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by Christopher Dickey, R. M. Schneiderman, Babak DehghanpishehDecember 13, 2010

Majid Saeedi / Getty ImagesPhotos: Nations in the Nuclear Club

They Have the Bomb

The covert operations that target Iran’s nuclear program suddenly came to light with explosive violence and stunning implications for the future of warfare on Nov. 29.

On that Monday morning, dawn had just broken over a bustling Tehran so deeply shrouded in smog that many commuters wore face masks to protect against the fumes and dust in the air. On Artesh Street, among rows of new and half-finished apartment blocks, the nuclear physicist Majid Shahriari was working his way through rush-hour traffic with his wife and bodyguard in his Peugeot sedan. A motorcycle pulled up beside the scientist’s car. Nothing extraordinary about that. But then the man on the bike stuck something to the outside of the door and sped away. When the magnetically attached bomb went off, its focused explosion killed Shahriari instantly. It wounded the others in the car but spared their lives. A clean hit.

Only a few minutes later and a few miles away, in a leafy neighborhood in the foothills of the Alborz Mountains, again a motorcycle pulled alongside the car of another scientist, Fereydoun Abbasi Davani. A longtime member of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards, Abbasi Davani was named specifically in a United Nations sanctions resolution as “involved in nuclear or ballistic missile activities.” Sensing what was about to happen, he stopped the car, jumped out, and managed to pull his wife to safety before the bomb went off.

That same morning, in Israel, where many see Iran’s nuclear program as a threat to the very existence of the Jewish state, nobody celebrated the Tehran attacks publicly. Nobody claimed responsibility. But nobody denied it, either. And as it happened, that was the morning Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced that Meir Dagan would be stepping down after eight years directing the Mossad and its secret operations against Iran. Under a photograph of Shahriari’s thoroughly perforated Peugeot, one of Israel’s tabloids ran the headline LAST SHOT FOR DAGAN?

This longest day in a dark war was not over yet, however. In Tehran that Monday afternoon, at a press conference that had been delayed for two hours, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad told reporters there was “no doubt the hand of the Zionist regime and the Western governments” had been involved in the attacks on the scientists. Then, for the first time, Ahmadinejad admitted something that his government had tried to deny until that moment: the high-speed centrifuges used to enrich uranium for use as nuclear fuel in reactors, or possibly for weapons, had been damaged by a cyberattack. Iran’s enemies—he didn’t specify which ones—had been “successful in making problems for a limited number of our centrifuges with software they installed in electronic devices.” Ahmadinejad assured the press that the problem was now taken care of. “They are unable to repeat these acts,” he claimed. Yet only a few days before, top Iranian officials had declared there was no problem at all.

Rarely has a covert war been so obvious, and rarely have the underlying facts been so murky. Conspiracy theory hangs as heavy in Tehran these days as the smog: a number of Iranian reformists opposed to Ahmadinejad have suggested the two scientists targeted in November, as well as another one, Masoud Ali Mohammadi, killed by an exploding motorcycle in January, were attacked by the regime itself because their loyalties were suspect. All reportedly sympathized to some extent with the opposition Green Movement. Both Mohammadi and Shahriari had attended at least one meeting of SESAME, a U.N.-linked research organization based in Jordan, where Israelis as well as Arabs and Iranians were present. “In the eyes of the Revolutionary Guards, everybody’s a potential spy,” says a former Iranian intelligence officer, who asked not to be named because of likely retributions inside Iran. “You are either 100 percent dedicated to the system or you are an enemy.”

So, who done it? The speculation itself is part of the psychological game played by various governments against Iran and to some extent against each other. In what Cold War spies would have called “a wilderness of mirrors,” different intelligence services may take credit, with a wink and a nod, for things they did not do, while denying they did what they actually did do. Enemies of Iran can take pleasure, for now at least, in the fear stirred up by uncertainty.

Video muted: click volume for sound What Took the UN So Long? A Newsweek Starter Kit explains why it took the Security Council so much time to sanction Iran.

What we can deduce from the limited evidence that has emerged so far, according to former White House counterterrorism and cyberwarfare adviser Richard Clarke, is that at least two countries conducted operations against Iran simultaneously and not necessarily in close coordination. One likely carried out the hits; the other created and somehow infiltrated the highly sophisticated Stuxnet worm into computers of the Iranian nuclear program. In an interview, Clarke, who now runs a security-consulting business, strongly suggested Israel and the United States are the likely sources of the attacks. Other analysts suggest that France, Britain, and especially Germany, home of Siemens, which made the software and some of the hardware attacked by the Stuxnet worm, might also be involved. (A spokesman for Siemens says the company no longer does business with Iran.)

Historically, Israel’s covert operations have been on the violent side. When it comes to strategic murders, the Mossad has established a record 50 years long of “targeted assassinations,” often taking out scientists who tried to help its enemies develop weapons of mass destruction. It has carried out hits all over the Middle East and Europe (see following story). Iran knows this history well: Israeli intelligence sources, who decline to be named on the record, coyly suggest that the Iranian Revolutionary Guards are so convinced the Mossad directed the assassination plots that the Guards are taking extreme measures to protect the man considered next on the hit list: Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, a professor of nuclear physics whom the Israelis sometimes call “the Iranian Dr. Strangelove.” They believe he’s directing a secret nuclear-weapons program that is distinct from the public enrichment operations at Natanz and elsewhere, which are open to United Nations inspectors. (The official Iranian government position is that all its nuclear research and all its uranium enrichment are for purely peaceful purposes.)

