical regime uses to circumvent United Nations sanctions and obtain so-called “dual use” items – metals, valves, electronics, machinery – for its nuclear programme.

The businesses initially supply Iran with legitimate material, winning Tehran’s trust, and then start to deliver faulty or defective items that “poison” the country’s atomic activities.

“Without military strikes, there is still considerable scope for disrupting and damaging the Iranian programme and this has been done with some success,” said Yossi Melman, a prominent Israeli journalist who covers security and intelligence issues for the Haaretz newspaper.

Mossad and Western intelligence operations have also infiltrated the Iranian nuclear programme and “bought” information from prominent atomic scientists. Israel has later selectively leaked some details to its allies, the media and United Nations atomic agency inspectors.

On one occasion, Iran itself is understood to have destroyed a nuclear facility near Tehran, bulldozing over the remains and replacing it with a football pitch, after its existence was revealed to UN inspectors. The regime feared that the discovery by inspectors of an undeclared nuclear facility would result in overwhelming pressure at the UN for tougher action against Iran.

The Iranian government has become so concerned about penetration of its programme that it has announced arrests of alleged spies in an attempt to discourage double agents. “Israel is part of a detailed and elaborate international effort to slow down the Iranian programme,” said Mr Melman.

But Vince Canastraro, the former CIA counter-terrorism chief, expressed doubts about the efficacy of secret Israeli operations against Iran. “You cannot carry out foreign policy objectives via covert operations,” he said. “You can’t get rid of a couple of people and hope to affect Iran’s nuclear capability.”

Iran has consistently asserted that it is pursuing a nuclear capability for civilian energy generation purposes. But Israeli and Western intelligence agencies believe the 20-year-old programme, which was a secret until 2002, is designed to give the ruling mullahs an atom bomb.

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Israel Asserting Middle East Supremacy: From Gaza to Tehran

February 2, 2009

“The Israeli Defense Force is the most moral army in the World!”
Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert

By James Petras | Information Clearing House, February 2, 2009

Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany bombed, invaded and annexed countries and territories as a prelude to their quest for World Empire.  Israel’s drive for regional dominance has followed in their footsteps, imitating their style: Indiscriminate aerial bombings of civilian and military facilities, a savage blitzkrieg led by armored vehicles, disdain and repudiation of all criticism from international agencies was accompanied by an open, military buildup for a new and bigger war against Iran.  Like the Nazi leadership, who played on the ‘Bolshevik threat’, the Israeli high command has set in motion a vast world-wide propaganda campaign led by its world Zionist network, raising the specter of ‘Islamic terror’ to justify its preparations for a military assault on seventy-four million Iranians.  Just as Nazi Germany interpreted the passivity, sympathy and impotence of the West when confronted by ‘facts on the ground’ as license for aggression, the Israeli military machine receives a powerful impetus for new wars by the Western governments’ inaction and flaccid response to its invasion of Lebanon, the bombing of Syria and now its Nazi style blitz and conquest of Gaza.  For the Israeli high command, the impotence and complicity of the Western states, marks the way to bigger and bloodier wars to establish Israel’s supremacy and dominance of the Middle East, from the Red Sea to the Persian Gulf.

Gaza Blitz:  Dress Rehearsal for an Assault on Iran

Israel’s military victory in Gaza is a dress rehearsal for a full-scale military assault on Iran.  In the course of their Gaza extermination campaign, Israeli political and military strategists gained a great deal of vital information about: (1) the levels of complicity and impotence of European, North American and Arab states;  (2) the high degree and depth of material and political support obtainable from the United States government in pulverizing adversaries; (3) the high degree of internal support among the Jewish electorate for even the most brutal killing fields; (4) the massive unquestioning backing of an offensive war from all the biggest and most politically influential and wealthiest Jewish-Zionist organizations in the US and Western Europe; (5) the weakness and ineffectiveness of the United Nations and the incapacity of the entire range of humanitarian organizations to limit Israel’s extermination campaign directed at destroying the very existence of an entire people; (6) the unconditional backing of the entire mass media and news agencies in the US and most of the mass media in Europe and the rest of the world; (7) the willingness of the liberal critics to equally blame the victims of extermination and the exterminators for the ‘violence’, thus neutralizing any effective consequential condemnation of the Israeli state; and (8) the adaptation of practically all the journalists, writers, academics and politicians to the entire euphemistic vocabulary of the Israeli propaganda office.

