Ahmadinejad starting WW3

[eaglethebeagle]

Look I am not into predicting things but as many already know shit is starting to hit the fan.

What do you think? Iran is about to get the world into a big power play.


I expect more shit to happen if not its happening right now and we will shortly have it reported its going to be daily shit until the final straw.

Peace out my brothers.

[SgtJim]

i hope not :)

btw, 3 (or 2?) carriers still on going to the gulf........as i know

[eaglethebeagle]

well thats if the USS John Stennis is still leaving back to home port which right now I would say not happening. Fucking ahmedinjad wants to start this he is feeling the pressure of his people ready to rise up and take him out like in Lybia and Syria is still trying to do.

[eaglethebeagle]

im hearing there are more than U.S. carriers heading to the Arabian Sea now.

[eaglethebeagle]

http://news.yahoo.com/u-military-moves-carriers-denies-iran-023925806.html






WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. military said on Wednesday that a new aircraft carrier strike group had arrived in the Arabian Sea and that another was on its way to the region, but denied any link to recent tensions with Iran and portrayed the movements as routine.
The shift in the powerful U.S. naval assets comes at a moment of heightened tensions with Iran, which has threatened to close the Strait of Hormuz - the world's most important oil shipping lane - if U.S. and EU sanctions over its nuclear program cut off its oil exports.
The U.S. military has said it will halt any blockade of the strategic strait and the top U.S. naval officer acknowledged on Tuesday that preparing for a potential conflict there was something that "keeps me awake at night."

Still, the Pentagon denied any direct link between recent tensions and the movement of aircraft carriers.
"I don't want to leave anybody with the impression that we're somehow (speeding) two carriers over there because we're concerned about what happened, you know, today in Iran. It's just not the case," said Captain John Kirby, a Pentagon spokesman.
Military officials said the USS Carl Vinson arrived in the Arabian Sea on Monday to replace the outgoing USS John C. Stennis carrier strike group, which Iran last week warned not to return to the Gulf after departing in late December.

The Stennis was due to return to its home port in San Diego but the Pentagon did not say when that would happen.
Another carrier strike group, led by the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln, concluded a port visit to Thailand on Tuesday and was now in the Indian Ocean. It is on track to join the Vinson in the Central Command area of operations, which begins in the neighboring Arabian Sea.
It is "not unusual to have two carriers in the CENTCOM theater at the same time," a second U.S. military official said.
Another official said there had been two carriers in the Gulf region at least twice in the past 18 months.

Tensions between Iran and the United States ratcheted up again in the past week. Iran started an underground uranium enrichment plant and sentenced an American to death for spying. Washington and Europe have stepped up efforts to cripple Iran's oil exports, and Tehran on Wednesday blamed U.S. and Israeli agents for killing an Iranian nuclear scientist.
Israel declined to comment on the killing and the United States denied any U.S. role and condemned the attack, in which the scientist was blown up by a bomb attached to his car by a motorbike hitman.

Iran had warned the Stennis not to re-enter the Gulf and it is unclear when another U.S. carrier will enter Gulf waters. The Pentagon has suggested only that, sooner or later, a carrier will pass through the Strait of Hormuz into the Gulf.
"We routinely operate our ships - all of our ships, all of our types of ships - inside the Arabian Gulf and that will continue," Kirby said.
(Additional reporting by Reed Stevenson)


Screw it i just copy pasted the text so if they erase the page it is still here to read.

[jamieooh]

link didn't work eagle

[eaglethebeagle]

fixed that previous link sorry...I fudged it up trying to tag a thumbs up icon on it.

here is another article on this Iran poop storm that in my opinion is very close to being the the real deal. We are sending fleets to the Arabian Sea and Ahmadinejad is a fudging psychopath.

WASHINGTON — The Obama administration is relying on a secret channel of communication to warn Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, that closing the Strait of Hormuz is a “red line� that would provoke an American response, according to United States government officials.
The officials declined to describe the unusual contact between the two governments, and whether there had been an Iranian reply. Senior Obama administration officials have said publicly that Iran would cross a “red line� if it made good on recent threats to close the strait, a strategically crucial waterway connecting the Persian Gulf to the Gulf of Oman, where 16 million barrels of oil — about a fifth of the world’s daily oil trade — flow through every day.
Gen. Martin E. Dempsey, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said this past weekend that the United States would “take action and reopen the strait,� which could be accomplished only by military means, including minesweepers, warship escorts and potentially airstrikes. Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta told troops in Texas on Thursday that the United States would not tolerate Iran’s closing of the strait.
The secret communications channel was chosen to underscore privately to Iran the depth of American concern about rising tensions over the strait, where American naval officials say their biggest fear is that an overzealous Revolutionary Guards naval captain could do something provocative on his own, setting off a larger crisis.
“If you ask me what keeps me awake at night, it’s the Strait of Hormuz and the business going on in the Arabian Gulf,� Adm. Jonathan W. Greenert, the chief of naval operations, said in Washington this week.
Administration officials and Iran analysts said they continued to believe that Iran’s threats to close the strait, coming amid deep frictions over Iran’s nuclear program and possible sanctions, were bluster and an attempt to drive up the price of oil. Blocking the route for the vast majority of Iran’s petroleum exports — and for its food and consumer imports — would amount to economic suicide.





“They would basically be taking a vow of poverty with themselves,� said Dennis B. Ross, who until last month was one of President Obama’s most influential advisers on Iran. “I don’t think they’re in such a mood of self sacrifice.�
But Pentagon officials, who plan for every contingency, said that, however unlikely, Iran does have the military capability to close the strait. Although Iran’s naval forces are hardly a match for those of the United States, for two decades Iran has been investing in the weaponry of “asymmetric warfare� — mines, fleets of heavily armed speed boats and antiship cruise missiles hidden along Iran’s 1,000 miles of Persian Gulf coastline — which have become a threat to the world’s most powerful navy.
“The simple answer is yes, they can block it,� General Dempsey said on CBS on Sunday.
Estimates by naval analysts of how long it could take for American forces to reopen the strait range from a day to several months, but the consensus is that while Iran’s naval forces could inflict damage, they would ultimately be destroyed.

“Their surface fleet would be at the bottom of the ocean, but they could score a lucky hit,� said Michael Connell, the director of the Iranian studies program at the Center for Naval Analysis, a research organization for the Navy and Marine Corps. “An antiship cruise missile could disable a carrier.�
Iran has two navies: one, its traditional state navy of aging big ships dating from the era of the shah, and the other a politically favored Revolutionary Guards navy of fast-attack speedboats and guerrilla tactics. Senior American naval officers say that the Iranian state navy is for the most part professional and predictable, but that the Revolutionary Guards navy, which has responsibility for the operations in the Persian Gulf, is not.
“You get cowboys who do their own thing,� Mr. Connell said. One officer with experience at the Navy’s Fifth Fleet headquarters in Bahrain said the Revolutionary Guards navy shows “a high probability for buffoonery.�
The Revolutionary Guards navy has been steadily building and buying faster missile boats and stockpiling what American experts say are at least 2,000 naval mines. Many are relatively primitive, about the size of an American garbage can, and easy to slip into the water. “Iran’s credible mining threat can be an effective deterrent to potential enemy forces,� an unclassified report by the Office of Naval Intelligence, the American Navy’s intelligence arm, concluded in 2009. “The Strait of Hormuz is a narrow chokepoint that could be mined effectively in a relatively short amount of time� — with disruptions within hours and more serious blockage in place over days.

Although the United States would respond with minesweepers, analysts said American naval forces might encounter layers of simultaneous attacks. The Iranians could launch antiship missiles from their coastline, islands or oil platforms and at the same time surround any American ship with missile-armed speedboats. “The immediate issue is to get the mines,� Mr. Connell said. “But they’re going to have to deal with the antiship cruise missiles and you’ll have small boats swarming and it’s all going to be happening at the same time.�

The United States could take out the antiship missile launchers with strikes from fighter jets or missiles, but analysts said it could take time to do so because the launchers on shore are mobile and often camouflaged.
The tight squeeze of the strait, which is less than 35 miles wide at its narrowest point, offers little maneuvering room for warships. “It would be like a knife fight in a phone booth,� said a senior Navy officer. The strait’s shipping lanes are even narrower: both the inbound and outbound lanes are two miles wide, with only a two-mile-wide stretch separating them.
American officials indicated that the recent and delicate messages expressing concern about the Strait of Hormuz were conveyed through a channel other than the Swiss government, which the United States has often used as a neutral party to relay diplomatic messages to Tehran.

:USA:



The United States and Iran have a history of conflicts in the strait — most recently in January 2008, when the Bush administration chastised Iran for a “provocative act� after five armed Iranian speedboats approached three American warships in international waters, then maneuvered aggressively as radio threats were issued that the American ships would be blown up. The confrontation ended without shots fired or injuries.
In 2002, a classified, $250 million Defense Department war game concluded that small, agile speedboats swarming a naval convoy could inflict devastating damage on more powerful warships. In that game, the Blue Team navy, representing the United States, lost 16 major warships — an aircraft carrier, cruisers and amphibious vessels — when they were sunk to the bottom of the Persian Gulf in an attack that included swarming tactics by enemy speedboats.
“The sheer numbers involved overloaded their ability, both mentally and electronically, to handle the attack,� Lt. Gen. Paul K. Van Riper, a retired Marine Corps officer who served in the war game as commander of a Red Team force representing an unnamed Persian Gulf military, said in 2008, when the results of the war game were assessed again in light of Iranian naval actions at the time. “The whole thing was over in 5, maybe 10 minutes.�
This story, "US sends top Iranian leader a warning on Strait threat," originally appeared in The New York Times.

[eaglethebeagle]

Prime Minister David Cameron warned that the "whole world" would take action if Iran closed the strategic Strait of Hormuz, in a television interview during a visit to Saudi Arabia on Friday.
"It is in the interests of the whole world that those straits are open and, if there was any threat to close them, I am sure the whole world would come together and make sure they stayed open," Cameron told Al-Arabiya television.
Cameron's first visit as premier to OPEC kingpin Saudi Arabia comes as Western governments move to step up sanctions over Iran's controversial nuclear programme, threatening an embargo on its oil exports.
The move has drawn an angry response from Tehran which has in turn threatened to shut the strait -- a chokepoint for a fifth of the world's sea-borne oil exports -- if it is attacked or heavy sanctions are imposed.
The New York Times reported late on Thursday that the United States has used a secret channel to warn Iran's leaders against closing the Strait of Hormuz, saying that doing so would provoke a US response.
Cameron also called for a UN Security Council resolution on Syria, where the United Nations estimates an uprising has left more than 5,000 dead since March in a crackdown on protests against President Bashar al-Assad's regime.
"We stand ready as a permanent member of the UN Security Council to take a fresh resolution to that Council, based on what the Arab League is doing and saying," the prime minister said.
He said any party which vetoed, in apparent reference to Russia, would have to "try to explain why they are willing to stand by and watch such appalling bloodshed by someone who has turned into such an appalling dictator."
UN chief Ban Ki-moon, who was in Lebanon on Friday, made a similar appeal, urging the international community to stand together to address the crisis in Syria.
But Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Gennady Gatilov has rejected Western-proposed amendments to a draft Security Council resolution that Moscow circulated last month also calling for a halt to violence by the opposition.
Western leaders have repeatedly called for the embattled Assad to step down but Moscow has steadfastly stuck by its ally Damascus.
During talks in the Saudi capital, Cameron and King Abdullah "discussed the importance of the UK-Saudi bilateral relationship and agreed to strengthen cooperation in a range of areas," Cameron's office said in a statement.
They "also discussed recent developments in the region, in particular their shared concerns about the situation in Syria, Iran and Yemen," it added.
Yemen has been rocked by a year of unrest in which hundreds have been killed amid fears of a growing Al-Qaeda influence across its southern and eastern provinces due to a weakening central government.
"The prime minister also raised our concerns about Somalia and the problems of conflict, piracy and terrorism which threaten Somalis and the wider international community," Cameron's office said.
"He briefed the king on the aims of next month's London Conference on Somalia, in particular to catalyse a coordinated international effort focused on practical measures to help Somalis rebuild their country."
Somalia has been without an effective central government since president Siad Barre was ousted in 1991 as violence, piracy and famine tear the African country.
Saudi state news agency SPA reported earlier that the two leaders discussed "regional and international developments as well as the various means of strengthening cooperation between both countries," without elaborating.
The meeting was attended by top Saudi officials.
Britain has been seeking to strengthen ties with oil-rich Saudi Arabia, a major market for Western arms deals, and boost exports to its largest Middle East trading partner.
Annual bilateral trade is worth 15 billion pounds, while Saudi investments in Britain amount to more than 62 billion pounds.