The real damage to the Iranian nuclear program, however, was done by Stuxnet—the most sophisticated computer worm ever detected and analyzed, one targeting hardware as well as software, and a paradigm of covert cyberweapons to come. “Stuxnet is the start of a new era,” says Stewart Baker, former general counsel of the U.S. National Security Agency. “It’s the first time we’ve actually seen a weapon created by a state to achieve a goal that you would otherwise have used multiple cruise missiles to achieve.”

According to figures compiled by David Albright of the Institute for Science and International Security, a Washington think tank that follows the Iranian program closely, Tehran had major problems bringing new centrifuges online throughout 2009. The first 4,000 already installed at the Natanz facility continued to spin, but the next 5,000 were beset by delays. The worst problems came in an array of centrifuges known as A-26, which Iran began installing in late 2008—around the time Stuxnet was sent on its mission. In the late summer of 2009, half the functioning A-26 centrifuges had to be pulled out of service. At the turn of this year, Albright has learned, 1,000 more simply broke down. This may have been the “limited number” Ahmadinejad was talking about.

Not all of the breakdowns can be attributed to Stuxnet. Spies from Israel and probably elsewhere have long been involved in the sabotage of high-tech materials and components for the Iranian nuclear program that Tehran has had to acquire on the black market because of U.N. sanctions. As far back as April 2007, Eli Levite, then deputy director of the Israeli Atomic Energy Commission, told a closed forum that “our efforts gained time for us and have doubtlessly caused significant delays in the [Iranian nuclear] project.” The threshold at which Iran can be deemed a real nuclear-weapons power—which is the point at which Israel might launch a military strike to neutralize the threat, even if that risked dragging the United States into a third Muslim-world war—is pushed back by these covert operations. And that gives diplomacy a chance even if, as happened in Geneva last week, talks with Iran appear to make little progress.

Some press reports suggest that Stuxnet, too, is an Israeli weapon. They point to Tel Aviv’s prowess in computer science, especially in highly secretive groups like Unit 8200, the Israeli military’s legendary cyber outfit. They point to some code in Stuxnet that might suggest the date on which a prominent Jewish businessman was executed in Tehran in 1979, or the name “Myrtus,” which could be construed as a reference to Esther, the biblical Jewish queen of Persia who stopped a genocide, and so on. But Clarke cautions against such convoluted explanations. “The argument is that the Israelis are trying to subtly let the Iranians know it was them—not so subtly that they claim it publicly, but enough so the Iranians get to know,” he says. “Stay away from all that.”

What’s clear, says Clarke, is that major resources went into Stuxnet’s development. Microsoft estimates that building the virus likely took 10,000 man-days of labor by top-rank software engineers. Unlike most of the worms and viruses that wreak havoc on computers, this one was not designed to spread far and wide, doing damage wherever it landed. It is structured to target a specific set of devices manufactured only in Finland and Iran that are used to determine the speed at which the centrifuges rotate. If that speed is not modulated perfectly, vibrations make the machines break down, as indeed they have. According to Eric Chien of the antivirus firm Symantec, who has pulled Stuxnet apart like a strand of DNA, all that incredibly complex information was built into it before it ever infected the Iranian system. Clarke suggests that whoever developed Stuxnet probably had the same types of software and centrifuges on which to run tests. “That’s expensive,” he says. “That’s millions of dollars.”

Because the Iranian nuclear program’s computers are not connected to the Internet, the worm couldn’t have been introduced to them online. It’s presumed to have come from a USB thumb drive that the user may or may not have known was infected: Stuxnet was designed to do nothing to computers that didn’t connect with the control mechanisms it targeted. And then, depending on where it found itself, Stuxnet was supposed to self-destruct. According to Chien, different components of the virus have different “time to live” mechanisms. A USB key inserted into a newly infected computer can’t carry the worm for more than 21 days. After that, it disappears. The worm is programmed to quit exploiting one particular weakness in Microsoft’s software after June 1, 2011, and the worm’s overall time to live runs out in June 2012.

Why bother with an expiration date at all? The answer supplied by Clarke is so very Washington-centric that it’s almost a dead giveaway. “All that suggests to me a nation-state actor with a series of lawyers involved in looking at the covert action,” says Clarke, whose latest book is Cyber War: The Next Threat to National Security and What to Do About It. “I’ve never seen or heard of a worm before that limited its spread.” One explanation, of course, is that the creators of the virus hoped it would self-destruct before it was discovered. Another, however, is that the creators and their government hoped to limit their liability if they were ever exposed. A former senior intelligence official in the U.S. government has doubts the CIA could have vetted such an attack. “The applicable presidential findings we had in this arena did not cover this kind of activity,” he says. If the United States were involved, he adds, it would have had to be a Defense Department operation.

Whoever was behind this seminal cyberattack, the next such worm, which might be adapted from the Stuxnet codes that are now widely circulated, may not be so punctilious. (Imagine what WikiLeaks-supporting anarchists might do with it. Or the Iranians.) Like other weapons that have transformed the battlefields of the last century only to become so widespread that they threaten their creators, this worm could turn.

