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IRAN STRIKE PLANS ESCALATING
 FAST"Israel’s special forces are...operating inside Iran in an
urgent attempt
to locate the country’s secret uranium enrichment sites... They are operating from a base in northern Iraq, guarded by Israeli soldiers with the approval of the Americans.". "The impeachment movement could quickly escalate at any time now in view of all the scandals, trials, investigations, and leaks. And if the Republicans get trounced in the mid-term election...impeachment could in fact explode as the dominant issue." MER - MiddleEast.Org - Washington - 5 March: The likelihood is President Bush has just used his very public visit to Indian, Pakistan and Afghanistan for very private preparations with these key regional countries for the coming attack on Iran. Other top U.S. and Israeli military and political officials have recently been in Turkey and other surrounding countries. U.S. and Israeli preparations to take down Iran are proceeding quickly now, the so-called 'referral to the U.N.' just another public relations sideshow, and regardless of all the contradictions and hypocrisy involved, especially now that the Americans have blessed Nuclear India and unilaterally destroyed a generation of anti-nuclear-proliferation efforts and laws. Washington is in a tizzy of the kind not really faced since the dangerous Nixon years. Sinking Nixon himself tried to regain his balance and public support with a trip to the Middle East, this after the U.S. put the world on 'nuclear alert' at the time of the 1973 war, and as we learned only years later with the President too drunk one critical night to take an urgent call from the British PM. Gross abuse of Presidential powers on top of repeated deceit on matters of the greatest consequence and history are the bottom line. Bush/Cheney credibility and poll numbers are now at an unheard of low point -- they have little more to lose on that front. Getting anything major through the Congress, even though both branches are held by the same Republican Party as the White House, is increasingly unlikely. Indeed, the impeachment movement could quickly escalate at any time now in view of all the scandals, trials, investigations, and leaks. And if the Republicans get trounced in the mid-term election, now just a few months away in November, impeachment could in fact quickly explode as the dominant issue. Worldwide the Americans are preparing friend and foe behind-the-scenes and manipulating public opinion out front. The notion that somehow this is just all bluster all meant to somehow press the Iranians to cry uncle and cease and desist becomes less credible by the day. This article about NATO and Israeli preparations is from The Sunday Times today in the UK. Notice the dateline: Washington and Tel Aviv. And remember the previous other MER articles in recent months focusing on the coming 'Iranian Strike' and the extreme pressures coming from the Israelis as well as the powerful Jewish neocons and the organizations like JINSA and AIPAC, which in fact begins its major annual Washington meeting today with top target Iran. Nato may help US airstrikes on Iran |
The Sunday Times - 5 March: WHEN Major-General Axel Tüttelmann, the head of Nato’s Airborne Early Warning and Control Force, showed off an Awacs early warning surveillance plane in Israel a fortnight ago, he caused a flurry of concern back at headquarters in Brussels. It was not his demonstration that raised eyebrows, but what he said about Nato’s possible involvement in any future military strike against Iran. “We would be the first to be called up if the Nato council decided we should be,” he said. Nato would prefer the emphasis to remain on the “if”, but Tüttelmann’s comments revealed that the military alliance could play a supporting role if America launches airstrikes against Iranian nuclear targets. The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) will tomorrow confirm Iran’s referral to the United Nations Security Council for possible sanctions. Iran insists it is developing peaceful nuclear energy, a claim regarded as bogus by America and Britain, France and Germany, which believe it wants to develop nuclear weapons. President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s remarks about wiping Israel “off the map” have added to fears. America and Israel have warned that they will not tolerate a nuclear-armed Iran. If negotiations fail, both countries have plans of last resort for airstrikes against Iran’s widely dispersed nuclear facilities. Porter Goss, the head of the CIA, visited Recep Erdogan, the prime minister of Turkey, a Nato country, late last year and asked for political, logistical and intelligence support in the event of airstrikes, according to western intelligence sources quoted in the German media. The news magazine Der Spiegel noted: “Washington appears to be dispatching high-level officials to prepare its allies for a possible attack.” Nato would be likely to operate air defences in Turkey, according to Dan Goure, a Pentagon adviser and vice-president of the Lexington Institute, a military think tank. A former senior Israeli defence official said he believed all Nato members had contingency plans. John Pike, director of the US military studies group Globalsecurity.org, said America had little to gain from Nato military help. “I think we are attempting to bring the alliance along politically so that when all diplomatic initiatives have been exhausted and we blow up their sites, we can say, ‘Look, we gave it our best shot’.” A senior British defence official said plans to attack Iran were pure speculation. “I don’t think anybody has got that far yet,” he said. “We’re all too distracted by Iraq.” Israel’s special forces are said to be operating inside Iran in an urgent attempt to locate the country’s secret uranium enrichment sites. “We found several suspected sites last year but there must be more,” an Israeli intelligence source said. They are operating from a base in northern Iraq, guarded by Israeli soldiers with the approval of the Americans, according to Israeli sources. The commander of Israel’s nuclear missile submarines warned Iran indirectly in a comment to an Israeli newspaper last week that “we are able to hit strategic targets in a foreign country”. The Israelis fear Iran may reach the “point of no return” — at which it has the capacity to enrich uranium to bomb-grade purity — in the next few months. The Americans are more interested in the point at which Iran is close to developing an actual bomb, thought to be at least three years away. Two Iranian opposition groups claimed this weekend that Iran had increased its production of Shahab 3 missiles, which have a range of 1,200 miles, sufficient to reach Israel. Diplomatic efforts to contain Iran are likely to proceed slowly, given Russian and Chinese opposition to punitive action. A Foreign Office official said although the IAEA would refer Iran to the security council, any sanctions would be a “strictly step-by-step process”. |