For example, sustained total war is called an ‘incursion’.  Ten thousand aerial assaults by hundreds of Israeli helicopters and fighter-bombers are equated with sporadic harmless homemade rocket attacks as ‘violence’.  Israeli targeting of thousands of civilian homes, hospitals and basic infrastructure are labeled ‘terrorist’ targets.  Resistance fighters are labeled ‘Hamas terrorists’.  The bombing of the Red Cross, the United Nations relief facilities, hospitals, mosques are called ‘mistakes’ or justified as ‘launching sites for Hamas terrorists.

Israeli political leaders have drawn the lesson from their dirty little ‘war’ that they can totally destroy a nation, decimate a society and murder and maim 7000 civilians with impunity.  Israeli leaders learned they can carry out an offensive genocidal war without suffering breaks in diplomatic relations (except Mauritania, Qatar, Bolivia and Venezuela).  The Israelis have successfully tested the loyalty and submissiveness of the major Arab regimes in the region and secured cooperation and acquiescence from Egypt, the ‘Palestinian Authority’, Jordan and Saudi Arabia.  Israeli civilian-military leaders calculate that with this high degree of governmental complicity, combined with support from all the major Zionist leaders and mass media moguls, they can dismiss even large-scale street protests, repeated calls for boycotts and United Nations denunciations.  Israeli leaders know that the criticism of major religious leaders and the growing number of Jewish dissidents, critical intellectuals and activists will have no consequential impact on Western governments nor lessen the fervor and loyalty of the major Jewish organizations.

Continued >>

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Iran Shuts Office of Nobel Winner’s Rights Group

December 23, 2008

Published on Monday, December 22, 2008 by the Associated Press

TEHRAN, Iran – Iranian authorities shut down the office of a human rights group led by Nobel Peace Prize winner Shirin Ebadi on Sunday as the group was preparing to honor a political activist who spent 17 years in prison in the Islamic republic.

[Iranian police have shut down the office of a human rights group headed by Nobel peace laureate Shirin Ebadi, seen here in her office, the deputy head of the Human Rights Defenders Centre, Narges Mohammadi, told AFP. (AFP/File/Atta Kenare)]Iranian police have shut down the office of a human rights group headed by Nobel peace laureate Shirin Ebadi, seen here in her office, the deputy head of the Human Rights Defenders Centre, Narges Mohammadi, told AFP. (AFP/File/Atta Kenare)

Iranian authorities banned Ebadi’s Center for Protecting Human Rights last year, but it had continued to operate from an office in the north of the capital, Tehran.Ebadi said police in uniform and plainclothes security officials raided and sealed the building where her group was working without presenting a warrant. No arrests were reported.

The semiofficial Mehr news agency reported that judiciary officials ordered the center’s closure because it did not have the required legal permits. A judiciary statement said the human rights center had issued statements that created an atmosphere “of media publicity against the establishment in recent years,” Mehr reported.

Ebadi said her group would continue its work despite the raid.

“Shutting down our offices won’t make us stop our human rights activities. We will meet again somewhere else and will continue to support the rights of activists and political prisoners,” she told The Associated Press.

Ebadi said recent reports by her group accusing the Iranian government of human rights violations might have prompted the crackdown. She said U.N. human rights representatives are not allowed to visit Iran but have seen the group’s reports and subsequently condemned what they called gross human rights violations.