With Maziar Bahari, Ronen Bergman, and John Barry

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November 25th, 2010

Via: TruthOut:

Since 2007, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) – with the support of the United States, Israel and European allies UK, France and Germany – has been demanding that Iran explain a set of purported internal documents portraying a covert Iranian military program of research and development of nuclear weapons. The “laptop documents,” supposedly obtained from a stolen Iranian computer by an unknown source and given to US intelligence in 2004, include a series of drawings of a missile re-entry vehicle that appears to be an effort to accommodate a nuclear weapon, as well as reports on high explosives testing for what appeared to be a detonator for a nuclear weapon.

In one report after another, the IAEA has suggested that Iran has failed to cooperate with its inquiry into that alleged research, and that the agency, therefore, cannot verify that it has not diverted nuclear material to military purposes.

That issue remains central to US policy toward Iran. The Obama administration says there can be no diplomatic negotiations with Iran unless Iran satisfies the IAEA fully in regard to the allegations derived from the documents that it had covert nuclear weapons program.

That position is based on the premise that the intelligence documents that Iran has been asked to explain are genuine. The evidence now available, however, indicates that they are fabrications.

The drawings of the Iranian missile warhead that were said by the IAEA to show an intent to accommodate a nuclear weapon actually depict a missile design that Iran is now known to have already abandoned in favor of an improved model by the time the technical drawings were allegedly made. And one of the major components of the purported Iranian military research program allegedly included a project labeled with a number that turns out to have been assigned by Iran’s civilian nuclear authority years before the covert program is said to have been initiated.

…

The origin of the laptop documents may never be proven conclusively, but the accumulated evidence points to Israel as the source. As early as 1995, the head of the Israel Defense Forces’ military intelligence research and assessment division, Yaakov Amidror, tried unsuccessfully to persuade his American counterparts that Iran was planning to “go nuclear.” By 2003-2004, Mossad’s reporting on the Iranian nuclear program was viewed by high-ranking CIA officials as an effort to pressure the Bush administration into considering military action against Iran’s nuclear sites, according to Israeli sources cited by a pro-Israeli news service.

In the summer of 2003, Israel’s international intelligence agency, Mossad, had established an aggressive program aimed at exerting influence on the Iran nuclear issue by leaking alleged intelligence to governments and the news media, as Israeli officials acknowledged to journalists Douglas Frantz and Catherine Collins. According to the book, “The Nuclear Jihadist,” as part of the program, Mossad sometimes passed on purported Iranian documents supposedly obtained by Israeli spies inside Iran.

German sources have suggested that the intelligence documents were conveyed to the US government, directly or indirectly, by a group that had been collaborating closely with Mossad.

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In September 2006, the world experienced a paradigm shift when a strong lobbying effort by grassroots organizations effectively derailed an initiative: A move that was tantamount to a declaration of war on Iran.

U.S.: Iran Resolution Shelved in Rare Defeat for Israel Lobby

In a significant and highly unusual defeat for the powerful American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) the Democratic leadership of the House of Representatives has decided to shelve a long-pending, albeit non-binding, resolution that called for President George W. Bush to launch what critics called a blockade against Iran.

But an unexpectedly strong lobbying effort by a number of grassroots Iranian-American, Jewish-American, peace, and church groups effectively derailed the initiative.

The decision by the chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, Rep. Howard Berman, to shelve HR 362 marked an unusual defeat for AIPAC, according to its critics who charged that the resolution was designed to lay the groundwork for the Bush administration or any successor administration to take military action against Iran.

A nuclear confrontation with Iran was avoided in 2006 because a small number of people with the power of community were enough to convince our Government not to take the world to the point of no return.

Our un-elected officials got the message, that the perils of a nuclear confrontation with Iran could mean the end of life for everyone here on earth. Congress refused to go along with the Bush Administration’s plans for military action against Iran.

Just two years later, the power of community stopped congress from attacking Iran.

Iran 2010

If you aren’t up to speed about the most dangerous move towards nuclear war the world has seen since the 1962 Cuba Missile Crisis, visit the critically acclaimed Global Research website founded by Michel Chossudovsky, Professor of Economics at the University of Ottawa and Director of the Centre for Research on Globalization.

Chossudovsky writes:

The US and its allies are preparing to launch a nuclear war directed against Iran with devastating consequences and this military adventure in the real sense of the word threatens the future of humanity.

The international community has endorsed nuclear war in the name of World Peace. “Making the World safer” is the justification for launching a military operation which could potentially result in a nuclear holocaust.

Iran, a country with a non-existent nuclear weapons capability and an air force that belongs in a museum, is not a threat to either nuclear power with a presence in the Middle East, the United States or Israel. [1]

The community of grassroots Iranian-American, Jewish-American, peace, and church groups have proven over and over, when we cooperate with each other we can make a difference.

The Powers That Be (TPTB) knew the day would come when the people would realize the power they have when they work together for their own survival.

Be it growing our own food in cooperation with our neighbors or lobbying the U.S. government with the truth about Iran, it only takes a small number of us to make a difference. [2]

Normally I don’t recommend those “take action” campaigns, the ones that tell us, “it’s not too late, click-here to importune our “elected” representatives with emails and faxes.” But in this case our emails and faxes attest to our power…of community. [3]

Start by contacting the Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton and demand she honor the commitment made by President Obama during the 2007 Democratic debate when he said that he would, “As president, be willing to meet without preconditions with Iran’s leaders, and that the notion of not talking to one’s foes was ridiculous.” [4]

E-mail President of the United States, (202) 456-1414 Phone, (202) 456-2461 Fax
E-mail The Secretary of State, (202) 647-6575 press 1 to leave a comment

“In nuclear war all men are cremated equal” Dexter Gordon

We can do this, we did it in 2006, 2008 and we can do it in 2010.