To me the difference in ahmedinajad actually taking action and trying to close the strait and anytime before this is the arab spring and the fall of some very long standing dictators. He has to feel his time is near an end and this action will put him on the world stage for whatever he thinks he can gain or just to go down in a blaze of glory like a big fuck you to the world.

[eaglethebeagle]

Iranian Navy speed boats harassed US naval vessels in two recent incidents in the Strait of Hormuz, a senior US defense official said, confirming a CNN report.
The first incident occurred as the USS New Orleans, an amphibious transport ship, was sailing last week through the Strait of Hormuz into the Persian Gulf.
Three Iranian Navy speed boats rapidly approached within 500 yards of the US ship, according to US officials cited by CNN.
The second incident involved a US Coast Guard cutter off the Kuwaiti coast, similarly approached by an Iranian speedboat.
Sailors aboard the cutter USCGC Adak reported seeing Iranians aboard the speed boat brandishing AK-47 assault rifles and a heavy machine gun, CNN said.
"I can confirm there was some harassment," a senior official told AFP.
US-Iranian tensions have worsened in recent weeks amid Western moves to tighten sanctions on the Iranian regime over its nuclear program and a series of incidents.
These include the assassination of an Iranian nuclear scientist, a death sentenced handed down against an American-Iranian former Marine accused of spying for the CIA, and the Iran's capture last month of what it said was a CIA drone.
Iran has responded to western threats of an oil embargo by warning it will close the Strait of Hormuz -- a chokepoint for 20 percent of the world's oil at the entrance to the Gulf -- in retaliation.


They are buffoons and stupid enough to start this shit.

[eaglethebeagle]

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Barack Obama entered the White House in 2009 carrying an olive branch for Iran, determined to show the world that Washington would not play the villain in a relationship marked by blood and bitterness over three decades.
Obama chose his words with excruciating care in reaching out to Iran publicly and privately, including through secret letters to Iran's Supreme Leader. The new president emphasized he wanted a "new beginning" with a country that called the United States "the Great Satan" and was branded by his predecessor as part of an "axis of evil."
Obama intended to go the extra mile on engagement, his aides said, so if the gambit failed, allies and adversaries alike could not point the finger at the United States as the "bad guy." Instead, they would rally behind the effort to pressure Iran.
Three years later, tensions over Iran's nuclear program have escalated to their highest level in years. Tehran is threatening to block the Strait of Hormuz and the chances of a miscalculation that could lead to a military clash - and a global oil crisis - appear to be rising.
Diplomacy has given way to harsher tactics, with Obama and his European allies trying to isolate the Islamic republic with the toughest sanctions ever.
Interviews with U.S. officials reveal a strategy of watching and waiting and a belief that the West's leverage over Iran may grow as Tehran feels the heat from the sanctions and popular upheaval in the Middle East.
One official also predicted that the neighboring government of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, a key Iranian ally, would ultimately collapse, adding to the worries of Iran's leaders.
"It's our assessment that the Assad regime is not going to survive," White House deputy national security adviser Ben Rhodes told Reuters.
"The fall of the Assad regime would substantially impact Iran's strategic position in the world and the region. The combination of those sanctions and the demise of the Assad regime is a level of pressure that the Iranian government has never been under before," he said.
The White House insists that the United States is not pursuing a strategy of seeking "regime change."
"We are absolutely not," Rhodes said. "It's very much the policy of the United States to change Iran's behavior through our sanctions and through isolation, not to change the Iranian regime."
Obama remains open to talks with Iran, aides say. But after years of disappointment, with a U.S. election looming, and with Congress and allies like Israel lobbying him to stand tough, Washington sees the next move as Tehran's, officials and European diplomats say.

How Obama arrived at this point is a story of peace offers made and rebuffed, a crushed revolution on Tehran's streets, and dashed hopes for a civilian nuclear deal.
At the start of the 2012 U.S. election year, Iran and its suspected quest for a nuclear bomb is firmly at the top of Obama's foreign policy priorities.

REACHING OUT
Obama began with outreach - some of it unusually direct.
Early in his term, the president sent a personal letter to Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khameini, who holds ultimate power, to show the seriousness of the outstretched hand. "A letter from the president was the clearest signal of our intentions that we could possibly make," a U.S. official said.
The United States and Iran do not have formal diplomatic ties.
Obama was closely involved in writing the letter that took account of their differences on nuclear and other issues, made clear there were two paths, and expressed a desire for a different kind of relationship, officials said. It was also a test to see if a serious dialogue could begin.
And in an unprecedented March 2009 Persian New Year message to the people and leaders of Iran, Obama repeatedly referred to the "Islamic Republic of Iran." It was a recognition of the formal name of the government and a signal that "regime change" was not the U.S. policy.
The intention was to show "a U.S. president who is not playing the villain in Iranian politics," Rhodes said.
"When you have a U.S. president who is not playing that role and saying look we've had a difficult history, let's look forward, the regime loses one of its most powerful propaganda tools," he said.
But Khamanei's response to Obama's 2009 letter contained nothing encouraging that the administration could act on. A second letter was sent to Khameini tied to that response.

TURNING AWAY
Late in 2009, Obama's policy began to shift.
In September, he took to the world stage at a Group of 20 summit in Pittsburgh, flanked by the leaders of Britain and France, and revealed that Iran was building a secret nuclear fuel plant underground near the holy city of Qom. The previous evening, Obama made sure his aides had briefed Russian and Chinese officials, who had not known about the facility.
In October, in direct talks in Geneva, the United States and its allies offered nuclear fuel for a civilian nuclear reactor in Tehran. In exchange, Iran would ship its enriched uranium outside the country, where it would be rendered unusable for a potential nuclear weapon.
Iran never picked up on the offer. The final straw when Iran declared in February 2010 that it would begin enriching uranium up to 20 percent.
By the end of 2009, "we were fully shifted to the notion of pursuing a U.N. Security Council resolution" with more sanctions, one official said.
Obama's critics and political opponents assert that his initial outreach was dangerous and displayed a lack of judgment.
Leading Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney in November accused Obama of naïveté in his efforts to engage Tehran. Obama's approach to dealing with Iran's nuclear ambitions was a "case study in botched diplomacy," he said in an opinion piece in the Wall Street Journal.
Current and former Obama aides disagree sharply.
"There was never any illusion or naïveté about who the regime was. There was never any assumption that we would pursue this regardless of their behavior," said Dennis Ross, a top White House adviser on Middle East policy until last month.
"If they weren't prepared to be responsive, then the assumption always was this will make it easier for us to mobilize real pressure against them," he said.
Obama was also criticized as missing a golden opportunity when the largest street protests in the Islamic republic's history broke out after Iran's disputed June 2009 election.
The protests, ultimately quashed with violence, did appear to catch the White House by surprise. But aides defended the muted U.S. response.
"We knew that too overt an embrace in some ways could hurt the Iranian opposition," said Jim Steinberg, former deputy secretary of state. "Especially when it looked like they had a chance of prevailing, we didn't want to undercut them and strengthen the hand of the hardliners."

A SOFT WAR?
U.S.-Iran tensions continued to ratchet up, and a string of events made it look to the outside world like an undeclared "soft war" was under way.
The United States accused Iran's shadowy Quds Force in a plot to assassinate the Saudi ambassador to Washington.
The Stuxnet computer virus attacked centrifuges at Iran's Natanz enrichment facility. Iran accused Israel and the United States.
Late last year, the United States lost a spy drone in Iran, unmasking an aggressive surveillance program.
There have been unexplained explosions at an Iranian missile depot and four nuclear scientists have been killed in Iran - the latest on Wednesday.
"We had absolutely nothing to do with the deaths of any of these scientists or the missile depot. Things exploding in Iran do not have anything to do with the United States," a U.S. official said.
Iran reacted to those events and the stepped-up economic sanctions as if under siege. It threatened to close the Strait of Hormuz, a major oil shipping lane.
"They feel themselves under threat internally. They talk about the soft overthrow and the covert war that is being waged," said John Limbert, a professor of Middle East studies at the U.S. Naval Academy.
U.S. officials downplayed the possibility that Iran would follow through on its threats.
Iran has threatened to close the Strait before, usually when its leaders feel international pressure, another U.S. official said on condition of anonymity.
"It's doubtful Iranian leaders want an all-out war, but they'll continue to agitate and push the envelope in ways they believe advance their national interests," the official added.

WAITING FOR IRAN
Obama is still open to an Iranian overture for serious negotiations on its nuclear program, officials say. Indeed, that is the ultimate goal of the pressure strategy, they say.
"We have a number of ways to communicate our views to the Iranian government, and we have used those mechanisms regularly on a range of issues over the years," White House National Security Council spokesman Tommy Vietor said.
"But any message that we have delivered to the Iranian government would be the same as what we've said publicly," Vietor said.
For now, Obama is focused on new sanctions that target Iran's central bank and oil sales.
"We are already seeing ... a really substantial impact on the Iranian economy, the Iranian currency," Rhodes said. "The next step for us is making sure that as we do that there is continued space for the Iranian government to take a different path, rather than simply seeing our pressure as an end of itself."
But with Iran announcing it has begun enrichment at the protected underground site near Qom, and Israel not ruling out a unilateral strike on Iran's nuclear sites, time may be short.
U.S. intelligence agencies say there is no evidence that Iran has decided to move forward with building a nuclear weapon. But experts point out it is taking steps to lay the groundwork so it can move quickly if that decision is made.
If Iran decided to move forward, it would be about a year away from having a crude nuclear explosive device, David Albright, president of the Institute for Science and International Security, said. "They still don't know quite how to move forward without getting caught," he said.
(Additional reporting by Arshad Mohammed and Warren Strobel; Editing by Doina Chiacu)

obama is the wrong president in the White House period for any time in history but now of all times he is the worst to be in there. He is inept and doesn't have the courage to make a critical call unless its a lay up like bin laden was.