In an annual report in May, Ebadi’s group said “freedom of speech and freedom of circulating information have further declined” since hard-line President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad took office in 2005.

Among her group’s work, it has campaigned for judicial reforms such as banning stoning and cutting off limbs as punishments for convicted criminals. It has also campaigned against executions of juvenile offenders.

Ebadi said the building authorities targeted Sunday was bought with money she received after winning the Nobel Peace Prize in 2003.

Ebadi, a lawyer and human rights and democracy campaigner, won the prize for efforts that included promoting the rights of women and children in Iran and worldwide. She is the first Iranian and Muslim woman to win the award.

“We will remain committed to defending the rights of defendants jailed for their political views and beliefs,” she said.

Her group had been planning to present an award Sunday to Taqi Rahmani, who spent a total of 17 years in jail after Iran’s 1979 Islamic revolution. Ebadi said he would be honored later.

Rahmani, 48, spent more than a third of his life in prison on vague charges of seeking to overthrow the ruling Islamic establishment. In 2005, Rahmani received an award from Human Rights Watch in recognition of the 17 years he spent imprisoned for his views.

Besides honoring Rahmani, Ebadi’s group had planned Sunday to mark the 60th anniversary of Human Rights Day.

© 2008 Associated Press

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Bush’s Follies Will Destroy Obama If He Lets Them

November 28, 2008
Truthdig, Nov 25, 2008
USAF / Staff Sgt. Samuel Rogers

By William Pfaff

One might think that if Barack Obama believes he can make a success of his new administration by largely reconstituting the Clinton administration, Hillary Clinton included, he should know better than to take on the reckless ambitions and commitments of the George W. Bush administration as well: the government that gave America the Mideast and Asian crises, blunders and humiliations of the past 6 1/2 years.

The world has witnessed a futile, destructive and illegal American invasion of Iraq, a war conducted on false pretenses, supposedly against terrorists, accompanied by worldwide actions that have made American policy in Bush’s “global war on terror” seem to many Muslims an attack on Islamic society itself.

Obama is now taking on the quasi-impossible tasks of bringing to a successful and responsible conclusion the Bush government’s wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, as well as what shows signs of becoming another military intervention of grave and unforeseeable consequences in Pakistan. He is doing so without challenging the assumptions and goals of Bush administration policy.

It has been the mindset of the Bush administration—and, unfortunately, of much of the neoconservative-influenced foreign policy establishment in Washington—that international society’s problems are reducible to wars that American armies will win. They are wrong on both counts. But some still argue that this is the way to a better and more democratic world.

Obama has no choice but to accept responsibility for these American crises. But why should he accept them on the distorted and even hysterical terms by which the Bush administration has defined world affairs since 2001?

Iraq has been a victim of the United States. Washington had no legal or moral justification for invading the country and destroying its infrastructure, killing an uncounted number of Iraqis and displacing half a million or more to ruined lives while setting off the sectarian conflicts that have wracked the country since 2003.

There is a heavy American responsibility to do no more harm, however well-intentioned. The present volatile situation in the country is for the moment a largely political shoving match between the divided and possibly ephemeral Shiite government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki and his rivals, who include the Shiite radicals of Muqtada al-Sadr, and the Sunni, and largely ex-Baathist, Awakening Movement, sponsored by the U.S. Army to defend Sunni tribal regions against the foreigners of the fundamentalist al-Qaida. In addition, are the two Kurdish movements that together control, and plan to make independent and permanent, a Kurdistan nation incorporating—if they have their way—the oil-rich Kirkuk region.

One can make the political—and moral—argument that as the American invasion is responsible for the Iraqi upheaval, Washington should somehow settle it. The answer is that it’s impossible for Americans to do so. The U.S. cannot do it by continued military occupation and intervention in the country’s affairs.

Only the Iraqis themselves can settle this, and doing so may entail even more religious and ethnic struggle. The neighboring Shiite great power, Iran, will play its cards in the country. The Saudis will play theirs. Israel will do everything in its power to prevent an American withdrawal. All of this will probably add still more tragedies to those of the last six years, but at least the U.S. responsibility will have become only indirect, which is bad enough.

