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IRAN, U.S., ISRAEL All THREATENING and PREPARING
MER - MiddleEast.Org - Washington - 12 February 2006:
As MER repeatedly predicted in past years, the international situation
is proceeding to one of the most dangerous times ever. The
mistakes, the lies, the hypocrisy, and all the killing and 'Shock and
Awe' of the past is catching up with all of us now. It's not
that Iran can seriously withstand a U.S./Israeli attack. Clearly
the American Empire has the firepower to destroy and prevail in the
short run. But the political, economic, and psychological forces
that may be unleashed by what the combined forces of the Neocons, the
Evangelicals, and the Zionists are more and more loudly threatening and
planning has serious people in Washington and beyond quivering and
fearing about the future big time now. This today from the Sunday Telegraph in London:
US prepares military blitz against Iran's nuclear sites By Philip Sherwell in Washington
Telegraph, UK, Sunday, 12/02/2006: Strategists
at the Pentagon are drawing up plans for devastating bombing raids
backed by submarine-launched ballistic missile attacks against Iran's
nuclear sites as a "last resort" to block Teheran's efforts to develop
an atomic bomb.
Central
Command and Strategic Command planners are identifying targets,
assessing weapon-loads and working on logistics for an operation, the
Sunday Telegraph has learnt.
They
are reporting to the office of Donald Rumsfeld, the defence secretary,
as America updates plans for action if the diplomatic offensive fails
to thwart the Islamic republic's nuclear bomb ambitions. Teheran claims
that it is developing only a civilian energy programme.
"This
is more than just the standard military contingency assessment," said a
senior Pentagon adviser. "This has taken on much greater urgency in
recent months."
The prospect of military action
could put Washington at odds with Britain which fears that an attack
would spark violence across the Middle East, reprisals in the West and
may not cripple Teheran's nuclear programme. But the steady flow of
disclosures about Iran's secret nuclear operations and the virulent
anti-Israeli threats of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has prompted the
fresh assessment of military options by Washington. The most likely
strategy would involve aerial bombardment by long-distance B2 bombers,
each armed with up to 40,000lb of precision weapons, including the
latest bunker-busting devices. They would fly from bases in Missouri
with mid-air refuelling.
The Bush administration
has recently announced plans to add conventional ballistic missiles to
the armoury of its nuclear Trident submarines within the next two
years. If ready in time, they would also form part of the plan of
attack.
Teheran has dispersed its nuclear plants,
burying some deep underground, and has recently increased its air
defences, but Pentagon planners believe that the raids could seriously
set back Iran's nuclear programme.
Iran
was last weekend reported to the United Nations Security Council by the
International Atomic Energy Agency for its banned nuclear activities.
Teheran reacted by announcing that it would resume full-scale uranium enrichment - producing material that could arm nuclear devices.
The
White House says that it wants a diplomatic solution to the stand-off,
but President George W Bush has refused to rule out military action and
reaffirmed last weekend that Iran's nuclear ambitions "will not be
tolerated".
Sen John McCain, the Republican
front-runner to succeed Mr Bush in 2008, has advocated military strikes
as a last resort. He said recently: "There is only only one thing worse
than the United States exercising a military option and that is a
nuclear-armed Iran."
Senator Joe Lieberman, a Democrat, has made the same case and Mr Bush is expected to be faced by the decision within two years.
By
then, Iran will be close to acquiring the knowledge to make an atomic
bomb, although the construction will take longer. The President will
not want to be seen as leaving the White House having allowed Iran's
ayatollahs to go atomic.
In Teheran yesterday,
crowds celebrating the anniversary of the 1979 Islamic revolution
chanted "Nuclear technology is our inalienable right" and cheered Mr
Ahmadinejad when he said that Iran may reconsider membership of the
nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.
He was defiant over possible economic sanctions.