[eaglethebeagle]

CAIRO (AP) — Iran warned Gulf Arab oil producers against boosting production to offset any potential drop in Tehran's crude exports in the event of an embargo affecting its oil sales, the latest salvo in the dispute between the West and the Islamic Republic over its nuclear program.
The comments by Iran's OPEC governor, published Sunday, came as Saudi Arabia's oil minister was quoted the same day denying that his country's earlier pledges to boost output as needed to meet global demand was linked to a potential siphoning of Iranian crude from the market because of sanctions.
World oil markets have been jolted over concerns that Iran may choke off the vital Strait of Hormuz in retaliation for sanctions hampering its ability to sell its oil. Saudi Arabia and other key Gulf Arab producers have recently said they are ready to provide stable and secure supplies of oil.
Iran's official news agency IRNA said Sunday that the U.S. has relayed a message to Iran about security in the Strait of Hormuz. It gave no details, and there was no immediate comment from Washington.
The U.S. recently imposed sanctions targeting Iran's central bank and, by extension, refiners' ability to buy and pay for crude. The European Union is also weighing an embargo on Iranian oil, while Japan, one of Iran's top Asian customers, has pledged to buy less crude from the country.
Mohammad Ali Khatibi, Iran's OPEC governor, was quoted Sunday by the pro-reform Shargh newspaper as saying that attempts by Gulf nations to replace Iran's output with their own would make them an "accomplice in further events."
"These acts will not be considered friendly," Khatibi said, adding that if the Arab producers "apply prudence and announce that they will not participate in replacing oil, then adventurist countries will not show interest," in the embargo.
The embargo concerns are linked to Iran's nuclear program. The West maintains Iran is enriching uranium for weapons purposes while Tehran says its program is for purely peaceful purposes such as generating electricity.
Saudi Arabia, the world's largest oil producer and a close U.S. ally, had said that it was ready to raise its output to accommodate global market needs. The country is the only member of the 12-nation Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries that has significant spare capacity, currently estimated at roughly more than 2 million barrels per day.
With concerns building amid the standoff between Iran and the West over Tehran's nuclear program, a string of Asian and Western officials have visited Saudi Arabia over the past week. While offering assurances that it could meet a shortfall in supply through its spare capacity, Saudi officials have also been careful to say that it was an internal matter if nations chose to abide by any sanctions.
Oil Minister Ali Al-Naimi appeared to try to further clarify the country's position in comments published Sunday in the daily Al-Ektisadiyah newspaper.
"We never said that Saudi Arabia is trying to compensate for Iranian oil in the case that sanctions (are enacted)," Al-Naimi was quoted as saying. "We said that we are prepared to meet the increase in global demand as a result of any circumstances."
The kingdom has a production capacity of 12.5 million barrels and is believed to be producing slightly over 9 million to 9.5 million barrels per day.
Iran's warning introduces a new layer of complication to an issue that has the potential for broad regional and global fallout.
"If the regional countries ... say no to what is harmful to the security of the region, then nothing will definitely happen," he said. But if the security of oil traffic in the Strait of Hormuz is violated, "all will be lost," he said.
"If these countries make a mistake and give the green light, this will be a historic green light," Khatibi said.
Saudi Arabia, the Arab world's largest economy, is widely seen as the main counterweight to Iran in the region. Any attempt by Iran to close the Strait of Hormuz, through which a sixth of the world's oil flows, would also affect the export abilities of the major Gulf producers, including Saudi Arabia, Iraq, the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait and Qatar.
While momentum appears to be building for the sanctions by the West, China, another major buyer of Iranian oil, has come out against the measures.
Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao was in Saudi Arabia on Saturday for meeting with officials in which the two countries "pledged to work together to further expand all-around exchanges and cooperation," according to China's Xinhua news agency
Wen said the two sides "should expand trade of crude oil and natural gas and energy-related cooperation as to deepen their energy partnership," Xinhua reported.
During the visit, Saudi state-owned oil giant Aramco and Chinese refiner Sinopec finalized an agreement to develop a 400,000 barrel per day joint venture refinery in the Red Sea city of Yanbu. The deal is just one between China and Gulf producers as the Asian powerhouse reaches out across the world to secure energy supplies for its booming economy.
___
Associated Press writer Nasser Karimi in Tehran contributed.

[eaglethebeagle]

JERUSALEM (AP) — The top U.S. military commander is scheduled for talks in Israel this week, Israel said Sunday, at a time when the U.S. is concerned that Israel might be preparing to attack Iran over its nuclear program.
The Israeli Defense Ministry confirmed the planned visit Thursday by Army Gen. Martin Dempsey, the chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff. It did not give his agenda for talks with Israelis — but Iran is expected to be at the top.
Israel considers a nuclear-armed Iran to be an existential threat because of its nuclear program, missile capabilities, support for anti-Israel militants in Lebanon and Gaza and frequent references by its president to the destruction of Israel.
Israel has repeatedly hinted it might take military action if international sanctions fail to stop Iran's nuclear development.
The U.S., Israel and other Western nations believe Iran is developing atomic weapons. Tehran insists its nuclear program is for peaceful purposes.
Dempsey's visit will be his first official trip to Israel since he assumed command of the joint chiefs on Sept. 30. His predecessor, Adm. Mike Mullen, made several visits to Israel during his four-year term.
On Thursday President Barack Obama and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu discussed the Iran situation in a telephone conversation.
The Obama administration is concerned that Iran's recent claim that it is expanding nuclear operations with more advanced equipment may push Israel closer to a strike.
The U.S. still hopes that international pressure will persuade Iran to back down, but the Islamic regime shows no sign it would willingly give up a project that has become a point of national pride.
The U.S. has led a series of economic sanctions against the regime. On Sunday, Israeli Cabinet Minister Moshe Yaalon said he was disappointed that the U.S. has not expanded the measures to further damage Iran's central bank and its energy industry.
Last week, an Iranian nuclear scientist was killed in a car bombing in Tehran. There has been no claim of responsibility, but Iran has accused the U.S., Israel and Britain of being behind the killing. Several leading Iranian nuclear scientists have been killed in recent years.
Israel has not commented publicly on the scientist's death.
The killing in Tehran came a day after Israeli military chief Lt. Gen. Benny Gantz was quoted as telling a parliamentary panel that 2012 would be a "critical year" for Iran — in part because of "things that happen to it unnaturally."
Gantz is also headed this week to Brussels for talks with NATO officials that are expected to focus on Iran.
The U.S. and its allies are pressuring Iran to halt uranium enrichment, but Iran appears to be attempting to expand operations.
The U.S. is also angered by an Iranian court's death sentence of a U.S. citizen and its threats to block the strategic Strait of Hormuz, the passage for one-sixth of the world's oil.

[eaglethebeagle]

TEHRAN (Reuters) - Iran said on Sunday it had received a letter from the U.S. government about the Strait of Hormuz, the crucial oil shipping lane that Tehran has threatened to close if sanctions prevent it exporting oil.
Foreign Ministry spokesman Ramin Mehmanparast was quoted by news agencies as saying Tehran had not yet decided if it would reply to the letter, the contents of which he did not detail.
"America's message over the Strait of Hormuz reached us through three channels. It was given to our U.N. representative, the Swiss ambassador conveyed it to the Foreign Ministry and also Iraqi President Jalal Talabani gave the message to Iran," Mehmanparast said, according to the ISNA news agency.
"If we deem it is necessary to give a response to America's message, then we will reply to it. The issue is being reviewed by Iran and it will be done in an appropriate way."
Tehran and Washington have had no direct diplomatic relations since 1979 and the Swiss embassy represents U.S. interests in Iran.
Tehran said on Saturday it had sent a letter to Washington with evidence U.S. intelligence services were involved in the assassination of a nuclear scientist last week.
Washington has said it would not tolerate any closure of the strait - the export route for one third of all seaborne traded oil - with Defense Secretary Leon Panetta has saying such a move would require a response.
Tensions between the two countries have risen in recent weeks. U.S. President Barack Obama signed a bill on New Year's Eve that, if fully implemented, would make it impossible for most countries to pay for Iranian oil.
In addition to threats about Hormuz, Iran has started enriching uranium at an underground bunker and sentencing an Iranian-American citizen to death on spying charges.
Negotiations between the West and Iran over Tehran's nuclear programme stalled one year ago.
(Reporting by Hossein Jaseb; Writing by Robin Pomeroy)

[jamieooh]

not to confident that the Israelis or Iranian will listen to anybody from the barry administration.
My understanding that the tough new sanction by the U.S. won't go into effect until barry says so. I might be wrong but I doubt it.

[eaglethebeagle]

you are right the sanctions were delayed or being delayed i think for 6 months to soften the impact on oil prices. According to what I read they felt that if they hit iran with these tougher sanctions immediately it would impact the price of oil drastically and the entire globe would be hit by high oil prices. I dont know if that is believable or not. In the long range the price of oil should go up. Unless Saudi Arabia ups production and/or America ups native production in addition to European countries upping production to offset the decline from iran and possibly the affects of there being a military action in the Strait of Hormuz with iran then we could see a big leap in cost regardless of a delayed sanctions. I think we should go forward ASAP with action against iran in all phases. They are not showing they care what the rest of the world demands from them. They are literally a rogue regime with no other allies but those who still use them for economic benefit like Russia and China and the South American countries all using iran for cheap oil and or weapons trade.

The conflict will come either now or later and the longer it takes to happen it is better for iran. Iran is in full atomic bomb making mode and at what point they are at may be a guess by our best intel right now. ahmedinjad did a little tour of his South American business partners recently and to which was for what purpose? He could be buying arms as well as bribing them with wholesale oil prices for their support. The seriousness of what could happen if we need to take military action is what I am concerned about most. China really sees energy supply as a threat to their own well being.

They need iranian oil now and in the future and they like it at the cheap prices they get it at too from iran. Remember they are communist and so the government makes more money the cheaper they get the oil for from iran. They dont like the U.S. and our allies possible taking over an oil supplier from them in a crazy communist thinking that if we conquer iran it could lead to us having first option in oil business with iran in the future. I look at iraq and dont see how that benefited the U.S. in oil supply terms unless someone knows more than me about that which is very possible. Lybia is in flux after quaddafi being outed now and so where does that put them in the oil supply business?

So if China is standing strong against military action against iran how far will they go to keep iran and its current regime in power? That is a big question. Russia does business with iran as well both in oil and in weapons dealings. Again same question what would Russia do if we get into war with iran? If it isnt the U.S. going in first and Israel is forced to do the action first without U.S. support what happens if China and or Russia step in to help Iran? Will we then back Israel at that point? Will we stay out of it and leave Israel out to dry against China and or Russia and Iran?

Then there are the other dirt bag countries like Syria and Palestine who are friendly with Iran for being equally terrorist in all fashions what will those little fuck sticks do in support of their islamic brother nation iran?

Then finally is there any legitimacy to the South American friendships ahmedinjad thinks he has in Venezuela and those other South American countries he sucks cock with?

All of these are real possibilities and how fast it is sorted out and when it is sorted out is the question.

