Are we going to war with Iran?
The Guardian | 18.10.2005 18:05
If the criminal Neo-Fascists have their way, the question should be "When are we ...?". They're attempting to give Iran "the Iraq treatment", and whether it succeeds will tell us a great deal about ourselves, not to mention what the future of this planet will look like.
Are we going to war with Iran?
Dan Plesch evaluates the evidence pointing towards a new conflict in the Middle East
Tuesday October 18, 2005
The Sunday Telegraph warned last weekend that the UN had a last chance to avert war with Iran and, at a meeting in London last week, the US ambassador to the UN, John Bolton, expressed his regret that any failure by the UN security council to deal with Iran would damage the security council's relevance, implying that the US would solve the problem on its own.
Only days before, the foreign secretary, Jack Straw, had dismissed military action as "inconceivable" while both the American president and his secretary of state had insisted war talk was not on the agenda. The UN's International Atomic Energy Agency inspectors have found that Iran has not, so far, broken its commitments under the nuclear non-proliferation treaty, although it has concealed activities before.
Article continues
It appears that the UK and US have decided to raise the stakes in the confrontation with Iran. The two countries persuaded the IAEA board - including India - to overrule its inspectors, declare Iran in breach of the non-proliferation treaty (NPT) and say that Iran's activities could be examined by the UN security council. Critics of this political process point to the fact that India itself has developed nuclear weapons and refused to join the NPT, but has still voted that Iran is acting illegitimately. On the Iranian side there is also much belligerent talk and pop music now proudly speaks of the nuclear contribution to Iranian security.
The timing of the recent allegations about Iranian intervention in Iraq also appears to be significant. Ever since the US refused to control Iraq's borders in April 2003, Iranian backed militia have dominated the south and, with under 10,000 soldiers amongst a population of millions, the British army had little option but to go along. No fuss was made until now. As for the bombings of British soldiers, some sources familiar with the US army engineers report that these supposedly sophisticated devices have been manufactured inside Iraq for many months and do not need to be imported.
But is the war talk for real or is it just sabre rattling? The conventional wisdom is that for both military and political reasons it would be impossible for Israel and the UK/US to attack and that, in any event, after the politically damaging Iraq war, neither Tony Blair nor George Bush would be able to gather political support for another attack.
But in Washington, Tel Aviv and Downing Street, if not the Foreign Office, Iran is regarded as a critical threat. The regime in Tehran continues to demand the destruction of the state of Israel and to support anti-Israeli forces. In what appeared to be coordinated releases of intelligence assessments, Israeli and US intelligence briefed earlier this year that, while Iran was years from a nuclear weapons capability, the technological point of no return was now imminent.
Shortly after the US elections, the vice-president, Dick Cheney, warned that Israel might attack Iran. Israel has the capability to attack Iranian targets with aircraft and long-range cruise missiles launched from submarines, while Iranian air defences are still mostly based on 25-year-old equipment purchased in the time of the Shah. A US attack might be portrayed as a more reasonable option than a renewed Israeli-Islamic confrontation.
The US army and marines are heavily committed in Iraq, but soldiers could be found if the Bush administration were intent on invasion. Donald Rumsfeld has been reorganising the army to increase front-line forces by a third. More importantly, naval and air force firepower has barely been used in Iraq. Just 120 B52 and stealth bombers could target 5,000 points in Iran with satellite-guided bombs in just one mission. It is for this reason that John Pike of globalsecurity.org thinks that a US attack could come with no warning at all. US action is often portrayed as impossible, not only because of the alleged lack of firepower, but because Iranian facilities are too hard to target. In a strategic logic not lost on Washington, the conclusion then is that if you cannot guarantee to destroy all the alleged weapons, then it must be necessary to remove the regime that wants them, and regime change has been the official policy in Washington for many years.
For political-military planners, precision strikes on a few facilities have drawbacks beyond leaving the regime intact. They allow the regime too many retaliatory options. Certainly, Iran's neighbours in Saudi Arabia and the Gulf who are worried about the growth of Iranian Shia influence in Iraq would want any attack to be decisive. From this logic grows the idea of destroying the political-military infrastructure of the clerical regime and perhaps encouraging separatist Kurdish and Azeri risings in the north-west. Some Washington planners have hopes of the Sunnis of oil-rich Khuzestan breaking away too.
A new war may not be as politically disastrous in Washington as many believe. Scott Ritter, the whistleblowing former UN weapons inspector, points out that few in the Democratic party will stand in the way of the destruction of those who conducted the infamous Tehran embassy siege that ended Jimmy Carter's presidency. Mr Ritter is one of the US analysts, along with Seymour Hersh, who have led the allegations that Washington is going to war with Iran.