Barack Obama started off his presidential campaign by saying that he would get American troops out of Iraq by mid-2010. That was a strong, simple position that, if resolutely carried out, would make it clear to the Iraqis what they have to do to save themselves, and how long they have in which to do it.

Since the early campaign, the president-elect has been forced to qualify his position, weaken it, blur it, say that actually many U.S. troops probably will stay on, the dates may change, American involvement will continue, and so on. He has been forced back toward the Washington consensus opinion, the centrist and “responsible” position, close to the Bush opinion.

Nearly everyone is against his sticking to his original policy: The Iraq factions all plan to exploit American ambiguities to strengthen their own positions and maneuver the American command to favor them. The Kurds want time to make their proto-Kurdistan even more impregnable (while encouraging their reluctance to deal with Turkish and Iranian hostility to a sovereign Kurdistan, as well as deal realistically with their fellow Iraqis).

In Washington, the Pentagon is against withdrawal on Obama’s terms. It still wants permanent bases in Iraq. It claims Obama’s timetable is logistically impossible. The Republicans will shout “treason” and “betrayal.” American oil companies and the corporations that are already part of the occupation, as well as those that have big ambitions for moving into an American-secured Iraq, will demand that the U.S. stay.

All this must be resisted if Obama is to be his own man. He has to rid himself of George Bush’s folly. He must make Iraq truly independent. If he doesn’t, it could destroy his administration.

Visit William Pfaff’s Web site at www.williampfaff.com.

© 2008 Tribune Media Services Inc.

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The Price of Hillary Clinton

November 26, 2008

by Srdja Trifkovic

Global Research, November 25, 2008

Chronicles – 2008-11-24

No secretary of state will come to that office with stronger pro-Israel credentials or closer ties to the Jewish community than Sen. Hillary Clinton, Douglas Bloomfield assures his readers in The Jerusalem Post. Good for them, and for Bosnia’s Muslims and Kosovo’s Albanians; but for the rest of us Mrs. Clinton’s appointment as the third woman U.S. Secretary of State is hugely problematic. It heralds “the end of the world as we know it” in some ways, although neither she nor her coterie necessarily know what they are doing.

At the technical level, Hillary Clinton is likely to deepen the chronic crisis of the once-venerable institution at Washington’s Foggy Bottom, to which her two female predecessors have contributed in two different ways.

Madeleine Albright was an activist who will be remembered for her hubris (“If we have to use force, it is because we are America. We are the indispensable nation. We stand tall. We see further into the future.”), coupled with studied callousness. Asked on “60 Minutes” about the death of a half-million Iraqi children due to sanctions, she promptly responded, “I think this is a very hard choice, but the price is worth it.” Her crowning glory was her premeditated 1999 war in the Balkans, prior to which she said that “the Serbs need a little bombing.” Her State Department contributed to the formulation, as well as execution, of Bill Clinton’s doctrine of “humanitarian intervention.”

Condoleezza Rice, less evil and more obtuse, will be remembered for nothing. She was an auxilliary tool of the Bush-Cheney team, with all key decisions made elsewhere.

Mrs. Clinton will try to rebuild the relative importance of the Department of State, which will become her personal fiefdom, but her labors will not be for the better. Her appointment, the most significant among several major figures from the Clinton era, belies Obama’s rhetoric of “change” when it comes to foreign affairs. There will be tectonic shifts, cultural and moral, at home. The established premises of an imperial presidency – which in world affairs inevitably translates into the quest for dominance and justification for global interventionism – will not be challenged, however.