Katherine Smith, PhD mandrell2010@gmail.com

Footnotes:
[1] Israel has enough plutonium to make up to 200 nuclear weapons. Who’s Telling the Truth About Iran’s Nuclear Program? by Muhammad Sahimi

[2] [Excerpt From Grandmother Scores Huge Victory over Monsanto]

And the question that scares Monsanto to death:

Why don’t I and all of my neighbors just grow our own food…on one square foot of land?

The conversation at Starbucks is no longer about which stocks or houses are going up (or down) but which vegetables sprout the fastest and how many crops can one get in before winter. Now when someone mentions planting a bush permanently they are not talking about how to bury our last president but the best way to plant super bush beans in the spring.

Quit worrying about HR 875, going to jail or getting fined $1 million for growing your own food; that has to be disinformation.

Even if there were enough food police there aren’t enough judges and prosecutors to enforce such a ridiculous law.

What the Monsanto lobby is really afraid of is that one day we will wake up and realize if we work together as a community and cooperate with each other then they will have no power over us.

[3] Those “take action”- campaigns that appeal to our selfish and divisive nature don’t work. These are going around the internet:

Subject: Sign the letter to Google. Tell them to stop being evil and protect the free and open Internet.

Subject: Hi — this is Jason Rosenbaum, a new campaigner at the PCCC. I’ve got some urgent news. Can you sign our promise to oppose cuts in Social Security and then ask your representatives to sign on as well?

All they accomplish is to reinforce our feelings of helpless and isolation. They create negative energy, consider a typical rant:

“These people have been robbing us for years. I don’t for the life of me know why we keep sending the same people that keep doing the same things over and over again. We need to empty Washington! Send them home in wholesale fashion. Take the profit out, of public service and put the public service, back in!”

[4] Mr. Obama first made waves with his views on Iran policy in 2007, when he said during a Democratic debate that he would, as president, be willing to meet without preconditions with Iran’s leaders, and that the notion of not talking to one’s foes was “ridiculous.”

Since becoming president, Mr. Obama has pursued diplomacy, but his stance has become steadily more confrontational. Iran’s Nuclear Program, The New York Times

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The timing of an investigation by the House Ethics Committee, which on August 2, 2010 formally brought a case against Congresswoman Maxine Waters, one of America’s most enduring liberal and fierce Anti War politicians, and the WikiLeaks of tens of thousands of Army documents related to the war in Afghanistan may be connected.

Speculation by bloggers, including John Young of Cryptome.com, and an expose at The Intel Hub that the WikiLeaks is part of a disinformation operation, and that the documents themselves could even be fake, should put every left leaning American on Yellow alert.

Fox News wasted no time exploiting the WikiLeaks documents to further vilify Iran, pointing out that the documents indicate the U.S. belief that Iran is arming the Taliban insurgency. This adds another layer to Fox’s steady stream of propaganda that has flowed over the years advocating for an attack on the country, and stands as a reason why some believe the leak was staged. WikiLeaks documents– disinformation or not– are being used for anti-Iran propaganda, OpEdNews

Google trends confirm the news coverage has shifted from the BP Gulf Oil Spill to a debate over the non-Arab sovereign country of Iran. [1]

An investigation marginalizing the most virulent anti war democrat in congress at a time when the U.S. is openly considering a raid on Iranian’s (non-existent) nuclear weapons program, could be the most dangerous move towards nuclear war the world has seen since the 1962 Cuba Missile crisis.

Congresswoman Waters responded immediately to the baseless charges, “The record will clearly show that in advocating on behalf of minority banks, neither my office nor I benefited in any way, engaged in improper action or influenced anyone.”

The committee, which apparently is dragging it’s feet on the investigation of the alleged impropriety that took place 18 months ago, recently announced it could not determine a date for the hearing.

August 4, 2010, Congresswoman Water’s office called on the House Committee on Standards of Official Conduct to schedule an adjudicatory hearing and to release to the public all documents related to her.

“I feel strongly that further delay in the scheduling of the hearing violates the fundamental principles of due process, denies my constituents the opportunity to evaluate this case, and harms my ability to defend my integrity.

Therefore I am waiving my right to keep the Committee’s findings confidential so that the public to be fully informed about this matter and I am able to present my case, my constituents and all Americans will understand that I have not violated any House rules.”

The failure to release the allegations against Congresswoman Waters has resulted in a media circus of speculation based only on a report prepared by the controversial Office of Congressional Ethics.

You will recall Public opinion was deeply divided on Bush’s 1990 Gulf policy, and the decision to invade Iraq was made by the US Senate via a narrow five-vote margin.

An investigation of any kind (especially one that is over events that took place in 2008) of the most outspoken voice of reason in the U.S. House of Representatives on the issue of U.S. aggression in the Middle East should put all Americans on Red alert.

And if you want more proof of a concerted effort to paint Iran, a country with a non-existent nuclear weapons capability and an air force that belongs in museums read on. [2]

On August 3, 2010, the U.S. State Department rebuffed a call from Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad for direct talks with President Barack Obama. In the same week of the anniversary of the unnecessary bombing of Nagasaki and Hiroshima, Hillary Clinton proposes the ultimate hypocrisy by suggesting that Tehran pay more attention to the international concerns over its nuclear program. [3]

Just two days later, the U.S. State Department released their latest report on terrorism and claims that Iran remained the, “most active” state sponsor of terrorism, and its support for terrorist and militant groups throughout the Middle East and Central Asia had a “direct impact” on international efforts for peace and stability.