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Pentagon plans to derail Iranian atomic bomb test
Philip Sherwell in Washington
Telegraph, UK, Sunday, 12/02/2006:
Iran
has drawn up designs for a deep underground tunnel with
remote-controlled heat and pressure sensors as part of what Western
intelligence officials believe are preparations for a secret atomic
test. The plans, which
American and British intelligence conclude are genuine after studying
them on a laptop computer smuggled out of Iran by a defector, appear to
be the latest evidence that Teheran is conducting a clandestine nuclear
weapons programme. | | The Natanz enrichment facility |
The
existence of the sophisticated sketches for a 400-metre long
subterranean test shaft was made public last week in The Washington
Post. The welter of documents and disclosures provides what Western
governments believe is an overwhelming circumstantial case that Iran is
seeking an "Islamic bomb". Washington and London
won International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) support last weekend for
Iran to be reported to the United Nations Security Council, after the
clerical regime resumed banned centrifuge research work at its Natanz
uranium-enrichment plant. Publicly, even American
hawks such as Vice-President Dick Cheney are backing the diplomatic
track to resolve the showdown over Iran's nuclear programme, which
Teheran claims is for peaceful energy purposes. But the Sunday
Telegraph has learnt from a senior Pentagon adviser that, as the crisis
deepened in recent months, military strategists have been updating
plans for "last-resort" military strikes on Iranian nuclear sites. The
raids would be ordered if President George W Bush is advised that they
are the only remaining option to prevent the Islamic republic from
acquiring atomic weapons. Jack Straw, the Foreign
Secretary, has consistently made clear that Britain opposes a military
solution. He fears that even the threat of bombing will sabotage any
hope of securing a united international diplomatic front against
Teheran - as well as again splitting the Labour Party. British
diplomats highlight the chaos that Iran, if attacked, could unleash in
the region through its Shia surrogates in Iraq, Hizbollah in Lebanon
and Hamas in the Palestinian territories. A
high-powered British diplomatic delegation visited Washington last week
to discuss tactics with Nicholas Burns, the State Department's number
three. They want to increase co-operation with Iranian exiles and make
better use of satellite television channels and the internet to spread
the message inside Iran that the West's opposition to Teheran's nuclear
programme is not an imperialist anti-Islamic plot, as the mullahs claim. Britain
is hoping that the threat of action by the Security Council, including
possible financial sanctions, will expose differences within the regime
on how far to push its game of nuclear brinkmanship. But there is a
growing belief in Washington that it will be impossible to win the
required Chinese and Russian support at the UN for any significant
measures that might inhibit Iran's nuclear ambitions. The
review of the Pentagon's contingency plans follows the stream of recent
discoveries of Iran's secret nuclear operations and the virulent
rhetoric of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad since he was elected last
year. Iran is still thought to be anywhere between three and 10 years
away from physically producing a nuclear weapon. But the West and
Israel believe the "point of no return" - when Iran's scientists
acquire the technological know-how and experience to make an atomic
bomb - could be reached much sooner. The Pentagon
adviser told the this newspaper: "We will have reached the point of no
return in the next couple of years. If diplomacy hasn't worked by then,
Iran will be a long way down the line to acquiring a nuclear weapon.
We're talking about choosing the least bad of a series of bad options.
President Bush will also be nearing the end of his term and have to
decide if he trusts this issue to another administration or wants to
use the B2s." In a separate interview, Richard Perle, a senior defence
official at the time of the Iraq war and who maintains close links to
the military, said that 12 B2 bombers, each carrying dozens of
precision-guided weapons, could deliver a serious blow to Iran's
nuclear ambitions. "If the President were faced
with the choice between Iran crossing the line to become a nuclear
weapon state and using force to destroy or significantly delay that
prospect, then I believe he would use force," Mr Perle said. "That
decision will be made at the last moment but there is certainly strong
contingency planning for that. I think the decision-making elite in
Washington would back Mr Bush if that was seen to be his only choice." Iran
has been preparing by strengthening air defence systems and building
tunnels intended to hide atomic material and facilities from a bombing
campaign, Jane's Defence Weekly reported this month. The
regime has spread its nuclear programme across several sites, some of
them underground, after drawing lessons from the 1981 Israeli air
strike that wiped out Saddam Hussein's efforts to produce an Iraqi
plutonium bomb at Osirak. But United States military strategists
believe that by targeting certain key "bottleneck" facilities -
probably the Natanz uranium-enrichment site, the Isfahan conversion
plant and the Arak heavy water reactor - they could hobble the whole
programme for years. "There may well be secret
sites out there but a nuclear programme is not that easy to hide," said
Dan Goure, a Pentagon consultant and vice-president of the Lexington
Institute defence think-tank. "You need large sites for uranium
enrichment and manufacturing plutonium. It's not like a biological or
chemical warfare programme: you cannot conduct research in a Petri
dish." Mr Perle and Dr Goure believe that America
is better equipped to carry out the attacks than Israel, whose F15s and
F16s would encounter refuelling problems. In a further signal that if
strikes were required the US would prefer to carry them out, Mr Bush
said last week that America would "rise to Israel's defence" if Iran
threatened it.
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February 2006
World War III? (February 28, 2006)
“The threat from the White House is to go in anyway... I see the possibility if we do that of really setting forth World War III.” - Walter Cronkite, 27 Oct 2002.
Huge Death Toll in Iraq In Week - Equivalent to Five 9/11s (February 27, 2006)
As usual the information coming from the Pentagon and State Department, and from the many who work for them either overtly and covertly, is again unreliable and deceptive, off by an order of magnitude in fact. After independent investigations it appears the Americans, and their associated regime in Baghdad, tremendously downplayed the actual death and destruction toll in the last week in Iraq since the bombing of the Golden Dome. Indeed, adjusting for population size, it is as if in just the past week alone Iraq has suffered deaths amounting to five 9/11s!