We really have the potential for a world war as fucked up as that sounds. 2012 has been said to be the end of the world and right now Global Thermonuclear War is my best guess how we get there. Obama would just push the button and launch the nukes and if it happens no one survives even if you survive the blast the radiation and aftermath will end all the world.
:Bump1:

[eaglethebeagle]

Police raids in Bangkok, Thailand, which netted a suspected Hezbollah operative Thursday and the makings of bomb-making materials Saturday, represent "one of the most credible Israel-focused threats overseas in a long time," said NBC News analyst Roger Cressey, and "very much the real deal" adds NBC News analyst Mike Leiter.
The two analysts referred primarily to the Saturday raid where police confiscated more than 8,800 pounds (4,000 kilograms) of urea fertilizer and several gallons of liquid ammonium nitrate found in a warehouse in Samut Sakhon, on the western outskirts of Bangkok.

Officials in the U.S. and Israel said Hezbollah could have been planning an attack on the Israeli embassy in downtown Bangkok, near various tourist sites, say Cressey and Leiter. Hezbollah, a Shi'ite Islamist group in Lebanon backed by Syria and Iran, is on the U.S. blacklist of foreign terrorist organizations.


The raid caused both the U.S. and Israel to issue public travel warnings urging their citizens to be cautious.
Information that led to the raid was relayed to Thai police by Israeli intelligence. Police detained a Swedish national of Lebanese origin with alleged links to pro-Iranian Hezbollah militants on Thursday. The intelligence indicated a plot could be carried out between between Friday and Sunday.
Cressey said the fear was that Hezbollah was constructing a large bomb that would have caused a devastating blast in an area that many Americans visit.
"There would have been a lot of collateral damage," said Cressey, a former member of the U.S. National Security Council staff.

Moreover, both analysts note they've been told the threat may not be over, that at least one other operative is being sought. Leiter, former director of the U.S. National Counterterrorism Center, says there is a fear about plots against "secondary targets", either tourist or Jewish, in the Thai capital.
As for the rationale for the attack, Cressey said, "All theories make sense. Can't rank order them yet," while Leiter noted, "It's pretty consistent with the increase in tension between Israel and Iran." Iran has vowed revenge for the killings of its nuclear scientists, which it has blamed on Israel and the U.S.
One possibility raised by both is Hezbollah revenge for the Israeli killing on Imad Mugniyah, the Hezbollah leader who died in a car bombing in downtown Damascus nearly four years ago on February 12, 2008.

Mugniyah was responsible for many anti-American and anti-Israeli terrorist attacks, including the bombing of the U.S. embassy in Beirut in 1983, the Marine Barracks bombing in 1983 and the bombing of the Israeli embassy in Buenos Aires in 1992. Hezbollah vowed revenge for that killing but never carried out attacks that it tied to Mugniyah's death.
Background on the incident from the Associated Press:
National police chief Priewpan Damapong told reporters the suspect, named as Atris Hussein, had given police an address where bomb-making material was being kept.
Priewpan said the suspect had maintained that his group had not planned an attack in Thailand but intended to transport the substances to a third country, which he would not name.
Asked about the discovery, Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra told reporters: "I have been informed. I would like to ask people not to panic. We are currently in control of the situation."


Thai officials have seemed irritated by travel advisories issued by the U.S. and Israeli governments, followed by several more since Friday. Foreign Minister Surapong Towijakchaikul said diplomats from countries that had issued warnings would meet with him for an explanation on Monday.
Tourism is a big money-earner for Thailand, and ministers are keen not to deter travelers, especially after the hit to tourism from severe flooding in 2011 and political unrest in 2010.
Yingluck also instructed the defense ministry to consult U.S. embassy officials to discuss its terror warning and seek a retraction.

However, an embassy spokesman later said the terror warning to its citizens was valid and the United States had no plan to rescind it.
Defence Minister Yuthasak Sasiprapha told reporters in the northern city of Chiang Mai on Sunday that Thailand was not the target, although officials have also said that areas of Bangkok frequented by Westerners and Israelis could be hit.
Yuthasak said that a second suspect had managed to leave the country.

http://www.apacheclips.com/media/37484/pro-Iranian_Hezbollah__found_in_Thailand_after_terror_ warnings/




:USA:

[eaglethebeagle]

Gulf states show rising confidence to rattle Iran



DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — For leaders on the Iranian side of the Gulf, the past days have offered some hard lessons in the politics of oil.
The Iranians have watched as frustrated bystanders while the leader of its most influential ally, China, began a tour of Gulf Arab states with talks in Tehran's top regional rival Saudi Arabia. Two other major Iranian oil customers — South Korea and Japan — also had high-level delegations in the Gulf to discuss supply guarantees if they fall in line with U.S.-led pressures to cut back on Iranian imports.
Iran sharply warned its neighbors about making any deals that could undercut its critical oil income. The Gulf rulers barely blinked.

That highlights the growing confidence among the Gulf Arabs — all close U.S. allies — to stand up against Iran and use tougher tactics in what they view as the region's hard-boiled realities: Any gain for Shiite power Iran is perceived as a loss for its Sunni rivals led by Saudi Arabia.
The stronger Gulf political posture is unlikely to stray too far from Washington's stances, but it reflects the wider changes for the Gulf's monarchs and sheiks after the Arab Spring revolts. In the past year, the wealthy Gulf states have gone into overdrive against any possible internal threats to their own autocratic systems.

They also sense an opportunity to rattle Iran, which is being squeezed by tighter sanctions over its nuclear program and by seeing its main Middle East partner, Syrian President Bashar Assad, struggle with growing street protests and mutinies among his security forces.
"The Gulf states had long looked to Washington to be their protector," said Sami Alfaraj, director of the Kuwait Center for Strategic Studies. "They still have the U.S., but the Gulf is increasingly looking around and saying: 'We need to take care of ourselves, too.'"
Gulf leaders are studying proposals for closer defense cooperation after Saudi-led forces came to the aid last year of Bahrain's monarchy, which claims that Iran has help stir an uprising by the island kingdom's Shiite majority against the minority Sunni rulers. Statements against Iran by the Gulf's six-nation political bloc — which also includes Kuwait, Qatar, Oman and the United Arab Emirates — also have grown increasingly harsh, including recriminations about Iran seeking to destabilize the region.

In Abu Dhabi last week, the United Arab Emirates' foreign minister, Sheik Abdullah bin Zayed Al Nahyan, said Iran was imperiling the interests of the entire world by threatening to close the Strait of Hormuz, the water route for about one-sixth of the global oil flow. He was joined by Japanese Foreign Minister Koichiro Gemba, who said his country was "watching the developments in the Strait of Hormuz very carefully and with concern."
Iran threatened to close the waterway over new U.S. sanctions, which have been approved by President Barack Obama with at least a six-month delay before they will be implemented. The sanctions target Iran's central bank and oil exports.

Saudi officials, meanwhile, have refused to publicly accept Iran's claims that it has no link to an alleged plot to kill the Saudi ambassador in Washington. Two men, including a suspected member of Iran's Quds Force special foreign actions unit, have been charged in New York federal court.
"The Gulf states are definitely taking a stronger stance against Iran and are using their considerable influence to try to convince others of their Iranian fears," said Theodore Karasik, a security expert at the Dubai-based Institute for Near East and Gulf Military Analysis.
Among the points in a joint statement Sunday between Saudi King Abduallah and Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao was a call to make the Mideast free of "weapons of mass destruction including nuclear weapons."

It's certainly a reference to Israel, which is believed to have a nuclear arsenal although officials neither confirm nor deny the nation's weapons capabilities. But, in the current climate, the message is almost fully directed toward Iran.
A regional arms race is one of the West's spinoff worries about a possible Iranian nuclear weapon — with Saudi Arabia looking to countries such as Pakistan to jump-start an atomic weapons program. Already, the Gulf states are awash in mostly American weaponry — including a deal last month to sell $30 billion worth of F-15SA fighter jets to Saudi Arabia — and the Pentagon has significant Gulf resources with warplanes at several bases and the Navy's 5th Fleet in Bahrain.
Iran denies it seeks nuclear weapons and says it only wants reactors for energy and research. Iran refuses, however, to abandon its program to enrich uranium, which the U.S. and many allies believe could lead to weapons-grade material.

The latest U.S.-led drive to aim sanctions at Iran's oil industry — the source of 80 percent of its foreign currency revenue — has brought sharp backlash from Tehran. On Sunday, Mohammad Ali Khatibi, Iran's OPEC governor, was quoted as saying that attempts by Gulf nations to replace Iran's output with their own would make them an "accomplice in further events."
"These acts will not be considered friendly," Khatibi told Iran's Shargh newspaper.
Khatibi fired another salvo Tuesday in Europe's direction. He called a proposed European Union embargo of Iran's oil "economic suicide" that would deepen the euro zones fiscal crisis, according to the semiofficial Mehr news agency.
But the Gulf tours of the Far East economic powers appeared to put Iran even more on edge.
China, Japan and South Korea are Iran's top Asian oil markets — taking an even bigger combined share than the nearly 20 percent that currently goes to Europe. An all-out embargo is highly unlikely. China — one of five veto-wielding permanent members of the U.N. Security Council — has consistently opposed tighter sanctions on Iran and Japan and South Korea appear unwilling to risk possible upheaval in their economies.

Still, pressure is growing for some curbs.
A senior State Department envoy, Robert Einhorn, urged South Korea officials Tuesday to reduce crude oil imports from Iran. South Korea's Foreign Ministry said the government hasn't yet decided on a course of action, but reportedly is seeking assurances from other oil exporters that they would fill any gaps.
South Korean Prime Minister Kim Hwang-sik joined the Chinese premier in Abu Dhabi for the opening of an alternative energy summit on Monday. They did not mention Iran in public comments, but talks by Kim included top UAE officials who set political and energy policies.
"Historically, Iran viewed itself as a kind of big brother, a superior power, to the Gulf Arab states. That view has become badly dated," said Patrick Clawson, director of research at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. "The Gulf states now see themselves as mutual powers in the region who can increasingly stand up for themselves. They survived the Arab Spring without too much trouble — except for Bahrain — and have come out of it more confident and more willing to go head to head with Iran."

:USA:

[eaglethebeagle]

As tensions ratchet up in the Persian Gulf, the Kremlin is signaling that it will use all its diplomatic influence to oppose war and, according to a leading Moscow newspaper, has ordered the military to prepare for any possible spillover from a conflict between Iran and the US into the sensitive post-Soviet Caucasus region.
Russia will block any further sanctions against Iran in the UN Security Council, a Foreign Ministry official said Tuesday, because it believes rising tensions could trigger a conflict that would destabilize the wider region. Last week Russian deputy prime minister and former ambassador to NATO Dmitry Rogozin warned that any Western attack on Iran would constitute "a direct threat to [Russian] national security."

The independent Moscow daily Nezavisimaya Gazeta reported Monday that this year's annual military exercises in Russia's south, Kavkaz 2012, will be much larger than usual and organized around the premise of a war that begins with an attack on Iran but spreads to neighboring Armenia and Azerbaijan, and draws Russia into a regional maelstrom. The newspaper said the war games, which are usually confined to Russian territory, might this year include maneuvers in the breakaway Georgian statelets of South Ossetia and Abkhazia, and perhaps also in Russian-allied Armenia.