This report on terrorism should be questioned because in 2001 the senior director for Middle East affairs in the National Security Council is quoted as saying:

“The State Department and NSC officials met secretly with Iranian diplomats in October, 2001 to discuss “how to effectively unseat the Taliban and once the Taliban was gone, how to stand up an Afghan government.” [4]

Normally I don’t recommend those “take action”- campaigns: the ones that tell us, it’s not too late, click-here to importune our “elected”- representatives with emails and faxes.

However, a confrontation with Iran is different.

A World War III would be terminal, and therefore it is imperative we make our voices heard.

Contact Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton and demand she honor the commitment made by President Obama during the 2007 Democratic debate when he said that he would:

“As president, be willing to meet without preconditions with Iran’s leaders, and that the notion of not talking to one’s foes was ridiculous.” [5]

What’s worse than turmoil in the Middle East asked a blogger, “A radioactive turmoil in the Middle East.

E-mail President of the United States
Call President Obama (202) 456-1414
Fax the White House (202) 456-2461

E-mail The Secretary of State
Call Hillary Rodham Clinton (202) 647-6575 press 1 to leave a comment

Albert Einstein understood the perils of nuclear war and the extinction of life on earth, which has already started with the radioactive contamination resulting from depleted uranium. “ I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones.”

Katherine Smith, PhD mandrell2010@gmail.com

Footnotes:

[1] Recent developments have turned the Middle East into the center of international attention. Iran, as the Persian Gulf region’s only non-Arab nation, Israel, as the world’s sole Jewish state, and a host of fragile Arab countries, who are being immersed in the waves of the West’s economic turmoil, find their destiny intertwined, with each party trying to surmount the other. All this makes for an interesting, yet worrying, rivalry in the Middle East.

August 5, Google Alert – Nuclear
AP Exclusive: Iran defiant in nuclear documents
Nuclear powers remember Hiroshima, The Press Association
UK PM Makes Policy Slip, Says Iran Has Nuclear Weapon, Wall Street Journal
Senate Committee Delays Action on New START Treaty, Voice of America
Poll: Arab majority believes nuclear Iran helps Mideast, Jewish Telegraphic Agency

[2] Who’s Telling the Truth About Iran’s Nuclear Program? by Muhammad Sahimi
Since February 2003, Iran’s nuclear program has undergone what the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) itself admits to be the most intrusive inspection in its entire history. After thousands of hours of inspections by some of the most experienced IAEA experts, the Agency has verified time and again that (1) there is no evidence of a nuclear weapons program in Iran, and (2) all the declared nuclear materials have been accounted for; there has been no diversion of such materials to non-peaceful purposes. Iran has a clean bill of health, as far as its nuclear program is concerned.

July 7, 2008 04:24 AM H. Con. Res. 362 – through efforts, Iran seeks to establish regional hegemony, threatens longstanding friends of the United States in the Middle East, and endangers American national security interests.

Regional hegemony is not achieved with Iranian army that has been designed solely to defend Iran, and an air force that belongs in museums.

To summarize: it is clear that practically every paragraph in the Senate and House Resolutions have factual errors, lies, exaggerations, and half-truths. Iran can be criticized on many grounds, particularly in the area of respect for human rights. But, Iran is not a threat to the United States or to Israel. It is not anywhere close to having the capability for manufacturing nuclear weapons, even if it wanted to.

Therefore, the American public must recognize these Resolutions for what they really are: War Resolutions proposed and pushed by neoconservatives in both the Democrat and Republican parties, various pro-Israel lobbies, and their allies.

It is crucial that the American public act now, today, by calling their congressional representatives before these “declarations of war” against Iran are passed. If we do launch an unprovoked attack on Iran the results will most probably be horrific to all sides, if not to the entire world.

[3] U.S. dismisses Ahmadinejad’s call for direct talks with Obama

[4] President Ahmadinejad of Iran has denied the charges that his government supports Taliban insurgents.

Prior to Ahmadinejad’s coming to power, while the U.S. planned the invasion of Afghanistan, Iran helped organize the Northern Alliance against the Taliban. Though the U.S. has downplayed Iran’s role in the early days of the war, U.S.soldiers and officials have conceded that Iranian forces were present with the Afghan rebels in 2001. In his 2006 article, “How Neocons Sabotaged Iran’s Help on al-Qaeda” author Gareth Porter wrote:

“After the Sept. 11 attacks, U.S. officials responsible for preparing for war in Afghanistan needed Iran’s help to unseat the Taliban and establish a stable government in Kabul. Iran had organized resistance by the Northern Alliance and had provided arms and funding at a time when the United States had been unwilling to do so.”

The article quotes Flynt Leverett– senior director for Middle East affairs in the National Security Council at the time– who said that State Department and NSC officials met secretly with Iranian diplomats in October, 2001 to discuss “how to effectively unseat the Taliban and once the Taliban was gone, how to stand up an Afghan government.”

The State Department’s policy planning staff wrote a paper in November 2001 recommending that the U.S. pursue more formal cooperation with Iran in fighting al-Qaeda. Yet collaboration with Iran in Afghanistan would have involved equal sharing of information about al-Qaeda between the two countries, and since the Bush administration had already decided to include Iran on its “axis of evil” hit-list by then, the U.S. turned its back on the idea.