For an embattled President Bush, combating the mullahs of Tehran may be a useful means of diverting attention from Iraq and reestablishing control of the Republican party prior to next year's congressional elections. From this perspective, even an escalating conflict would rally the nation behind a war president. As for the succession to President Bush, Bob Woodward has named Mr Cheney as a likely candidate, a step that would be easier in a wartime atmosphere. Mr Cheney would doubtless point out that US military spending, while huge compared to other nations, is at a far lower percentage of gross domestic product than during the Reagan years. With regard to Mr Blair's position, it would be helpful to know whether he has committed Britain to preventing an Iranian bomb "come what may" as he did with Iraq.
· Dan Plesch is the author of The Beauty Queen's Guide to World Peace.
Dan Plesch evaluates the evidence pointing towards a new conflict in the Middle East
Tuesday October 18, 2005
The Sunday Telegraph warned last weekend that the UN had a last chance to avert war with Iran and, at a meeting in London last week, the US ambassador to the UN, John Bolton, expressed his regret that any failure by the UN security council to deal with Iran would damage the security council's relevance, implying that the US would solve the problem on its own.
Only days before, the foreign secretary, Jack Straw, had dismissed military action as "inconceivable" while both the American president and his secretary of state had insisted war talk was not on the agenda. The UN's International Atomic Energy Agency inspectors have found that Iran has not, so far, broken its commitments under the nuclear non-proliferation treaty, although it has concealed activities before.
Article continues
It appears that the UK and US have decided to raise the stakes in the confrontation with Iran. The two countries persuaded the IAEA board - including India - to overrule its inspectors, declare Iran in breach of the non-proliferation treaty (NPT) and say that Iran's activities could be examined by the UN security council. Critics of this political process point to the fact that India itself has developed nuclear weapons and refused to join the NPT, but has still voted that Iran is acting illegitimately. On the Iranian side there is also much belligerent talk and pop music now proudly speaks of the nuclear contribution to Iranian security.
The timing of the recent allegations about Iranian intervention in Iraq also appears to be significant. Ever since the US refused to control Iraq's borders in April 2003, Iranian backed militia have dominated the south and, with under 10,000 soldiers amongst a population of millions, the British army had little option but to go along. No fuss was made until now. As for the bombings of British soldiers, some sources familiar with the US army engineers report that these supposedly sophisticated devices have been manufactured inside Iraq for many months and do not need to be imported.
But is the war talk for real or is it just sabre rattling? The conventional wisdom is that for both military and political reasons it would be impossible for Israel and the UK/US to attack and that, in any event, after the politically damaging Iraq war, neither Tony Blair nor George Bush would be able to gather political support for another attack.
But in Washington, Tel Aviv and Downing Street, if not the Foreign Office, Iran is regarded as a critical threat. The regime in Tehran continues to demand the destruction of the state of Israel and to support anti-Israeli forces. In what appeared to be coordinated releases of intelligence assessments, Israeli and US intelligence briefed earlier this year that, while Iran was years from a nuclear weapons capability, the technological point of no return was now imminent.
Shortly after the US elections, the vice-president, Dick Cheney, warned that Israel might attack Iran. Israel has the capability to attack Iranian targets with aircraft and long-range cruise missiles launched from submarines, while Iranian air defences are still mostly based on 25-year-old equipment purchased in the time of the Shah. A US attack might be portrayed as a more reasonable option than a renewed Israeli-Islamic confrontation.
The US army and marines are heavily committed in Iraq, but soldiers could be found if the Bush administration were intent on invasion. Donald Rumsfeld has been reorganising the army to increase front-line forces by a third. More importantly, naval and air force firepower has barely been used in Iraq. Just 120 B52 and stealth bombers could target 5,000 points in Iran with satellite-guided bombs in just one mission. It is for this reason that John Pike of globalsecurity.org thinks that a US attack could come with no warning at all. US action is often portrayed as impossible, not only because of the alleged lack of firepower, but because Iranian facilities are too hard to target. In a strategic logic not lost on Washington, the conclusion then is that if you cannot guarantee to destroy all the alleged weapons, then it must be necessary to remove the regime that wants them, and regime change has been the official policy in Washington for many years.
For political-military planners, precision strikes on a few facilities have drawbacks beyond leaving the regime intact. They allow the regime too many retaliatory options. Certainly, Iran's neighbours in Saudi Arabia and the Gulf who are worried about the growth of Iranian Shia influence in Iraq would want any attack to be decisive. From this logic grows the idea of destroying the political-military infrastructure of the clerical regime and perhaps encouraging separatist Kurdish and Azeri risings in the north-west. Some Washington planners have hopes of the Sunnis of oil-rich Khuzestan breaking away too.