RELATED: Q &A: What's with the war talk surrounding Iran?
"We believe that sanctions relative to Iran have lost their usefulness," Gennady Gatilov, Russia's deputy foreign minister, told a Moscow press conference Tuesday. "We will oppose any new resolution [on UN sanctions against Iran]....
"Russia would consider any use of force against the territory of Iran unacceptable. That would make the situation even more critical.... Unfortunately, many [Western] government leaders are not restraining themselves and are speaking openly about a military strike against Iran," Mr. Gatilov added.

A harsh sanctions regime, signed into law by President Obama two weeks ago, would target Iran's ability to earn cash through oil exports by penalizing Western companies who clear payments through Iran's central bank. The European Union could enact its own sanctions against Iranian oil exports as early as next week.
Doesn't want nuclear weapons in Iran, but doesn't want war
Russian experts say that Moscow opposes Iran's alleged drive for atomic weapons, but may fear the consequences of a military strike aimed at curbing the country's nuclear program more.
"War in Iran could create a new situation in the wider Caucasus and the Caspian Basin, which would a very serious challenge to Russia," says Fyodor Lukyanov, editor of Russia in Global Affairs, a leading Moscow-based foreign policy journal. "There is a high degree of uncertainty about what would happen in neighboring regions. How would it affect the situation around Nagorno Karabakh, for instance?"
Armenia and Azerbaijan (see map here) fought a savage war in the 1990s over the tiny Armenian-populated enclave of Nagorno Karabakh, which ended with Armenia annexing the territory and some surrounding regions. Azerbaijan has never accepted that outcome, but its desire for revenge has been checked by intensive international diplomacy.

"The situation around Karabakh is stable now, but the status quo could be destroyed by an external shock, such as war in next-door Iran," says Mr. Lukyanov. "For Russia, this would pose an impossible dilemma. That's why upcoming military exercises will be designed to address various possible outcomes and find ways to deal with them. . . Russia is absolutely not interested in war breaking out."
Secret benefits for Russia
But, he adds, Russia might also "secretly benefit" from any US attack on Iran as long as it didn't produce pro-Western regime change in that country. Prices for oil, Russia's main source of foreign exchange, would skyrocket, at least in the short term.
"The most likely outcome is that the US would become bogged down in another complicated, long-term conflict," Lukyanov says. "That means US attention would be less directed than ever on the post-Soviet region, and that would be good for Moscow."

The Russo-Georgian August 2008 war came just days after the Russian military completed its Kavkaz 2008 war games in the north Caucasus, a conflict that ended with Russia declaring South Ossetia and Abkhazia fully independent from Georgia. Tensions between Russia and NATO-friendly Georgia continue to this day, and might also be deeply complicated by any conflict that breaks out between the US and nearby Iran.


Mr. Rogozin, the Russian deputy prime minister, when asked to clarify his earlier comment that war against Iran would create a threat to Russia's national security, told journalists Tuesday that "any ratcheting up of tensions on Iran can bring nothing useful, it would lead to a catastrophe in the region.... Russia is doing everything it can from the point of view of diplomacy to resolve the conflict," he added.

:thumbsdown:

[eaglethebeagle]

According to Bloomberg, the rising tensions between Iran and the U.S. and Europe benefit China with cheaper oil. Here are the details.

* Even as the European Union members formulated their Iranian oil embargo and the U.S. worked on sanctions several days ago, Chinese refiners were demanding discounts on oil imported from Iran, Bloomberg reported. If it becomes the only buyer of Iranian crude, China stands to see up to a 40 percent discount on the price it pays for oil.

* Bloomberg reports that, though China has voted four times for United Nations sanctions against Iran for its nuclear development, Chinese Foreign Minister Zhai Jun was critical in late December of the U.S. plan to block payments to Iran's central bank for petroleum exports.

* According to the Washington Post, on a recent trip to China, Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner was unable to receive assurances that China would reduce its oil imports, though the country did seem to have relaxed its stance on the U.S. blocking Iranian access to funds via Chinese banks.

* Geithner found a more positive response in his support-gaining mission to Asia from Japan, where he traveled a day after visiting China. While there, he was told by the foreign minister that Japan would be willing to reduce the ten percent of oil imports that it currently receives from Iran, the Washington Post reported.

* Chinese officials were quick to state that their relationship with the U.S. was more important to their relationship with Iran, the Washington Post reported. According to the Christian Science Monitor, China has recently argued in light of increasing requests to cut its ties to Iran that it is not a U.S. ally and it is not required to obey U.S. law.

* According to Bloomberg, though it is seeking additional oil sources in the Middle East, China buys 22 percent of Iran's oil exports -- the most of any country. Even though the country wishes to diversify, Willy Wo-Lap Lam, adjunct professor of history at the Chinese University in Hong Kong, says Beijing's "long standing policy to undermine U.S. influence in the Middle East" makes it highly unlikely that China will turn completely from Iran.

@yahoonews

:thumbsdown:

[eaglethebeagle]

http://news.yahoo.com/video/world-15749633/how-to-deal-with-iran-israel-as-tensions-near-boiling-point-27888678.htmlWill China and Russia get involved militarily if military action is taken against iran? My take is yes they will.:thumbsdown:

[eaglethebeagle]

WASHINGTON (AP) — The U.S. military is now "fully prepared" to deal with any Iranian effort to close the Strait of Hormuz, a vital Persian Gulf avenue for international oil shipments, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said Wednesday.
At a Pentagon news conference, Panetta was asked whether, in light of Iran's threat to close the strait in retaliation for stronger international economic sanctions, Washington is adjusting U.S. forces in the region.
"We are not making any special steps at this point in order to deal with the situation," Panetta replied. "Why? Because, frankly, we are fully prepared to deal with that situation now." He noted that routine planning continues as the U.S. and its allies consider a range of potential Iran-related problems.
The Navy this month added a second aircraft carrier strike group in the Middle East, portraying it as part of a normal rotation and not a deliberate buildup of force. The carriers are the USS Carl Vinson and the USS Abraham Lincoln, under the control of U.S. Naval Forces Central Command in Bahrain.
The U.S. has kept a continuous naval presence in the Gulf region for decades, but international concerns about a potential confrontation have grown amid tensions over the advancement of Iran's nuclear program.
The U.S. also has military forces in nearby United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Kuwait and other Gulf nations.
Iran's Revolutionary Guard, the country's most powerful military force, says Tehran's leadership has decided to order the closure of the Strait of Hormuz if Iran's oil exports are blocked as a result of sanctions. A senior Guard officer said earlier this month that the decision has been made by Iran's top authorities.
Iranian politicians have made the threat in the past, but this was the strongest statement yet that a closure of the strait is official policy.
In his remarks at the Pentagon, Panetta said he still holds out hope for a diplomatic solution with Iran.
"It takes two to be able to engage, and we've always expressed a willingness to try to do that," he said. "But we've always made clear that in terms of any threats to the region, in terms of some of the behavior that they've conducted in the region, that we'll also be prepared to respond militarily if we have to."
In what some view as a sign of concern about aggravating tensions with Iran, the U.S. and Israel have postponed what Panetta has called the largest-ever U.S.-Israeli air defense exercise. It was supposed to be conducted in April.
Israeli government spokesman Mark Regev said on Monday the postponement was a "joint" decision with Washington. "The thinking was it was not the right timing now to conduct such an exercise," he said. He refused to elaborate.
Asked about this Wednesday, Panetta said Israel's defense minister, Ehud Barak, had approached him to suggest the delay "in order to be able to plan better." Panetta said the decision had nothing to do with Iran.
Israel's ambassador to Washington, Michael Oren, issued a statement Tuesday saying the delay "stemmed solely from technical issues." He said the exercise, dubbed "Austere Challenge 2012", would be held in the second half of this year.
___
Robert Burns can be reached on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/robertburnsAP

[eaglethebeagle]