As Neocons use the WikiLeaks story of Iranian efforts to hamper the U.S. occupation of its neighbor in order to push their agenda, no doubt they will overlook the fact that in 2007 the CIA received presidential approval to mount a covert operation to destabilize Iran’s government. It’s even less likely that they’ll mention that Iran’s democratically elected government was overthrown by the CIA and replaced by the heavy-handed Shah– a U.S. puppet– when it wanted to nationalize its oil fields back in 1953.

Such facts aren’t convenient for a U.S. government trying to seize the moral high ground while biding its time for the right moment to launch another unprovoked attack on a sovereign nation. WikiLeaks documents– disinformation or not– are being used for anti-Iran propaganda, OpEdNews

[5] Mr. Obama first made waves with his views on Iran policy in 2007, when he said during a Democratic debate that he would, as president, be willing to meet without preconditions with Iran’s leaders, and that the notion of not talking to one’s foes was “ridiculous.”

Since becoming president, Mr. Obama has pursued diplomacy, but his stance has become steadily more confrontational. Iran’s Nuclear Program, The New York Times

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Global Research, July 3, 2010

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JNOUBIYEH | 10:25 AM

Following last week’s reports by Al-Quds Al-Arabi newspaper and UK daily The Times in which they said that the Saudi Arabia has given the green light for the IAF to use its airspace in order to launch an attack against Iran, another news agency joined the chorus.

A semi-official Iranian news agency reported Wednesday that Israeli Air Force helicopters recently landed at a Saudi Arabia airport and unloaded equipment intended for attacking targets in a Muslim state.

This follows last weekend’s reports of an American fleet passing through the Suez Canal, triggering fears that the United States and Israel were preparing for an attack on Iran, with Egypt’s cooperation, the Arabic language newspaper Al-Quds Al-Arabi said.

The Israeli aircraft reportedly landed at Tabuk Airport on June 18 and 19 and that the Saudi airport canceled numerous flights to enable the Israeli aircraft landing, the FARS agency said in an unconfirmed report titled “Suspicious military activity of the Zionist regime in Saudi Arabia.”

The agency quoted a Saudi passenger as saying the aviation authorities canceled a flight scheduled to take off from Tabuk Airport without giving any reason.

The U.K. daily The Times reported some 10 days ago that Saudi Arabia had agreed to open its air space to Israeli aircraft as part of preparations for a possible attack on Iran. The report claimed the Saudi air force had begun training to enable safe passage for the Israeli planes, thus shortening the flight time to the Persian Gulf considerably.

Israel did not comment on this report, but Saudi Arabia firmly denied having agreed to such a move.

Arab news sites reported Wednesday that following the flotilla affair, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan had canceled a number of agreements for military cooperation with Israel, including one enabling IAF training in Turkish air space. According to the reports, Israel was planning, under this agreement, to fly to Georgia and from there to continue toward Iran.

Over the weekend Egyptian sources said that an American fleet consisting of 11 frigates and an aircraft carrier, believed to be the nuclear-powered aircraft carrier USS Harry S Truman, crossed the Suez Canal from the Mediterranean to the Red Sea.

The report, which appeared on Friday in Al-Quds, said commercial boat traffic in the canal had been suspended for several hours to enable the American fleet to pass. Eyewitnesses were quoted as saying the fleet also included an Israeli frigate. The report also alleged that thousands of Egyptian soldiers were deployed along the Suez Canal to guard the ships’ passage while two Egyptian fighter helicopters circled above.

Some reports said the fleet was on its way to the Persian Gulf, presumably as part of the efforts to implement the sanctions against Iran and supervise the ships going to and from Iran.

Al-Quds said that following the American fleet’s passing through the Suez Canal, Egyptian opposition lawmakers warned the government not to repeat the mistake of opening the canal for US ships to attack Iraq. They also reportedly warned the government not to cooperate with the United States and Israel, saying the Arab and Muslim world will not take it lying down this time.

Source

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“We warn the US and certain adventurist countries that if they are tempted to inspect Iranian air and ship cargos, we will take tough action against their ships in the Persian Gulf and the Sea of Oman,” Larijani said in an open session of the parliament here in Tehran on Wednesday.

The Iranian parliament speaker added that the Iranian retaliatory move is part of the country’s policy to defend national interests.

Larijani blasted US President Barack Obama’s remarks against Iran, and underscored that hypocritical moves against the Iranian nation will be against their interests.

Inspection of Iranian cargos is part of the punitive measures cited in a US-sponsored resolution approved by the UN Security Council on June 9.

The resolution requires the inspection of ships or planes headed to or from Iran if suspected cargo is aboard.

The new sanctions target at least three entities managed by the Islamic Republic of Iran Shipping Lines (IRISL).

An Iranian lawmaker had also earlier warned the western states against practicing the new set of UNSC sanctions, saying that Tehran will reciprocate any unwise move with similar actions.

“Even if one Iranian ship is stopped for security-check, we will act likewise and thoroughly inspect any (western) ship passing through the Persian Gulf and the Strait of Hormuz,” member of the Iranian parliament’s National Security and Foreign Policy Commission Hossein Ebrahimi said.

“Clearly their ships need to be inspected more than ours,” he said, adding that Iran carries out most of its military maneuvers in its strategic southern waters.