Palestine Articles - 26 Feb (February 26, 2006)
Palestine Articles - 26 Feb
ISRAEL ARTICLES on 26 Feb (February 26, 2006)
ISRAEL ARTICLES on 26 Feb
Who really bombed the Golden Dome is in much doubt (February 26, 2006)
Just who really bombed the Golden Dome in Samarra a few days ago? Just who really benefits the most from this historic act that may have reshuffled the political geostrategic deck in Iraq and in the region? There's a long history now in the Middle East of covert operations blamed on others in order to justify actions the powers that be are determined to pursue.
From the "PALESTINIAN TERRITORIES"....to the Jewish Territories of Oscars Hollywood (February 25, 2006)
PARADISE NOW: "The nomination probably won't be rescinded, but with 70 being the median academy voter age, and Judaism the predominant religion, it is something of a surprise, even to insiders, that the film has been nominated at all, let alone that it is a strong prospect to win."
Washington Scene: JUNKETS TO ISRAEL TO CONTINUE AS BEFORE (February 25, 2006)
"U.S. lawmakers took 163 privately funded trips to Israel; more than one in five current members of Congress have traveled there. That compares with 139 to Mexico, the next most popular foreign destination, 97 to Italy and 87 to Germany... Israel has been the largest recipient of U.S. foreign aid since World War II."
Jewish Lobby Enters Arab World - Ariel Sharon's 'Dear Personal Friend' Seduces Qatar (February 23, 2006)
This appears to be the first time such an Israeli-connected 'think tank' operation is formally setting up shop in an Arab country, however thinly masked as 'The Brookings Institution'. Much more background follows in the MER FlashBack article titled "ISRAELI Influence-Peddling - ON TOP OF ALL THE SPYING AND LOBBYING."
Today at 12pm noon sharp (Washington DC time) join in at MER CHAT - MiddleEast.org/chat (February 22, 2006)
World Council of Churches Vents Angry (February 20, 2006)
A coalition of American churches sharply denounced the U.S.-led war in Iraq on Saturday, accusing Washington of "raining down terror" and apologizing to other nations for "the violence, degradation and poverty our nation has sown."
The statement, issued at the largest gathering of Christian churches in nearly a decade, also warned the United States was pushing the world toward environmental catastrophe with a "culture of consumption" and its refusal to back international accords seeking to battle global warming.
DIVESTMENT AHEAD as 'JEWS ONLY' APARTHEID EXPANDS (February 19, 2006)
Though the church-based 'divestment campaign' still remains very hesitant, embryonic and unlikely to 'catch on' and be 'sustained' as would be required for it to have a serious chance of seriously impacting, the debate is at least underway in limited forums... Meanwhile Israel's barriers, walls, fences, prisons, confuscations, checkpoints, and settlements are all still expanding in a worse than Apartheid every was way.
GEORGETOWN UNIVERSITY SEVERELY RESTRICTS MEDIA (February 18, 2006)
The event was the 5th annual Palestine Solidarity Movement Conference -- no well-known speakers and certainly no one who is use to having any serious security. "I saved these two days to be at the conference" the reporter insisted before declaring in obvious frustration that she was going to have a weekend vaction instead and left in a huff.
CRISIS IRAN, CRISIS WORLD (February 17, 2006)
The crisis with Iran is far more than a confrontation over production of a few nuclear weapons in the years ahead. The crisis with Iran, and indirectly with the growing forces of Arab nationalism and Muslim assertiveness, as well as with the growing counter-U.S. superpower reach of China and to a lesser extent Russia, is about nothing less than world domination.
Iran Articles - 16 Feb (February 16, 2006)
Sharon The War Criminal - FlashBack to 2001 and BBC 'Accused' (February 15, 2006)
"I think there is no doubt in my mind that he (Sharon) is indictable (as a war criminal) for the kind of knowledge that he either had, or should have had." - Professor Richard Falk, Princeton University
ISRAEL Articles on 14 Feb (February 14, 2006)
Articles with keyword PALESTINE (February 14, 2006)
Articles with keyword PALESTINE
Valentine's Day Plot To Discredit, Destroy Hamas (February 14, 2006)
Remember it for its day of publication as the Valentine's Day Plot to discredit and destroy Hamas. And if this is what makes it to the pages of the New York Times just imagine what the Americans, the Israelis, and their European allies are really doing (and have already done) behind-the-scenes with all the agents and money not to mention all the bugging, killing, and scheming they are so capable of bringing to bear. But it all comes at a historic cost, and so much the Americans and Israelis do comes back as unexpected forms of blowback even worse for them than what they tried to destroy before.