Once it is accepted that Obama’s primary interest lies in an irreversible redistribution of power and money at home, it ceases to be surprising that he chose Hillary Clinton as his chief diplomat. Allowing her to indulge in some global grandstanding is acceptable to him, if that means the Clintons will not stand in the way of his domestic agenda. They are both revolutionaries, after all: that Mrs. Clinton is instinctively opposed to any traditional understanding of diplomacy became obvious during the primary campaign, when she accused Obama of “naivete” for saying he was willing to meet leaders of Iran, Syria and North Korea.

With Robert Gates staying at the Pentagon and Jim Jones as Obama’s national security adviser, there will be a lot of continuity in the U.S. foreign policy, not only with the 1990s but also with recent years. In Mrs. Clinton’s case there will be more lies, the hallmark of the family. During the primaries she listed a number of foreign policy accomplishments based on her husband’s legacy. She claimed that in 1999 she “negotiated open borders” in Macedonia to Albanian refugees from Kosovo, although the crossings were opened days before her arrival. She had repeatedly invoked her “dangerous” trip to Bosnia in 1996, including alleged snipers at Tuzla airport, whereas the Bosnian war had ended six months earlier and video footage shows smiling schoolchildren greeting her in Tuzla. (She later admitted “misspeaking” over sniper claims.)

In the same spirit Mrs. Clinton declared, in late 2002,

“Saddam Hussein has worked to rebuild his chemical and biological weapons stock, his missile-delivery capability and his nuclear program. He has also given aid, comfort and sanctuary to terrorists, including al-Qaida members. I want to insure that Saddam Hussein makes no mistake about our national unity and for our support for the president’s efforts to wage America’s war against terrorists and weapons of mass destruction.”

Hillary Clinton says that she has had second thoughts since that time, and a year ago she declared in Foreign Affairs magazine that “US troops should be brought home.” During the primary campaign, however, she was markedly less willing than Obama to commit to a withdrawal timetable. The woman who voted to authorize the Iraq war, and who parroted lies used to justify it, cannot be expected to clean up the mess created by that war. It is more likely that she will advocate a downsized, rebranded, and effectively open-ended U.S. occupation of Iraq for which the military has been preparing ever since the “Surge.”

In Afghanistan, far from disengaging, Mrs. Clinton will advocate greater troop deployments and an escalation of military activity. On Iran, during the primaries she sounded like John McCain: “I want the Iranians to know that if I’m the president, we will attack Iran” if it attacks Israel, she declared last April: “In the next 10 years, during which they might foolishly consider launching an attack on Israel, we would be able to totally obliterate them.” She will negotiate with the mullahs, however, if Tehran’s tacit support is considered necessary for the achievement of her major ambition: a breakthrough in the Middle East.

Bill Clinton came closer than any U.S. president to brokering Arab-Israeli peace in the final year of his presidency, and insiders say that Hillary will place this issue at the top of her agenda. She is a favourite of the pro-Israel lobby, however, and it is unclear what she can offer, or do, in 2009-2010 that was not offered or tried at Camp David a decade earlier.

Continued >>

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Activists Celebrate Iran’s Ban on Juvenile Executions

October 17, 2008

By Zainab Mineeia and Jim Lobe | Inter-Press Service

WASHINGTON, Oct 16 – International human rights groups have welcomed the reports out of Tehran Thursday that Iranian courts may no longer order the death penalty against juvenile offenders.

Of the five countries that still permit the execution of juveniles, Iran has been responsible for the most executions in recent years.

“I’m delighted,” Jo Becker, director of the Children’s Rights Project of New York-based Human Rights Watch (HRW) told IPS. “If this directive is implemented, it will be a huge step forward and will move the world very close to a real ban on the execution of juvenile offenders.”

“[We] welcome the announcement and hope that it will pave the way to a complete abolition of the death penalty in Iran,” said a statement issued late Thursday by Amnesty International in London.

The group also called on Iran’s parliament, the Majlis, to ensure that the ban, which was reportedly issued by the office of Iran’s prosecutor general, is made into law and that the Islamic Republic’s Council of Guardians endorses it.