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Saudi Arabia has conducted tests to stand down its air defences to enable Israeli jets to make a bombing raid on Iran’s nuclear facilities, The Times can reveal.

In the week that the UN Security Council imposed a new round of sanctions on Tehran, defence sources in the Gulf say that Riyadh has agreed to allow Israel to use a narrow corridor of its airspace in the north of the country to shorten the distance for a bombing run on Iran.

To ensure the Israeli bombers pass unmolested, Riyadh has carried out tests to make certain its own jets are not scrambled and missile defence systems not activated. Once the Israelis are through, the kingdom’s air defences will return to full alert.

“The Saudis have given their permission for the Israelis to pass over and they will look the other way,” said a US defence source in the area. “They have already done tests to make sure their own jets aren’t scrambled and no one gets shot down. This has all been done with the agreement of the [US] State Department.”

Full article here

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Flotilla Massacre is a Reply to the Turkish-Iranian Relations

The leaders of the Israeli gang of War criminals, the so-called “Israeli government” is currently engaged in inciting and planning to launch a nuclear war against Iran, was not able to do anything in response to the Turkish- Iranian-Brazilian agreement of last May 17 2010 to transfer 1.200 Kg of low-enriched uranium to Turkey in return for nuclear fuel. In retaliation, they perpetrated the massacre on the Freedom Flotilla of humanitarian aid-carrying ships aiming to break the Israel genocide of siege on Gaza imposed since 2006. The Turkish-Iranian-Brazilian agreement stood as an obstacle against the Israeli ambitions to force the world to enter into a spiral of bloody nuclear war. It is wrong to believe that the Turkish government was not expecting the massacre against the Freedom Flotilla which carried 10.000 tonnes of humanitarian aid to Gaza.

Deck of an israeli gun boat.

The military maritime piracy and massacre operation carried out by Shayetet 13, a naval commando unit, in which at least 20 peace activists were murdered and over 50 were wounded, was a decision of the inner circles of power in israel and approved by the Israeli Cabinet headed by Benjamin Netanyahu, Ehud Barak and other war criminals. This Israeli massacre was a message addressed to Turkey and its new Iranian and Syrian allies. Anyone who knows to read between the lines and the history of Israel’s military leaders can understand that Israel has never distinguished between civilians and militants of the groups which are considered as enemies according to the non-logical standards of the zionists.

The Turkish Aid Ship, Marmara.

Israel committed a massacre against the Turkish ship “Marmara”, which carried humanitarian aid to the Palestinians besieged in the Gaza concentration camp. This massacre was well prepared by the Israeli cabinet, and some pro-Israel governments were informed with full details about the planned crime. Israel commissioned a special unit in the Marine Corps, deployed boats and helicopters patrolling the coast of Ashdod and Gaza and announced the waters off the coast of Gaza a closed military zone. They also announced via their propaganda organs of their intent to transfer the ships and the solidarity activists to the port of Ashdod before deporting them to their countries as illegal immigrants, and to arrest those who refused to identify themselves and sign a pledge not to return. They also prepared tents as detention units to jailing the activists and investigating them; the team of the interrogators which Israel choose to interrogate the peace activist was manned by people with experience as torturers and who had previously “worked” the Palestinian prisoners of the israeli gulag.

Israeli special forces helicopter.

The Israeli ships monitored the Freedom Flotilla from a distance of about 124 km away of the coast of Israel. According to the international movement, the passengers rushed to wear the safe jackets and raised the alert status as soon as the war ships were visible. The peace activists on board of the convoy stated that three Israeli ships spoke to the Turkish ship Captain over radio and warned him of the consequences of approaching the coast of Gaza which was declared as the a closed military area. They demanded from them to bring the humanitarian aid to the port of Ashdod, stressing that the Israeli navy would prevent the penetration a military closed area at any price, meaning that they would not shrink from murdering anybody.

Israeli gun boat, paid in full by German tax payers.

The ships were carrying 10.000 tons of medical supplies and building materials, timber, and 100 pre-built houses, for ten thousands of people who lost their homes due to the Israeli war crimes on Gaza early in the year of 2009. They also carried 500 electric vehicles for the use of disabled people, especially since the recent Israeli war crimes over 600 were left permanently disabled, with amputated legs.

The Israeli Arab Knesset MP Hanan Al-Zoubi had spoken through a loudspeaker in Hebrew with the Israeli military telling them to not attack ships carrying civilian peace activists and humanitarian aid. She added that during her appeal the Israeli soldiers fired live bullets at ships, which led to the wounding of civilians, among them the Arab-Israeli citizen Sheikh Raed Salah, who was shot and now in a critical conditions. She added: “the Israeli gunboats approached the “Caravan of freedom” and asked the captain of the ship to identify himself and the identity of the boat. The ships were in the International waters about 100 miles from Gaza. At this moment the Israeli helicopters attacked the ships from the sky.

Turkish sources and media revealed a document which shows that a death list had been prepared in advance by the Israelis, showing names and pictures of people on board of the ships to be murdered, who, according to Israel, were “involved in the International humanitarian aid for Gaza”. According to the Turkish sources, hundreds of Israeli soldiers stormed the blue Turkish ship “Marmara” flotilla and they had copies of the death list. The list included the names of civilians on the fleet who should be killed”. The document was apparently recovered after one of the Israeli soldiers lost it during the piracy act.

