Friday 29th of March 2024

my friend's enemy .....

my friend's enemy .....

Iraq will not allow its territory to be used to attack Iran, Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Maliki has said during a visit to Tehran. 

He was speaking after meeting Iran's foreign minister and is later due to meet President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. 

The role of the US in Iraq is high on the agenda, with Tehran concerned about a treaty under discussion on the terms of the US military's future in Iraq. 

Iran's alleged backing for militants in Iraq is also likely to be discussed. 

'We will not allow Iraq to become a platform for harming the security of Iran and neighbours,' Iranian state-run media quoted Mr Maliki as saying after late-night talks with Manouchehr Mottaki. 

Iraqi PM Assures Iran On Security

Hopefully not...

Israel threatens to strike Iran's nuclear plans
By Colin Freeman

Israel has said a strike on Iran will be "unavoidable" if the Islamic regime continues to press ahead with alleged plans for building an atom-bomb.

The warning, from Israeli transport minister Shaul Mofaz, is the bluntest threat yet against Tehran from any member of prime minister Ehud Olmert's administration.

In an interview with the mass-circulation Yedioth Ahronoth newspaper on Friday, Mr Mofaz said that Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad - who has called for Israel to be wiped off the map - "would disappear before Israel does".

"If Iran continues with its programme for developing nuclear weapons, we will attack it. The sanctions are ineffective," said Mr Mofaz, referring to pressure by the United Nations security council to end Iran's disputed programme of uranium enrichment. "Attacking Iran, in order to stop its nuclear plans, will be unavoidable."

show of brawn

Independent.co.uk
Israel's dry run 'attack on Iran' with 100 jet fighters


By Donald Macintyre in Jerusalem
Saturday, 21 June 2008

Israel has mounted a major long-range military air exercise – involving more than 100 F15 and F16 fighters – as a rehearsal for a potential strike on Iran's nuclear facilities, American officials have indicated.

The fighters, along with refuelling tankers and helicopters able to rescue downed pilots, were mobilised during the first week of June over the eastern Mediterranean and Greece in an exercise monitored by foreign intelligence agencies.

The tankers and helicopters flew 900 miles from their bases in Israel – roughly the same distance as that between Israel and Iran's uranium enrichment plant at Natanz, the US officials said.

Israeli government officials declined to give details yesterday and referred inquiries to the statement by the Israeli military carried in yesterday's New York Times, which broke the story of the exercise. This said only that the Israeli Air Force "regularly trains for various missions in order to confront and meet the challenges posed by the threats facing Israel".

Two weeks ago Shaul Mofaz, Israeli Transport Minister and a former military chief of staff and defence minister, became the first senior figure to suggest publicly that Israel might launch its own strike on Iran.

Mr Mofaz, whose remarks were blamed for a record single-day rise of $11 a barrel in the price of oil, said in an interview: "If Iran continues with its programme for developing nuclear weapons we will attack." Mr Mofaz, speaking on 6 June, the day after the military exercise, added: "Attacking Iran, in order to stop its nuclear plans, will be unavoidable."

bomb-dee-boom...

CIA 'ignored Iran nuclear evidence'

A former CIA agent has alleged that the US intelligence agency ignored evidence Iran had suspended work on a nuclear bomb, a US newspaper has said.

The man's lawyer told the Washington Post that the ex-agent was told on "five occasions" to either falsify his reporting on weapons of mass destruction in the Near East, or "not to file his reports at all".

Details of the claims emerged after the ex-agent filed a motion in a US federal court last week asking the US government to declassify legal documents which he said described a deliberate suppression of findings on Iran's nuclear programmes that ran against the CIA's view.

unpredictable results

US admiral urges caution on Iran

America's top military officer has said opening up a new front in the Middle East through a strike on Iran would be "extremely stressful" for US forces.

Adm Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, was commenting on the likelihood of US or Israeli military action over Iran's nuclear programme.

Tensions have risen amid reports Israel could be planning a possible strike against Iran's nuclear facilities.

Iran denies its nuclear programme is anything other than peaceful.

The BBC's Justin Webb in Washington says it has been clear for some time that Adm Mullen does not want to attack Iran.