TEHRAN, Iran (AP) — Senior Iranian lawmakers have stepped up threats that Islamic Republic warships could block the Persian Gulf's oil tanker traffic after the latest blow by Western leaders seeking to rein in Tehran's nuclear program: A punishing oil embargo by the European Union that sharply raises the economic stakes for Iran's defiance.
The EU decision taken Monday in Brussels — following the U.S. lead to target Iran's critical oil exports — opened a new front against Iran's leadership. Pressure is bearing down on the clerical regime from many directions, including intense U.S. lobbying to urge Asian powers to shun Iranian crude, a nose-diving national currency and a recent slaying in what Iran calls a clandestine campaign against its nuclear establishment.
In response, Iranian officials have turned to one of their most powerful cards: The narrow Strait of Hormuz at the mouth of the Gulf and the route for a fifth of the world's oil. Iran has rattled world markets with repeated warnings it could block the hook-shaped waterway, which could spark a conflict in the Gulf.
Military experts have questioned whether Iran has the naval capabilities to attempt a blockade. But the U.S. and allies have already said they would take swift action against any Iranian moves to choke off the 30-mile (50-kilometer) wide strait — where the American aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln, along with British and French warships, entered the Gulf on Sunday without incident.
The British Ministry of Defense said the three nations sought to "underline the unwavering international commitment to maintaining rights of passage under international law."
Earlier this month, Gen. Martin Dempsey, chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, told CBS' "Face the Nation" that Iranian forces could block shipping through the strait "for a period of time," but added "we can defeat that" and restore the flow of oil and other commerce. He did not offer details on a U.S. military response, but the Pentagon is believed to have contingency plans for such a scenario.
A member of Iran's influential national security committee in parliament, Mohammad Ismail Kowsari, said Monday that the strait "would definitely be closed if the sale of Iranian oil is violated in any way." He went on warn the U.S. against any "military adventurism."
Another senior lawmaker, Heshmatollah Falahatpisheh, said Iran has the right to shutter Hormuz in retaliation for oil sanctions and that the closure was increasingly probable, according to the semiofficial Mehr news agency.
"In case of threat, the closure of the Strait of Hormuz is one of Iran's rights," Falahatpisheh said. "So far, Iran has not used this privilege."
The lawmakers' comments do not directly reflect the views of Iran's ruling clerics, but they echo similar statements made earlier this month by military commanders with close ties to the theocracy.
At the same time, however, Iran has tried to ease tensions by offering to reopen nuclear talks with the U.S. and other world powers after a one-year gap, and backing off warnings about U.S. naval operations in the Gulf — where the U.S. Navy 5th Fleet has a base in Bahrain.
On Monday in Brussels, the EU's foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton urged Iran to offer "some concrete issues to talk about."
"It is very important that it is not just about words; a meeting is not an excuse, a meeting is an opportunity and I hope that they will seize it," she said as the EU adopted its toughest measures on Iran with an immediate embargo on new oil contracts and a freeze of the country's Central Bank assets. About 90 percent of the EU's nearly $19 billion in Iranian imports in 2010 were oil and related products, according to the International Energy Agency.
On Monday, the U.S. added new sanctions on Bank Tejerat, Iran's third-largest bank. President Barack Obama has also approved new sanctions on Iran's powerful central bank that take effect later this year.
It follows U.S. sanctions enacted last month that target the Central Bank and its ability to sell petroleum abroad. The U.S. has delayed implementing the sanctions for at least six months, worried about sending the price of oil higher at a time when the global economy is struggling. On Monday, benchmark crude pushed above $99 a barrel after the EU sanctions and the renewed threats to close the Strait of Hormuz.
"This is not a question of security in the region," said German Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle. "It is a question of security in the world."
In Washington, a joint statement by Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner said the EU move "will sharpen the choice for Iran's leaders and increase their cost of defiance" over the country's nuclear program.
But there are no signals from Iran that the tougher sanctions will force concessions on the core dispute: Iran's ability to enrich uranium.
Iran's Foreign Ministry spokesman Ramin Mehmanparast was quoted by state TV as calling the EU sanctions "psychological warfare" to try to halt Iran's nuclear program.
Iran's leaders have consistently portrayed the country's nuclear fuel labs as a symbol of national pride and part of efforts to become the Muslim world's center for homegrown technology, including long-range missiles and rockets capable of reaching orbit. Iran says it seeks reactors only for energy and research, but the U.S. and others worry that the uranium enrichment will eventually lead to warhead-grade material.
Earlier this month, Iran said it was beginning enrichment at a new facility buried in a mountainside south of Tehran.
"Iran's right for uranium enrichment is nonnegotiable," said conservative Iranian lawmaker Ali Aghazadeh. "There is no reason for Iran to compromise over its rights. But Iran is open to discussions over concerns about its nuclear program."
Russia — which strongly opposed the EU sanctions — said in a statement: "Under pressure of this sort, Iran will not make any concessions or any corrections to its policies."
On the U.S. side, Obama may also be wary about political fallout from any negotiations in an election year.
No date has been set to resume talks. A more pressing task for OPEC's No. 2 producer is assessing the sting from the EU slap.
The 27-nation bloc imposed an immediate halt to all new contracts for Iranian crude and petroleum products while existing ones are allowed to run until July. It also placed a freeze on the assets of Iran's Central Bank.
About 80 percent of Iran's oil revenue comes from exports, and any measures that affect its ability to export oil could hit hard at its economy, which is already staggering from widespread unemployment and a sinking currency that has sharply driven up the relative costs for imported goods.
Theodore Karasik, a security expert at the Dubai-based Institute for Near East and Gulf Military Analysis, called the struggling Iranian economy a potential "weak spot" for the ruling system as the country moves toward parliamentary elections in early March.
Reflecting the uncertainties, the Iranian rial fell Monday to a new low of nearly 21,000 to the dollar, a 14 percent drop since Friday, currency dealers said. A year ago, the rial was trading at 10,500 to the dollar.
Samuel Ciszuk, a consultant at KBC Energy Economics in Britain, said the sanctions will likely cause crude prices to rise in Europe and soften in Asia in the short term as more Iranian oil heads east. The sanctions will make it even harder for Iran to find customers for its oil and shipping companies willing to carry it.
"Iranian crude is being made the last choice. ... You may be able to get it at a discount (outside the West), but how stable is the supply?" he said.
In order to sell supplies once destined for Europe, Iran may need to offer discounts to its main buyers in Asia such as Japan, South Korea and China. Ciszuk said there hasn't been much sign Tehran is willing to do this so far, and it may prefer for now to divert the excess into storage.
U.S. officials, meanwhile, have been pressing Tehran's main Asian oil markets to turn away from Iran.
China — which counts on Iran as its third-biggest oil supplier — has rejected sanctions and called for negotiations over Iran's nuclear program.
South Korea, which relies on Iran for up to 10 percent of its oil supplies, was noncommittal on the U.S. sanctions. Japan, which imports about 9 percent of its oil from Iran, gave mixed signals but most recently expressed concern about how the sanctions would affect Japanese banks.
But all three nations sent high-profile delegations — including one led by Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao — to oil-rich Gulf Arab states this month for talks that left Iran fearful of efforts to undercut its crude exports.
Within Iran, meanwhile, security officials are on higher alert over what they claim is a covert campaign led by Israel's Mossad and backed by the U.S. and Britain. On Jan. 11, a magnetic bomb placed on a car killed scientist who worked at Iran's main uranium enrichment facility. It was at least the fourth targeted killing of a nuclear-related researcher in two years.
The U.S. denied any role in the January attack, but Israel's military chief hinted that Iran could face incidents that happen "unnaturally."
After the sanctions vote, British Prime Minister David Cameron, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Nicolas Sarkozy issued a joint statement urging Iran to suspend its sensitive nuclear activities.
"Our message is clear," the statement said. "We have no quarrel with the Iranian people. But the Iranian leadership has failed to restore international confidence in the exclusively peaceful nature of its nuclear program. We will not accept Iran acquiring a nuclear weapon."
___
Murphy reported from Dubai, United Arab Emirates. Associated Press writers Don Melvin in Brussels, Robert Burns in Washington and Adam Schreck in Dubai contributed to this report.

[eaglethebeagle]

A top American Middle East diplomat visited Moscow Tuesday as part of an international effort to get Russia to support a UN Security Council resolution demanding an end to the violence in Syria, which has killed well over 5,000 people since last spring.
Assistant Secretary of State for Near East Affairs Jeff Feltman was in Moscow as part of an increasingly frantic international effort to intervene in the troubled Middle Eastern country, American officials said.
"Issue number one on [Feltman's] agenda there is Syria and our interest in being able to move forward in the UN Security Council and talking about how the situation looks after the Arab League report over the weekend," State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland told journalists at a press briefing Monday.
Feltman's trip came as five Persian Gulf states on Tuesday joined Saudi Arabia in announcing they are withdrawing from a month-old Arab League monitoring mission to Syria because of the observers' inability to curb Bashar al-Assad's brutal crackdown, and instead are turning their hopes for intervention to the United Nations.
"The Syrian regime did not implement the Arab plan under existing Arab pressure, so there was no other way except to approach the Security Council," one Arab League ambassador told Reuters, speaking anonymously to explain the decision to withdraw some 55 members of the 165-member Arab League team.
American officials are also expected to ask Moscow about media reports that it has inked a deal to sell combat jets to the Assad regime, the State Department said.
"Obviously, if [the media reports are] accurate, it would be quite concerning," Nuland said Tuesday. "But as we've been saying for months, our firm belief is that any country that is still trading in weapons and armaments with Syria really needs to think twice, because they are on the wrong side of history and those weapons can be used against innocents, and have been."
Over the weekend, the State Department said it is considering closing the U.S. embassy in Syria due to continued security concerns, but it had not yet decided whether to do so. On Monday, it again issued a warning urging American citizens to leave Syria.



I post this related to Russia because it is very clear that Russia its leaders specifically are not interested in human rights nor are they concerned with tyrants gaining weapons and nuclear arms as in iran. So they are dealing with syria as syria butchers its own people. russia is not concerned for peace as long as they can sell weapons and nuclear secrets for cash to line putins pockets.

[eaglethebeagle]

DAVOS, Switzerland (AP) — Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak said Friday the world must quickly stop Iran from reaching the point where even a "surgical" military strike could not block it from obtaining nuclear weapons.
Amid fears that Israel is nearing a decision to attack Iran's nuclear program, Barak said tougher international sanctions are needed against Tehran's oil and banks so that "we all will know early enough whether the Iranians are ready to give up their nuclear weapons program."
Iran insists its atomic program is aimed only at producing energy and research, but it has refused to consider giving up its ability to enrich uranium.
The United Nations has imposed four rounds of sanctions against Iran, but veto-wielding Russia and China say they see no need for additional punitive measures. That has left the U.S. and the European Union to try to pressure other countries to follow their lead and impose even tougher sanctions.
"We are determined to prevent Iran from turning nuclear. And even the American president and opinion leaders have said that no option should be removed from the table and Iran should be blocked from turning nuclear," Barak told reporters during the annual meeting of the World Economic Forum.
"It seems to us to be urgent, because the Iranians are deliberately drifting into what we call an immunity zone where practically no surgical operation could block them," he said.
But while Barak called it "a challenge for the whole world" to prevent a nuclear-armed Iran, he stopped short of confirming any action that could further stoke Washington's concern about a possible Israeli military strike.
Iran has accused Israel of masterminding the killing of Iranian scientists involved in the nuclear program, but Barak declined to comment on that.
Earlier, he told a panel discussion that "a stable world order" is incompatible with a nuclear-armed Iran because countries such as Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Egypt will all want the bomb.
"This will be the end of any nonproliferation regime," Barak said. "The major powers in the region will all feel compelled to turn nuclear."
Separately, U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon urged a resumption of dialogue between Western powers and Iran on the nuclear issue.
He said Friday that Tehran must comply with Security Council resolutions and prove conclusively that its nuclear program is not directed at making arms.
"The onus is on Iran," Ban said at a press conference. "They have to prove themselves that their nuclear development program is genuinely for peaceful purposes, which they have not done yet."
Ban expressed concern about the most recent report of the International Atomic Energy Agency, which strongly suggested Iran's nuclear program has a military purpose.
On Thursday, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said Iran is ready to revive talks with the U.S. and other world powers but suggested that Tehran's foes will have to make compromises to prevent negotiations from again collapsing in stalemate.
Iran says it won't give up its right to enrich uranium and produce nuclear fuel, but it has offered to allow IAEA inspectors to visit its nuclear sites to ensure that the program won't be weaponized.
IAEA chief Yukiya Amano said at a Davos session that "we do not have that much confidence if Iran has declared everything" and its best information "indicates that Iran has engaged in activities relevant to nuclear explosive devices."
"For now they do not have the capacity to manufacture the fuel," he said. "But in the future, we don't know."
Amano added that an IAEA mission would be sent Saturday to address this issue.
"If the enrichment to higher levels is in a declared facility, we can find it very quickly," he said. "The problem is we do not know if these are all the declared facilities."
Richard Haass, a former top U.S. diplomat who heads the Council on Foreign Relations, said international law justifies a pre-emptive strike only to stave off an "imminent" attack.
"The real question is can Iran assure us what it is not doing?" he said.
Israeli defense officials said Friday that new European sanctions on Iran could constrain Israel. They said any Israeli strike against Iranian nuclear facilities may lack international legitimacy while the world waits to see the effects of the new measures.
The officials spoke Friday on condition of anonymity because they weren't authorized to discuss sensitive military matters.
Much of the West agrees with Israel that Iran, despite its denials, is developing nuclear weapons technology. But the United States clearly worries that a military attack could backfire, by dividing international opposition to Iran — and send oil prices skyrocketing.
Israel has attacked nuclear sites in foreign countries before. In 1981, Israeli warplanes destroyed an unfinished Iraqi nuclear reactor. In 2007, Israeli aircraft destroyed a site in Syria that the U.N. nuclear watchdog deemed to be a secretly built nuclear reactor.
But Israel is unlikely to strike without coordinating with the Americans, who maintain forces on aircraft carriers and military bases in the Gulf.
In spite of his tough words to Iran, Ban said that dialogue among the "three-plus-three" — Germany, France and Britain plus Russia, China and the United States — is the path forward.
"There is no other alternative for addressing this crisis than peaceful ... resolution through dialogue," said Ban.
Ban noted that there have been a total of five Security Council resolutions so far on the Iranian nuclear program, four calling for sanctions.
It's not just the West that is concerned.
"We take it for granted Iran would want nuclear weapons," Yan Xuetong, dean of the Institute of Modern International Studies at Tsinghua University, said of China. "Certainly, China is working very hard with the international community to prevent this."
___
John Daniszewski in Davos and Tia Goldenberg in Jerusalem contributed to this report.