Regarding the complicity of other foreign states in this crime, it has transcended that the Germans Parliamentarians who were on-board, Annette Groth, Inge Höger and Norman Paech, had repeatedly asked the German Foreign Ministry for support and protection, but were rebuffed and instead they were warned to get off the flotilla because of unspecified “dangers”. The strange attitude of Cyprus, which neither allowed the ships to enter port, nor allowed a delegation of Parliamentarians to board the ships, can in retrospect only be explained with the prior knowledge and complicity in the crime if the Cypriot regime.

In the end, Israel has carried out a horrific bloody massacre, and the victims were all civilians.The questions remain: Did Israel achieve its goals with the massacre on the Freedom Flotilla ship? Did Turkey and the other countries on Israel secret hate list (who are listed in secret as “hostile enemies”) receive the Israeli message? Which was the Israeli message? The answer to the first question is a clear now, and the coming days will reveal the answer to the second question and whether Israel really considers Turkey an enemy in secret. Whatever the answers to these questions, Israel should admit that the political equation has changed in the region and Israel and its allies can no longer change the politics.

In the best interest of everybody, Israel should understand that everything they do is against them and that it would be better to desist from further criminal actions. Also in the best interest of everybody, all other nations must understand that Israel no longer has any legitimacy whatsoever as a state, and that its continued existence as a state is undesirable in the extreme to everybody outside of the tiny corrupt elites which are its support base overseas.

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Three German-built Israeli submarines equipped with nuclear cruise missiles are to be deployed in the Gulf near the Iranian coastline.

The first has been sent in response to Israeli fears that ballistic missiles developed by Iran, Syria and Hezbollah, a political and military organisation in Lebanon, could hit sites in Israel, including air bases and missile launchers.

The submarines of Flotilla 7 — Dolphin, Tekuma and Leviathan — have visited the Gulf before. But the decision has now been taken to ensure a permanent presence of at least one of the vessels.

The flotilla’s commander, identified only as “Colonel O”, told an Israeli newspaper: “We are an underwater assault force. We’re operating deep and far, very far, from our borders.”

Each of the submarines has a crew of 35 to 50, commanded by a colonel capable of launching a nuclear cruise missile.

The vessels can remain at sea for about 50 days and stay submerged up to 1,150ft below the surface for at least a week. Some of the cruise missiles are equipped with the most advanced nuclear warheads in the Israeli arsenal.

The deployment is designed to act as a deterrent, gather intelligence and potentially to land Mossad agents. “We’re a solid base for collecting sensitive information, as we can stay for a long time in one place,” said a flotilla officer.

The submarines could be used if Iran continues its programme to produce a nuclear bomb. “The 1,500km range of the submarines’ cruise missiles can reach any target in Iran,” said a navy officer.

Apparently responding to the Israeli activity, an Iranian admiral said: “Anyone who wishes to do an evil act in the Persian Gulf will receive a forceful response from us.”

Israel’s urgent need to deter the Iran-Syria-Hezbollah alliance was demonstrated last month. Ehud Barak, the defence minister, was said to have shown President Barack Obama classified satellite images of a convoy of ballistic missiles leaving Syria on the way to Hezbollah in Lebanon.

Binyamin Netanyahu, the prime minister, will emphasise the danger to Obama in Washington this week.

Tel Aviv, Israel’s business and defence centre, remains the most threatened city in the world, said one expert. “There are more missiles per square foot targeting Tel Aviv than any other city,” he said.

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Falling Off the $1 Trillion Cliff

We’re headed for an ugly cliff this Sunday. At 10 a.m. on May 30, all of those little cost of war counters that have been furiously spinning away on countless websites will cross the $1 trillion mark. No alarm will sound. No bell will ring. But, on the day before Memorial Day, the cost of the wars in cold, hard cash will follow the human cost of the Afghanistan war into a new order of magnitude.

Just how much is $1 trillion? Let’s put it into real-world terms. For that amount of money, you could do fantastic, life-changing things like:

• Provide jobs for 1 million music/arts teachers for a year, and
• Provide health care for 1 million children for one year.

And then, just for fun, you could also:

• Buy Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn.

If you did all three of these things, you’d still have $925 billion to spare.

These wars aren’t making us safer. They aren’t worth the cost, and we don’t need them. What people do need are jobs and help when they don’t have enough work or any work at all. But instead of leading on the jobs issue, they’re delaying and dissembling about the cost–while spending trillions on war! For example, the Senate just skipped town instead of staying in session long enough to pass an unemployment insurance extension. HuffPost Hill spells out what that means:

On June 1, several programs, including extended unemployment benefits, will expire. By the end of the week, 19,400 people will prematurely stop receiving checks, according to data from the Department of Labor. …By the end of the following week, the number of premature unemployment exhaustions will climb to 323,400. The week after that, 903,000. By the end of the month, 1.2 million.

HuffPo’s Ryan Grim and Arthur Delaney put that in even more context:

It will be the third time this year that lawmakers have allowed extended unemployment benefits to lapse, and the second time they’ve decided to leave town for recess fully knowing the lapse would cause panic and confusion among blameless layoff victims — not to mention what Katz calls a “huge” administrative burden on state workforce agencies.

This is a disaster. People are losing jobs or have already been unemployed long-term. And while Congress is “nickel-and-diming” people who are suffering, those cost of war counters keep spinning.

Help us get the word out: check out our new Facebook app and show us how you’d spend the $1 trillion wasted on war, and share it with your friends.

Then, if you haven’t yet, join Rethink Afghanistan on Facebook.

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