But his latest remarks suggest he is fighting hard behind the scenes for both the US and Israel to think carefully about the consequences of an attack before considering mounting it, he says.

cooking with Iranian gas

India 'close' to Iran pipeline deal

India will soon sign a deal on a pipeline that will transport gas from Iran, India's oil minister has said.

The $7.5bn project, which will bring gas from Iranian fields to India and Pakistan is expected to be signed "next month", Murli Deora said at a World Pertroleum Congress (WPC) event in Madrid on Thursday.

"The only issue is where to take the delivery, the delivery point," he said, adding the two options were on the India-Pakistan border or the Pakistan-Iran border.

"But these things are being sorted out at a very high level now, and I hope by next month things will be okay."

The deal was discussed at the sidelines of the WPC event, Deora said.

US pressure

Talks on the 2,600km pipeline began in 1994 but stalled amid tensions between India and Pakistan and differences over prices and transit fees.

But India and Pakistan said last month that they had come to a commercial agreement on the deal.

India has been under pressure from the United States not to do business with Iran.

Washington accuses Tehran of being a state sponsor of terrorism and of seeking to build nuclear weapons, claims Iran denies.

But New Delhi, which imports more than 70 per cent of its energy needs, has been looking around for fresh supplies of oil and gas.

Bush's proschemata belicosities

From Chris Floyd

Three Amigos: Bush, McCain, Obama Draw a Blood-Red Line on Iran

...

Bush indeed has a history. He has a history of launching military aggression. He has a history of launching military aggression on the basis of manufactured threats. He has a history of launching military aggression without the agreement of allies abroad. He has a history of launching military aggression against the advice of "military skeptics," whom he either "retires" or sidelines or ignores when he launches the aggression. He has a history of launching military aggression regardless of the strain it puts on the armed forces or the national treasury.

And he does not need "political support at home" to launch another act of military aggression, if by "political support" Powers means popular backing from the public. Bush is not facing re-election, and never will again. And he has already been given full support from the Democratic-controlled Congress in a series of measures which fully embrace Bush's bellicose stance toward Iran, as well as the specious casus belli he has advanced.

if and when...

Military action 'would destabilise Iraq'

By Patrick Cockburn in Baghdad
Saturday, 5 July 2008

Iraq will be plunged into a new war if Israel or the US launches an attack on Iran, Iraqi leaders have warned. Iranian retaliation would take place in Iraq, said Dr Mahmoud Othman, the influential Iraqi MP.

The Iraqi government's main allies are the US and Iran, whose governments openly detest each other. The Iraqi government may be militarily dependent on the 140,000 US troops in the country, but its Shia and Kurdish leaders have long been allied to Iran. Iraqi leaders have to continually perform a balancing act in which they seek to avoid alienating either country.

The balancing act has become more difficult for Iraq since George Bush successfully requested $400m (£200m) from Congress last year to fund covert operations aimed at destabilising the Iranian leadership. Some of these operations are likely to be launched from Iraqi territory with the help of Iranian militants opposed to Tehran. The most effective of these opponent groups is the Mujahedin-e-Khalq (MEK), which enraged the Iraqi government by staging a conference last month at Camp Ashraf, north-east of Baghdad. It demanded the closure of the Iranian embassy and the expulsion of all Iranian agents in Iraq. "It was a huge meeting" said Dr Othman. "All the tribes and political leaders who are against Iran, but are also against the Iraqi government, were there." He said the anti-Iranian meeting could not have taken place without US permission.

politcal porkies obligato

Robert Fisk's World: Why do we keep letting the politicians get away with lies?

Saturday, 30 August 2008

How on earth do they get away with it? Let's start with war between Hizbollah and Israel – past and future war, that is.

Back in 2006, Hizbollah captured two Israeli soldiers from their side of the Lebanese frontier and dragged them, mortally wounded, into Lebanon. The Israelis immediately launched a massive air bombardment against all of Lebanon, publicly declaring Beirut's democratically-elected and US-backed – but extremely weak – government must be held to account for what Hizbollah does. Taking the lives of more than 1,000 Lebanese, almost all civilians, Israel unleashed its air power against the entire infrastructure of the rebuilt Lebanon, smashing highways, viaducts, electric grids, factories, lighthouses, totally erasing dozens of villages and half-destroying hundreds more before bathing the south of the country in three million cluster bomblets.