[eaglethebeagle]

US Defense Secretary Leon Panetta believes there is a "strong possibility" that Israel will strike Iran's nuclear installations this spring, the Washington Post said Thursday in an editorial.
When asked about the opinion piece by reporters travelling with him to a NATO meeting in Brussels, Panetta brushed it aside.
"I'm not going to comment on that. David Ignatius can write what he will but with regards with what I think and what I view, I consider that to be an area that belongs to me and nobody else," he said.
"Israel indicated they're considering this (a strike), we've indicated our concerns," he added.
The Post columnist said Panetta "believes there is a strong likelihood that Israel will strike Iran in April, May or June before Iran enters what Israelis described as a 'zone of immunity' to commence building a nuclear bomb."
President Barack Obama and Panetta are "said to have cautioned the Israelis that the United States opposes an attack, believing that it would derail an increasingly successful international economic sanctions program and other non-military efforts to stop Iran from crossing the threshold," he said.
"But the White House hasn’t yet decided precisely how the United States would respond if the Israelis do attack."
Panetta said Sunday in an interview with CBS that Iran needed "about a year" to produce enough enriched uranium for a nuclear weapon, and one or two more years to "put it on a deliverable vehicle."
Iran insists its nuclear project is peaceful and has threatened retaliation over the fresh sanctions, including possibly disrupting shipping through the strategic Strait of Hormuz.
Israeli media reported in October last year that the option of pre-emptive air strikes on Iran was opposed by the country's intelligence services but favored by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defence Minister Ehud Barak.
Israeli television said Mossad chief Tamir Pardo raised the possibility of a unilateral strike on Iran during a visit last week to Washington.

[eaglethebeagle]

Is Iran trying to develop a missile that could reach the "Great Satan"?

Related stories

Q&A: What's with the war talk surrounding Iran?
Why many Iranian-Americans are wary of Tehran, and vice versa
August surprise? Iran could have fuel for bomb before US election, study says.
Topics
Middle East Politics Israeli Politics Iranian Politics
The missile under construction at an Iranian research-and-development facility, which was damaged by a mysterious explosion in November, was a long-range missile prototype with a range of 6,000 miles – enough to hit the United States, a senior Israeli official said Thursday in a speech to a defense and security forum.

At the time of the Nov. 12 explosion at a facility some 30 miles outside Tehran, Iranian officials insisted that the suspicious blast was an accident. It occurred, they said, during experimentation on a medium-range missile – one capable of reaching Israel.

RECOMMENDED: Top 4 threats against America – the good and bad news

But on Thursday, Moshe Yaalon, Israel’s vice prime minister and minister of strategic affairs, said in a speech outside Tel Aviv that the missile under development actually had a range closer to 6,000 miles.

“That’s the Great Satan,” Mr. Yaalon said, using the well-known pejorative term that Iranian officials have used for the US. “It was aimed at America, not at us.”

If true, Yaalon’s claim would put Iran’s missile development program into a new league. Until now, most arms analysts have estimated that the range of Iranian missiles is limited to about 1,500 miles – enough, to be sure, to reach Israel and parts of Europe. But analysts have speculated very little on research into or development of a longer-range missile.

One Washington weapons research organization, the Institute for Science and International Security, did conclude in a late November report on the Iranian facility explosion that the blast occurred just as Iran had achieved “a major milestone in the development of a new missile.”

The institute said its investigation revealed that the explosion took place during a tricky and volatile procedure involving a missile engine. Postexplosion speculation had centered on sabotage that might have been part of what many experts assume is a covert war against Iran’s nuclear and weapons programs, being carried out by Israel, the US, and perhaps other Western countries.

But the claim issued by Yaalon, who just last week was in Washington to confer with US officials on Iran’s nuclear program, may also have been aimed at convincing the US that Iran poses a dangerous and growing threat – not just to Israel and the Middle East region, but also to countries farther afield.

Yaalon said in his speech that the West does not yet realize how much of a threat is posed by Iran, which he called “a nightmare for the free world.” In reality, he said, Israel in the Iranian regime’s eyes is only the “little Satan,” while America, as leader of the West, is “the larger Satan.”

Q-and-A: What's with the war talk surrounding Iran?

[eaglethebeagle]

TEHRAN (Reuters) - Iran will target any country used as a launchpad for attacks against its soil, the deputy Revolutionary Guards commander said, expanding Tehran's range of threats in an increasingly volatile stand-off with world powers over its nuclear ambitions.
Last week, Iran's supreme clerical leader threatened reprisals for the West's new ban on Iranian oil exports and the U.S. defense secretary was quoted as saying Israel was likely to bomb Iran within months to stop it assembling nuclear weapons.
Although broadened and sharpened financial sanctions have begun to inflict serious economic pain in Iran, its oil minister asserted on Saturday it would make no nuclear retreat even if its crude oil exports ground to a halt.
Iran says its nuclear program is for civilian energy purposes. But its recent shift of uranium enrichment to a mountain bunker possibly impervious to conventional bombing, and refusal to negotiate peaceful guarantees for the program or open up to U.N. nuclear inspectors, have thickened an atmosphere of brewing confrontation, raising fears for Gulf oil supplies.
"Any spot used by the enemy for hostile operations against Iran will be subjected to retaliatory aggression by our armed forces," Hossein Salami, deputy head of the elite Revolutionary Guards, told the semi-official Fars news agency on Sunday.
The Guards began two days of military maneuvers in southern Iran on Saturday in another show of force for Iran's adversaries associated with tensions over its disputed nuclear program.
The United States and Israel, Iran's arch-enemies, have not ruled out a military strike on Tehran if diplomacy fails to resolve the nuclear stalemate.
Salami did not identify which countries he meant as possible hosts for military action against it.
The six, U.S.-allied Arab states in the Gulf Cooperation Council, situated on the other side of the vital oil exporting waterway from Iran, have said they would not allow their territories to be used for attacks on the Islamic Republic.
But analysts say that if Iran retaliated for an attack launched from outside the region by targeting U.S. facilities in Gulf Arab states, Washington might pressure the host nations to permit those bases to hit back, arguing they should have the right to defend themselves.
The Gulf states that host U.S. military facilities are Qatar, Bahrain and Kuwait.
THREAT TO SHUT VITAL OIL CHANNEL
Iran has warned its response to any such strike will be "painful," threatening to target Israel and U.S. bases in the Gulf, along with closing the Strait of Hormuz used by one third of the world's seaborne oil traffic.
Betraying nervousness about possible blowback from any military strike on Iran, two of its neighbors - Qatar and Turkey - urged the West on Sunday to make greater efforts to negotiate a solution to the nuclear row.
Speaking at the annual Munich Security Conference attended by top world policymakers, Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu said an attack would be a "disaster" and the dispute over Iran's nuclear program could be ended very rapidly.
"If there is strong political will and mutual confidence being established, this issue could be resolved in a few days," he said. "The technical disputes are not so big. The problem is mutual confidence and strong political will."
He added: "A military option will create a disaster in our region. So before that disaster, everybody must be serious in negotiations. We hope soon both sides will meet again but this time there will be a complete result."
Turkey was the venue of the last talks between Western powers and Iran a year ago which ended in stalemate because participants could not even agree on an agenda.
Qatari Foreign Minister Khalid Mohamed al-Attiyah said an attack "is not a solution, and tightening the embargo on Iran will make the scenario worse.
"I believe that with our allies and friends in the West we should open a serious dialogue with the Iranians to get out of this dilemma. This is what we feel in our region."
Tehran has warned several times it may seal off the Strait of Hormuz, throttling the supply of Gulf crude and gas, if attacked or if sanctions mean it cannot export its oil.
A military strike on Iran and Iran's response, which might include an attack on the oilfields of No. 1 exporter Saudi Arabia, would send oil prices soaring, which could seriously harm the global economy.
(Additional reporting by William Maclean in Munich, Michael Holden in London,; Writing by Mark Heinrich; Editing by Sophie Hares)

[eaglethebeagle]

WASHINGTON/TEHRAN (Reuters) - President Barack Obama said on Sunday there were important risks to consider before any military strike against Iran and made clear he does not want to see more conflict in the oil-producing Gulf region.
In a television interview, Obama also said he did not believe Tehran had the "intentions or capabilities" to attack the United States, playing down the threats from Tehran and saying he wanted a diplomatic end to the nuclear standoff.
"Any kind of additional military activity inside the Gulf is disruptive and has a big effect on us. It could have a big effect on oil prices. We've still got troops in Afghanistan, which borders Iran. And so our preferred solution here is diplomatic," Obama said.
His comments echoed concerns expressed by earlier by Iran's neighbor Turkey that an attack on Iran would be disastrous.
Obama, who is up for re-election in November, has ended the U.S. war in Iraq and is winding down combat in Afghanistan amid growing public discontent about American war spending at a time when the economy remains shaky.
He said Israel had not yet decided what to do in response to the escalating tension but was "rightly" concerned about Tehran's plans.
"My number one priority continues to be the security of the United States, but also the security of Israel, and we are going to make sure that we work in lockstep as we proceed to try to solve this, hopefully diplomatically," he told NBC.
Iranian leaders have responded sharply to speculation that Israel could bomb Iran within months to stop it from assembling nuclear weapons, threatening to retaliate against any country that launches an attack against the Islamic Republic.
Iran says its nuclear program is meant to produce energy, not weapons.
But its recent shift of uranium enrichment to a mountain bunker - possibly impervious to conventional bombing - and refusal to negotiate peaceful guarantees for the program or open up to U.N. inspectors have raised fears about Iran's ambitions as well as concerns about Gulf oil supplies.
'DISASTER'
Although tough sanctions from the United States and Europe have begun to inflict economic pain in Iran, its oil minister asserted on Saturday it would make no nuclear retreat even if its energy exports ground to a halt.
Betraying nervousness about the possibility of a military strike on Iran, two of its neighbors - Qatar and Turkey - urged Western powers on Sunday to make greater efforts to negotiate a solution to the nuclear dispute.
Speaking at a security conference in Munich, Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu said an attack would be a disaster and suggested the dispute over Iran's nuclear program could be ended very rapidly.
"If there is strong political will and mutual confidence being established, this issue could be resolved in a few days," he said. "The technical disputes are not so big. The problem is mutual confidence and strong political will."
He added: "A military option will create a disaster in our region. So before that disaster, everybody must be serious in negotiations. We hope soon both sides will meet again but this time there will be a complete result."
Qatari Deputy Foreign Minister Khalid Mohamed al-Attiyah said an attack "is not a solution."
"I believe that with our allies and friends in the West we should open a serious dialogue with the Iranians to get out of this dilemma. This is what we feel in our region," he said.
Turkey hosted talks between Western powers and Iran a year ago that ended in stalemate because the participants could not agree on an agenda.
VOLATILE REGION
Despite Obama's stated preference for a diplomatic solution, he said from the White House on Sunday he would not take options off the table to stop Iran from getting nuclear weapons.
"We're going to do everything we can to prevent Iran from getting a nuclear weapon and creating an arms race - a nuclear arms race - in a volatile region," he said in the interview.
Any military strike on Iran, which might include an attack on the oilfields of No. 1 exporter Saudi Arabia, could send oil prices soaring, which could seriously harm the global economy.
Tehran has warned its response to any such strike would be "painful," threatening to target Israel and U.S. bases in the Gulf, and warning it may close the Strait of Hormuz used by one third of the world's seaborne oil traffic.
The elite Revolutionary Guards began two days of military maneuvers in southern Iran on Saturday in a show of force for Iran's adversaries. On Sunday, the deputy of that unit said Iran was ready to attack any country whose territory is used by "enemies" to launch a military strike against it.
"Any spot used by the enemy for hostile operations against Iran will be subjected to retaliatory aggression by our armed forces," Hossein Salami told the semi-official Fars news agency. The Gulf states that host U.S. military facilities are Qatar, Bahrain and Kuwait.
Experts currently estimate the longest range of an Iranian missile to be 1,500 miles, capable of reaching Israel and Europe. Las week, Israeli Vice Prime Minister Moshe Yaalon said Iran had been working on a missile that could strike the United States, with a range of 6,000 miles.
Asked about that risk, Obama said there was little sign of a pending Iranian attack on U.S. soil. "We don't see any evidence they have those intentions or capabilities right now," he said.
(Additional reporting by William Maclean in Munich, Michael Holden in London and Aruna Viswanatha in Washington; Writing by Laura MacInnis; Editing by Doina Chiacu)