Both Amnesty and HRW, as well as a number of other international and Iranian rights groups, have made the abolition of the execution of juvenile offenders a major priority in their international lobbying efforts.

Earlier this week, they published a statement signed by more than 300 non-governmental organisations (NGOs) from 82 countries around the world calling on the U.N. General Assembly to put pressure on the five hold-out countries, which include Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Pakistan, and Yemen, as well as Iran, to ban the practice.

Together, the five countries had executed 32 individuals who were juveniles at the time they allegedly committed the capital offence of which they were accused between January 2005 and last month. Of the total, however, Iran executed by far the most — 26.

“We, as local , national, regional and international non-governmental organisations from every part of the world, call on each U.N. member state to fully implement the absolute ban on the juvenile death penalty, as required by customary law, the Convention on the Rights of the child, the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, and as highlighted by the (U.N.) Secretary-General’s recent study on violence against children,” said the petition, which was organised by the Children’s Rights International Network (CRIN).

Until 2005, when its Supreme Court declared the execution of juvenile offenders unconstitutional, the United States also executed juvenile offenders. From 1976 until the Court’s ruling, 22 individuals who were younger than 18 at the time they committed their crimes were executed in U.S. states, 13 of them in Texas.

According to an interview with the Islamic Republic News Agency (IRNA) Wednesday, the judicial deputy of the Prosecutor General said courts have been ordered to commute death sentences of juvenile offenders to prison terms.

“According to this directive, punishments for offenders under the age of 18 [in capital offence cases], will be reduced to life in prison in the first stage and in the second stage [of parole] will be reduced to 15 years,” the deputy, Hussein Zebhi, stated, according to a translation provided by the International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran.

“In addition, in cases of good behaviour and signs of rehabilitation, juvenile offenders may qualify for conditional release under Islamic compassions guidelines,” he told IRNA, the state news agency.

The Campaign’s coordinator, Hadi Ghaemi, explained that Iranian officials had previously made a distinction between execution for capital offences and executions for under the law of “qisas” (“an eye for an eye”), claiming qisas sentences cannot be reduced by judges.

But while Zebhi did not explicitly address that issue, he told IRNA that “offenders under the age of 18, no matter what their offence is, will not be subject to executions but will receive other punishments according to the law.” Ghaemi called on the Iranian Judiciary to publicly release the entire text of the directive and clearly state that there will be no exceptions for cases of qisas.

“This decision is long overdue given that Iran leads the world in executing juvenile offenders, and it is a significant step towards honouring international law,” Ghaemi said, noting that Iran has ratified the relevant treaties, including the Convention on the Rights of the child and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which bans the death penalty for offenders under the age of 18.

“We are extremely for the families of nearly 130 juveniles on death row and hope that this directive will put an immediate end to any more executions of juvenile offenders,” he said.

Like Amnesty, however, Ghaemi stressed that the directive still fell short of a legally binding commitment and called for it to be approved into law by the parliament. “The next and urgently needed step is for the parliament to act on this issue and abolish the death penalty for children through legislation,” he said.

One of those apparently spared by the new directive may be Mohammed Feda’i, who allegedly killed another boy in a fight when he was 17. Earlier this summer, he was given a stay of execution to allow his family more time to reach an agreement over financial compensation with the victim’s family, according to Amnesty, which noted that Iran’s Supreme Court had upheld the sentence despite evidence that he had received inadequate representation at his trial.

The directive comes too late for Seeyed Reza Hejazi who was executed Aug. 19 for his role in a murder committed in 2003, when he was 15. Hejazi, who admitted that he stabbed an assailant while trying to break up a fight involving several others, insisted repeatedly that he did not intend to kill him.

Iran executed eight juvenile offenders last year and another six so far in 2008. According to a HRW report released last month, judges in Iran have had the power to impose the death penalty in capital cases if the defendant has attained “majority”, which is defined in Iranian law “as nine years for girls and 15 years for boys”.

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