After firing thousands of old but nonetheless lethal rockets into Israel – where the total death toll was less than 200, more than half of them soldiers – Sayed Hassan Nasrallah, Hizbollah's leader, told a lie: if he had known what Israel would do in revenge for the capture of two soldiers, he announced, he would never have agreed to Hizbollah's operation.

But now here comes Israel's environment minister, Gideon Ezra, with an equally huge whopper as he warns of an even bigger, more terrible war should Hizbollah attack Israel again. "During the (2006) war, we considered the possibility of attacking Lebanon's infrastructure but we never (sic) resorted to this option, because we thought at the time that not all the Lebanese were responsible for the Hizbollah attacks... At that time, we had Hizbollah in our sights and not the Lebanese state. But the Hizbollah do not live on the moon, and some (sic) infrastructure was hit." This was a brazen lie. Yet the Americans, who arm Israel, said nothing. The European Union said nothing. No journalistic column pointed out this absolute dishonesty.

see toon at top and read more at The Independent

Iran's friendship

September 19, 2008
Iran’s President Denies Hostility to Israelis
By NAZILA FATHI

TEHRAN — The Iranian president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, took the unusual step on Thursday of explaining that while he strongly opposed the state of Israel, his hostility did not extend to the Israeli people.

“We have no problem with people and nations,” he said. “Of course, we do not recognize a government or a nation for the Zionist regime.”

Mr. Ahmadinejad has long been seen as a threat to Israel, especially since he angered the West and Jews worldwide in 2005 when he repeated a slogan from the early days of the revolution, saying, “Israel should be wiped off the map.”

But on Thursday, he defended his vice president for tourism, Esfandiar Rahim Mashai, who created a storm of protest among legislators and senior clerics over the summer when he said that Iran was a friend of the Israeli people. Analysts viewed Mr. Ahmadinejad’s public support for Mr. Mashai’s remarks as a sign that Iran might be softening its position amid increasing pressure by the West over its nuclear program.

“It looks like the remarks are a policy,” said Saeed Leylaz, a political analyst in Tehran. “Despite the opposition, they were repeated, no apology was made and the president supported it today.”

In mid-July, Mr. Mashai was quoted as saying that Iran was “a friend of Israeli people.” He then repeated the comment in August, saying there was “no hostility toward the Israeli people.”

------------

see toon at top.

Israelis hostility towards Iran...

Israel asked US for green light to bomb nuclear sites in Iran
US president told Israeli prime minister he would not back attack on Iran, senior European diplomatic sources tell Guardian

    * Jonathan Steele
    * guardian.co.uk,
    * Thursday September 25 2008 19:02 BST

Israel gave serious thought this spring to launching a military strike on Iran's nuclear sites but was told by President George W Bush that he would not support it and did not expect to revise that view for the rest of his presidency, senior European diplomatic sources have told the Guardian.

The then prime minister, Ehud Olmert, used the occasion of Bush's trip to Israel for the 60th anniversary of the state's founding to raise the issue in a one-on-one meeting on May 14, the sources said. "He took it [the refusal of a US green light] as where they were at the moment, and that the US position was unlikely to change as long as Bush was in office", they added.

The sources work for a European head of government who met the Israeli leader some time after the Bush visit. Their talks were so sensitive that no note-takers attended, but the European leader subsequently divulged to his officials the highly sensitive contents of what Olmert had told him of Bush's position.

making glowing babies...

Iran's president has inaugurated the country's first nuclear fuel production plant, making what correspondents say was a defiant speech.

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said Iran was open to an offer of fresh talks with world powers, but only if they were based on "justice" and "respect".

Once operational, the new plant could produce sufficient plutonium for two nuclear weapons a year, analysts say.

Iran denies Western claims that it aims to build a nuclear bomb.

------------------

By our simple calculation extrapolated from this fear, France, Russian, the US would be able to make about 10,000 atomic bombs per year, altogether. Thus if having a nuclear power station in Iran is bad, there is no point pursuing nuke energy worldwide, is there? See toon at top...

the zionist warmongers .....

On Sept. 20, 2002, as the War Party was beating the drum for preventive war on Iraq, lest we wake up to "a mushroom cloud over an American city," The Wall Street Journal introduced an eminent voice to confirm that, yes, Saddam was driving straight for an atomic bomb.