A new war may not be as politically disastrous in Washington as many believe. Scott Ritter, the whistleblowing former UN weapons inspector, points out that few in the Democratic party will stand in the way of the destruction of those who conducted the infamous Tehran embassy siege that ended Jimmy Carter's presidency. Mr Ritter is one of the US analysts, along with Seymour Hersh, who have led the allegations that Washington is going to war with Iran.
For an embattled President Bush, combating the mullahs of Tehran may be a useful means of diverting attention from Iraq and reestablishing control of the Republican party prior to next year's congressional elections. From this perspective, even an escalating conflict would rally the nation behind a war president. As for the succession to President Bush, Bob Woodward has named Mr Cheney as a likely candidate, a step that would be easier in a wartime atmosphere. Mr Cheney would doubtless point out that US military spending, while huge compared to other nations, is at a far lower percentage of gross domestic product than during the Reagan years. With regard to Mr Blair's position, it would be helpful to know whether he has committed Britain to preventing an Iranian bomb "come what may" as he did with Iraq.
· Dan Plesch is the author of The Beauty Queen's Guide to World Peace.
The Guardian
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Iran says man arrested for twin bombings was trained by British agent
18.10.2005 20:57
Iran says man arrested for twin bombings was trained by British agent
Mon. 17 Oct 2005
www.iranfocus.com/modules/news/article.php?storyid=4031
Iran Focus
Tehran, Iran, Oct. 17 – An individual arrested in connection with Saturday’s twin bombings in the south-western city of Ahwaz has confessed to have received British training in Iraq to carry out the attacks, the Iranian Majlis (Parliament) deputy for the oil-rich city announced on Monday.
“The arrested individual is a deceived person who received the necessary training in Iraq”, Nasser Soudani told the Fars news agency, close to the office of Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
“Foreign agents, led by treacherous and criminal Britain, have trained teams in Iraq to create insecurity and an air of fright and terror in the province of Khuzestan”, Soudani said, referring to the ethnic Arab-dominated province whose capital is Ahwaz.
Saturday’s twin bombings in a central Ahwaz shopping centre left at least six people dead and over 100 injured.
Soudani said that two British intelligence agents arrested last month in the southern Iraqi city of Basra had ties to both the bombings on Saturday and a similar spate of bombings in the volatile city earlier in June.
British officials have said that the pair were MI5 agents working to uncover Iranian support for the insurgent attacks against British troops in southern Iraq.
Iranian officials and state-run press have been advertising the idea that Britain was behind Saturday’s bombings, a charge denied by the British embassy in Tehran. On Sunday, hard-line Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad told the state-run ISNA news agency that he suspected British involvement in the attacks. “We are very suspicious about the role of British forces in perpetrating such terrorist acts”, Ahmadinejad said.
“Our people are used to these kind of incidents, and our intelligence agents found the footprints of Britain in the same incidents before”, Ahmadinejad said, adding “We think the presence of British forces in southern Iraq and near the Iranian border is a factor behind insecurity for the Iraqi and Iranian people”.
A demonstration has been planned to take place this morning outside the British embassy in Tehran against London’s position regarding the Islamic Republic’s suspected nuclear weapons programme at the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).
Some analysts see a link between the spate of recent attacks on British forces in southern Iraq and the hardening anti-British voices in Tehran.
“Iranian rulers are clearly fuming over what they perceive as Tony Blair’s government coaxing the European Union towards a tougher position on Iran’s nuclear program”, said Simon Bailey of the London-based Gulf Intelligence Monitor. “They hope to isolate the British position within the EU by linking it to bombings in Ahwaz, but no one is buying this”.
Marki
A quick analysis of more advanced black propaganda
18.10.2005 22:35
for brevity, The Guardian is now TG...
First TG references a carefully planted story in The Telegraph, a paper so rabid in its right-wing, pro-zionist position, that its last owner, Conrad Black, is in serious trouble even in those countries that LOVE zionists. Bolton is quoted WITHOUT reference to the guy's horrific past, and known position on the value of the UN.
Next a comment about Blair's jewish warlord, Jack Straw. Straw is most famous for pretending to campaign against Pinochet as a student leader, and inviting Pinochet to the UK, and protecting him from prosecution for his Crimes against Humanity, as a minister. With this background, Straw is defined as a man who LIES for political gain. His public utterances are thus valueless (or indeed indicative that the opposite is true). However, ever speech that Straw makes on Iran is customed designed for organs like TG to disseminate.
The BLAH, BLAH about the UN is junk, since the UN is NOTHING more than a political convenience to 'fig leaf' the political ambitions and actions of China, the USSR (now Russia), and the US post WW2. Beyond these big 3, the key UN staff are mostly comprised of ultra-corrupt members of ruling families from the most obscure or irrelevant third world countries. All major UN bodies are controlled by the US, a situation that China, Russia and France are total happy with, because the trade off occurs in the freedom for these two big powers, and one small one do do what the hell they like in their own areas of control. US control of these UN bodies is of very limited use at a higher political level, because, just as with the EU, the REAL POWER is in the hands of the powerful member governments, AND NOT THE OFFICIALS.