TARGET IRAN - Preparations By All (February 13, 2006)
WAR these days is far more than military attack. With the Americans there is first of all a tremendous technological side involving high-tech spying, covert ops, assassinations, internal upheavals, economic punishments, and regime change attempts. In addition war preparations for the Americans in this modern-day interconnected world involve massive propaganda campaigns designed to manipulate public opinion; and this in turn includes everything from planting information and stories to twisting journalists and publications to 'report' in ways that suit the needs of the war planners.
TARGET IRAN! (February 12, 2006)
As MER repeatedly predicted in past years, the international situation is proceeding to one of the most dangerous times ever. The mistakes, the lies, the hypocrisy, and all the killing and 'Shock and Awe' of the past is catching up with all of us now. It's not that Iran can seriously withstand a U.S./Israeli attack. Clearly the American Empire has the firepower to destroy and prevail in the short run. But the political, economic, and psychological forces that may be unleashed by what the combined forces of the Neocons, the Evangelicals, and the Zionists are more and more loudly threatening and planning has serious people in Washington and beyond quivering and fearing about the future big time now. This today from the Sunday Telegraph in London:
Princeton University Speech by Mark Bruzonsky (February 11, 2006)
This speech was given by the publisher of MiddleEast.Org at a forum at Princeton University on 7 February 2006. The other persons on the forum were Anne-Marie Slaughter, Dean of the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs and Professor Cornell West.
The Mother of all Hoaxes - And the Disastrous Aftermath (February 6, 2006)
Yesterday was the third Colin Powell 'Anniversary' of what we have termed 'The Mother of all Hoaxes'. Three years ago he gave what is now one of modern history's most infamous speeches quite literally to the world. What happened that day was a great historic 'haox' perpetrated ' on the American people, the international community and the United Nations Security Council', i.e., the entire world. Yesterday MER republished a FlashBack article calling for the resignation of both Colin Powell and George Tenet -- we did so two long years ago now when it was relevant, timely, necessary, and difficult to do. Remember though, the actual perpertrators responsible for this horrendous hoax and the disastrous consequences which have followed are the President and the Vice-President of the United States.
Colin Powell and The Mother of All Hoaxes (February 5, 2006)
Last Friday evening Colin Powell's Chief of Staff in the State Department at the time Powell gave his historic speech at the U.N. Security Council came clean. It was that much-heralded speech of course that prepared the way for the launching of the disastrous Iraqi invasion/occupation. Now, Friday evening on the NOW! program on Public Broadcasting, Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson, who was right there helping prepare Powell's every move, damns it all as a 'historic hoax'.
HAMAS Taking Center Stage (February 4, 2006)
Now it's not from Moscow with love...but it is at times at least from Moscow with more realism and insight... Meanwhile it is the same old game in Washington -- politically correct persons associated with the Israeli/Jewish lobby and kosherized persons of Arab background are the only persons given the floor at the numerous forums popping up to speak about the Hamas few of them actually know much about and all of them proclaim their disdain for.
Hamas Speaks (February 3, 2006)
Tuesday this week, the day the American President gave his State of the Union speech in the evening, the resistance and liberation movement known as Hamas presented its view in the morning... Back in 1996, when MER had a weekly TV program, by special arrangement MER extensively interviewed Moussa Abu Marzook -- today the #2 official in Hamas -- in the federal detention center near Chinatown in New York about Hamas and the 'peace process'. We encourage news media organizations to get in touch with MER if interested in that lengthy multi-hour interview full of insights into how the Hamas victory was carefully orchestrated over the past decade. MER@MiddleEast.Org. 202 362-5266.
MER at Princeton University Next Tuesday 7 February (February 2, 2006)
MER Publisher Mark Bruzonsky will be speaking on a Panel at Princeton Universty next Tuesday with the Dean of the Woodrow Wilson School and Professor Cornell West on "Intellectuals and the Institution:
What's in the Service of the Nation?"
The 9/11 Imbroglio (February 1, 2006)
According to the academic organizer of these scholars, Professor Jim Fetzer of the University of Minnesota in Duluth, it was because of a meeting in Washington with MER Publisher Mark Bruzonsky last week that a major revision was made in their public statement a few days ago. The new aim, as MER had advocated in a June 2005 editorial, is to call on major media organizations around the world to form a unique international coalition to fully investigate 9/11 and to report what really happened and what is in legitimate controversy and doubt.
Drop Principles Now or Drop Dead Soon! (February 1, 2006)
Israel's notoriously powerfuly Lobby on Capitol Hill is wasting no time trying to lay down the law of money and power to Hamas. But this time it's probably too little, too late, with insufficient understand of or leverage on the now Hamas-led "Palestinian Authority"... And when the Israelis and Americans try to crush the new PA., as now seems all but inevitable sooner or later, probably after more attempts to foment a Palestinian Civil War which are likely to continue to fail, the political and geostrategic price may prove greater than the Americans will be willing to suffer upon themselves.
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