"This is a dictator who is ... feverishly trying to acquire nuclear weapons," wrote Bibi Netanyahu, former prime minister of Israel.

"Saddam's nuclear program has changed. He no longer needs one large reactor to produce the deadly material necessary for atomic bombs. He can produce it in centrifuges the size of washing machines that can be hidden throughout the country - and Iraq is a very big country. Even free and unfettered inspections will not uncover these portable manufacturing sites of mass death. ...

"(I)f action is not taken now, we will all be threatened by a much greater peril ... (for) no gas mask and no vaccine can protect against nuclear weapons."

This was horse manure of a high grade, as high as that which Richard Perle deposited on the podium of the Foreign Policy Research Institute a year earlier, when he informed a stunned audience that Saddam "is busily at work on a nuclear weapon."

http://lewrockwell.com/buchanan/buchanan111.html

carpeting persia...

From Chris Floyd

Dear New York Times,
OK, OK, we get the picture: you want the United States to attack Iran. Why don't you go ahead and put a permanent banner across the top of the front page with the Cato-like adjuration: "Iran Must Be Destroyed!" Or maybe you could just tack it on to every single story: "Yankees Trade to Bolster Outfield; Iran Must Be Destroyed." "Mixed Results for Apple I-Pad; Iran Must Be Destroyed." "Markets Anxious Over Health Care Vote; Iran Must Be Destroyed." "New Bistro Revels in Bohemian Ambience; Iran Must Be Destroyed."

After all, hardly a week goes by now without some big juicy piece of Times scaremongery about Iran's nuclear program, usually with the same image of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in a lab coat looking blankly at metal tubes. The thrust of these stories is always the same: Iran is galloping toward nuclear weaponhood -- a "global threat" that "cannot be allowed to stand." Last week, it was Bill Broad, goosing the rubes with this little number, a supposed "science" piece: For Iran, Enriching Uranium Only Gets Easier.

For a moment, let's put aside the fact of Iran's persistent denials of a desire for nuclear weapons -- including the explicit, repeated statements of the theocracy's supreme religious and political leader that such weapons are anathema. And let's put aside the fact that despite the most extensive and intrusive inspection regime in the history of atomic energy development, there is no evidence whatsoever that Iran is not doing exactly what it says it is doing: developing non-weaponized nuclear power for peaceful purposes. These are just facts, after all -- and facts, as the sainted Ronald Reagan once told us, are stupid things.

But even if we were to grant the fevered fantasies of our masturbatory militarists the slightest tincture of credibility -- or even take their brazen propaganda as gospel truth -- they have never yet explained exactly why Iran's possession of nuclear weapons would be a greater "global threat" than, say, the bristling arsenals produced by the illegal, covert, crimeful programs in Israel, India and Pakistan. Nor are we told why an ill-gotten Iranian bomb would be worse than the vast "legal" nuclear arsenals of Russia, China, France, Great Britain and, of course, the only nation in the history of the world that has actually used nuclear weapons to slaughter hundreds of thousands of defenseless civilians, the United States of America.

------

see toon at top and read more at the empire burlesque.....

http://www.chris-floyd.com

Only kept afloat by a multi-standard media.

What else can be said in that above article?  It says it all - logic - thinking - and common sense.

Perhaps for the first time since Vietnam and Iraq - our people might yet again realise that we support terrorism.

If you lay down with dogs you'll get up with fleas.

Welcome to the flea circus.

God Bless Australia.  NE OUBLIE.

 

widening the front yard...

from Jonathan Marcus

BBC Diplomatic Correspondent

The passage of two Iranian naval vessels through the Suez Canal represents yet another clear sign of Tehran's widening strategic horizons. And for Israel and its main ally - the US - it sends multiple signals.

It underscores that if a significant number of Western warships can operate in the Gulf - what Iran sees as its maritime backyard, then Iran too can deploy vessels to the Mediterranean - what Nato countries would regard as their maritime backyard.

The Iranian ships are to be based at a Syrian port, thus solidifying and symbolising the close ties between Damascus and Tehran.

And coming at a time of significant turmoil in the region, the deployment illustrates that Iran is eager to secure its widening strategic interests. If this annoys the Israelis or the Americans, then so much the better.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-12533803