QUOTE
On the Iranian side there is also much belligerent talk and pop music now proudly speaks of the nuclear contribution to Iranian security
UNQUOTE
The mask pulls back for a second, and the sickening racism of TG is clearly revealed. Darkies proud of their science and progress- just who in the hell do they think they are???
The next paragraph is VERY IMPORTANT. Iraq was invaded with the active assistance of Iran (go look up the 'Badr Brigades'), and so was Afghanistan. Iran is the single most important ally of the US in both occupations- today more than ever. Sistani- the 'Ayatollah' of Iraq, seems to spend more time in London than anywhere else, and is Blair's most important Iraqi stooge (not that Sistani sees himself that way- he thinks that he is projecting Iranian power into Iraq, which is true in the short term).
The Iranian government feels supremely confident because of its true role in events, and its closeness to Blair and his people. It is BLAIR that reassures the Iranians in private that the 'sabre-rattling' is for public consumption only. (see the First Gulf War, and the way in which Saddam was mislead by US diplomats prior to his invasion of Kuwait).
It is a key task of TG to ensure its readers have little idea how closely the regime in Iran works with Blair at the moment!!!
Now the article assumes that TG readers are smart enough to understand that Israel WILL NOT be attacking Iran. This is inevitable, given the other lines of propaganda that organs like the TG have been selling recently.
Next, you will see that TG refers to 'military planners' (not the drunken ideas from Bush's brain), and the fact that air strikes are NOT going to be the main method.
OF COURSE, WHAT *TG* DOES NOT REFER TO IS THE FACT THAT AFTER SEVERAL YEARS OF OCCUPATION, THE VAST MAJORITY OF AMERICAN MILITARY PERSONEL, FULL TIME AND RESERVISTS, HAVE BECOME COMBAT VETERANS DUE TO THEIR TIME IN IRAQ.
Many of you may NOT understand the significance of this. Various factors improve the fighting (not all is done on the ACTUAL front line) capabilities of any military force. Some are political or social, and difficult to manufacture if not already true. Combat experience is the SINGLE MOST IMPORTANT improvement that CAN be manufactured for any army, given the ability to create 'nursery-slope conflicts'.
Finally, we have TG's key conclusion, the MORONIC suggestion that starting WW3 with an ever growing Middle-Eastern war will be good for a president on his second, and last term. If it isn't good for Bush, TG has to explain how they expect him to be stupid enough to sign this project.
TG is not The Sun, or The Telegraph. TG targets the saddest section of the UK, the middle-class fair-trade dribblers, who will come out in their millions to protest war, but won't use a single one of their brain cells to perceive how the game is REALLY played, and how important it is that THEIR opinion is manipulated above and beyond ALL other groups.
This group, the TG audience, must be MADE to know that war with Iran is coming, must be MADE to think that Blair is insignificant compared to the 'fantastical' and 'oddball' NeoCons, must be MADE to think that Iraq was a disaster (for the US government, I mean), and must be MADE to think that war with Iran will be a disaster.
It is the job of TG to prevent people from 'joining the dots'.
Look at the last paragraph again...the careful lie about LOW US spending on its military budget (implying disaster for any major US military enterprise)...the ULTRA MORONIC suggestion of Cheney for (elected) president, which in UK terms would be the exact equivalent of saying that Mandelson's close proximity to Blair makes him the next LIKELY PM of the UK.
TG knows what its readership knows (isn't that self-evident). Thus TG knows exactly how guillible its readership is over laughable comments like Cheney for Prez.
TG wants you to think that Blair's chosen history is inevitable. It does this by projecting that history as the dull vicious stupid and careless actions of a right-wing US administration, playing directly to the predudices of its readers. If you have pre-conceived ideas, not matter how wrong or stupid, you won't be surprised when these ideas come to pass. Psy-Ops... PSYCHOLOGICAL OPERATIONS. Like hypnosis, it is not about the dull or stupid, but about the HIGHLY SUGGESTIBLE. Ron Hubbard built a religion on the back of this because who is likely to be more highly suggestible than those that like to read sci-fi and fantasy. He proved a point about middle-class 'well-read' 'well-educated' people. However, the theory had been recognised long before by those controlling the Mass Media. Humans that think highly of themselves ( a status thing) are most likely to be fooled, precisely because they are busy telling themselves that they are above being fooled.
You are going to be seeing a lot more propaganda like the Guardian piece above.
twilight