I love the bullshit political speak. They are saying lets have serious discussions to avoid a military conflict. Hey my man what the hell have we been trying to do for the last 3 to 5 years? Iran has against the world decided to not allow nuke inspections by anyone. They are now outwardly speaking of doing what they have said before they will do and that is kill Jews and destroy Israel. They have made the exact same threat to America and yet lets have more serious talks to avoid a war. Well if you wait too long you then must counter-strike after you have lost innocent lives letting the enemy take the first shot.

[eaglethebeagle]

It’s not a case of déjÃ* vu.
The American public again appears supportive of starting a war in the Middle East, with two polls indicating a near-majority would support a military attack on Iran to prevent the country from developing nuclear weapons.
In a Rasmussen poll released Monday, 48 percent of respondents said they would want the United States to assist Israel if it choses to unilaterally attack Iran.
A poll conducted by The Hill found that 49 percent believe the U.S. should be willing to use military force to prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons. Only 31 percent disagreed.
The findings come in the midst of the Republican presidential race. Mitt Romney, Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum have indicated a willingness to attack Iran, whereas Ron Paul has vehemently opposed a hypothetical attack and expressed concern about “war propaganda,” comparing the situation to the lead-up to the Iraq war.
Iran has a population of approximately 75 million people — more than twice the population of Iraq — and is about four times larger in area.
The Iraq War ended in December after nearly nine years of American involvement, which included thousands of American casualties and an increasingly skeptical public.
During a Feb. 5 interview with Matt Lauer, President Barack Obama said of Iran, “We’re not taking any options off the table.”
“Our preferred solution is diplomatic,” Obama said, “[but] I’ve been very clear that we’re going to do everything we can to prevent Iran from getting a nuclear weapon and creating an arms race — a nuclear arms race — in a volatile region.”

[eaglethebeagle]

The U.S. and Israel are publicly disagreeing over timing for a potential attack on Iran’s disputed nuclear facilities, as that nation’s leader said it won’t back down.
The U.S. and Israel have a “significant analytic difference” over estimates of how close Iran is to shielding its nuclear program from attack, Aaron David Miller, a former Mideast peace negotiator in the Clinton administration, said today.
“There’s a growing concern -- more than a concern -- that the Israelis, in order to protect themselves, might launch a strike without approval, warning or even foreknowledge,” he said in an interview.
The differing views were underscored by public comments this week by senior Israeli and U.S. defense officials.
Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak said yesterday that Israel must consider conducting “an operation” before Iran reaches an “immunity zone,” referring to Iran’s goal of protecting its uranium enrichment and other nuclear operations by moving them to deep underground facilities such as one at Fordo, near the holy city of Qom.
‘Nearing Readiness’
“The world has no doubt that Iran’s nuclear program is steadily nearing readiness and is about to enter an immunity zone,” Barak said in an address to the annual Herzliya Conference at the Interdisciplinary Center campus north of Tel Aviv. “If the sanctions don’t achieve their goal of halting Iran’s nuclear weapons program, there will arise the need of weighing an operation,” Barak said.
The U.S. holds the view that “there is still time and space to pursue diplomacy” with Iran over its nuclear program, State Department spokesman Mark Toner said today in Washington. He added that the U.S. “is absolutely committed to preventing Iran from getting nuclear weapons.”
In Iran, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said today that his nation won’t abandon its nuclear efforts and warned that a strike against the nuclear program would damage U.S. interests in the Middle East “10 times over,” according to the Associated Press. He said, without providing details, that he would disclose a letter that he said President Barack Obama sent Iran’s leaders.
Referring to Israel as a “cancerous tumor,” Khamenei said in his Friday sermon that “if any nation or any group confronts the Zionist regime, we will help.” He said that Iran has assisted anti-Israel groups such as Hezbollah and the Palestinian Hamas.
SWIFT Sanctions
The U.S. Senate Banking Committee unanimously approved yesterday a bill that would increase the economic pressure on Iran. The proposal targets Iran-related banking transactions, Iran’s national oil company and leading tanker fleet, joint ventures in mining and energy projects. It also would require corporate disclosure of Iran-related activity to the Securities and Exchange Commission.
One provision calls on the administration to provide a report to Congress within 60 days detailing Iran-related financial transactions facilitated by the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication, the Belgian member-owned institution known as Swift, and its competitors. The measure would give the president authority to sanction Swift to cut off such services. A similar bill, with stronger language mandating the imposition of sanctions, was submitted in the House yesterday.
Within Israel, there isn’t consensus that striking Iran is either good or necessary. Ephraim Halevy, a former head of Israel’s Mossad security agency, is one of two former intelligence chiefs who have spoken against a strike.
Panetta’s Concerns
U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta declined to comment directly on a report by Washington Post columnist David Ignatius that Panetta believes there is a strong likelihood Israel will strike Iran in April, May or June. Panetta and other U.S. officials have repeatedly warned Israel not to act alone.
“Israel has indicated that they’re considering this” through public statements, Panetta told reporters traveling with him yesterday in Brussels. “And we have indicated our concerns.”
Israelis think Iran will reach the immunity zone in “half the time the Americans think it will,” Miller said. “To take that difference and talk about a growing rift” between Israel and the U.S. “is by and large an overstatement,” he said.
Obama-Netanyahu Relations
Tension between Obama and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu may be complicating communications on the issue, a U.S. defense official said. “There’s no love lost between the two of them, and there’s a trust deficit,” said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he wasn’t authorized to speak to the news media.
Defense officials have been concerned that Obama hasn’t warned Netanyahu directly enough about the risks of a Israeli preemptive strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities, including for U.S. interests in the region such as bases in in Kuwait, Bahrain and Qatar, according to the official.
James Clapper, the U.S. director of national intelligence, said Jan. 31 that communication with Israel was good. “We’re doing a lot with the Israelis, working together with them,” he told the Senate intelligence panel.
Unknown Intentions
The chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Martin Dempsey, has said it is “premature” to resort to military force because sanctions are starting to have an impact on Iran. In a Jan. 26 interview with National Journal, Dempsey said he delivered a similar message of caution to Israel’s top leadership during a visit to the Jewish state in early January.
U.S. intelligence agencies think Iran is developing capabilities to produce nuclear weapons “should it choose to do so,” said Clapper.
“We do not know, however, if Iran will eventually decide to build nuclear weapons,” he said.
While leaders of both countries agree that time must be given to gauge the impact of the latest set of economic sanctions on Iran, Israel’s patience is shorter than that of the U.S., Ephraim Kam, deputy director of Tel Aviv University’s Institute for National Security Studies, said.
‘Too Late’
“It will take at least six months to see whether sanctions are effective and by then it may be too late,” said Kam, author of the 2007 book, “A Nuclear Iran: What Does it Mean, and What Can be Done.”
“We’re definitely using different clocks,” he said.
Israeli Army Chief of Staff Lieutenant-General Benny Gantz told the Herzliya conference on Feb. 1 that his nation must be “willing to deploy” its military assets because Iran may be within a year of gaining nuclear weapons capability. Gantz said international sanctions are starting to show some results.
Moshe Yaalon, Israel’s vice prime minister and its former top military commander, played down Iran’s ability to shelter its activities from a military attack. “It’s possible to strike all Iran’s facilities, and I say that out of my experience as IDF chief of staff,” he said at the conference, referring to the Israeli Defense Forces.
The U.S., its European allies and the International Atomic Energy Agency have challenged the government in Tehran to prove that its nuclear work is intended only for energy and medical research, as Iranian officials maintain.
Mehdi Khalaji, an Iran specialist at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, said in an interview that he doubts that the U.S. or Iran will launch a military strike this year. Rather, he cited the possibility than Iran might stage a provocation and use any response as an excuse to launch an asymmetrical attack against U.S. and Israel targets using proxies such as Hezbollah.
To contact the reporters on this story: Nicole Gaouette in Washington at ngaouette@bloomberg.net; Jonathan Ferziger in Tel Aviv at jferziger@bloomberg.net
To contact the editor responsible for this story: John Walcott at jwalcott9@bloomberg.net

[eaglethebeagle]

WASHINGTON (AP) — Additional U.S. sanctions on Iran are more significant for their timing than their immediate effect on Iran's economy, coming as the United States and its allies are arguing that Israel should hold off on any military strike on Iranian nuclear facilities to allow more time for sanctions to work.
The U.S. ordered tough new penalties Monday to give U.S. banks additional powers to freeze assets linked to the Iranian government and close loopholes that officials say Iran has used to move money despite earlier restrictions imposed by the U.S. and Europe.
Israelis officials have been open about their worry that Iran could be on the brink of a bomb by this summer and that this spring offers the last window of opportunity to destroy bomb-related facilities. Many Israeli officials believe that sanctions only give Iran time to move its nuclear program underground, out of reach of Israeli military strikes.
Nonetheless, the sanctions were endorsed Tuesday by Israel's hawkish foreign minister, Avigdor Lieberman.
"We appreciate the very crucial decision regarding the sanctions," Lieberman told reporters in Washington, in between meetings with U.S. senators. "We are awaiting that the Iranians, they will give up their nuclear ambitions," said Lieberman, who also met with Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton.
Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., said the sanctions are not doing enough. "We are pleased to see increasing sanctions but so far they have not been deterred from their course," he said of Iranian leaders.
Like previous economic penalties, these are intended to persuade Iran to back off what the West contends is a drive to build a nuclear bomb. Israel increasingly is concerned that sanctions will never be enough to make Iran drop what has become a national priority for a clerical regime that has vowed to wipe Israel off the map.
The faster and more effectively the sanctions can be seen to work, the better the case to shelve any plan by Israel to bomb Iran, a pre-emptory move that could ignite a new Mideast war. Taking this initial step against the Iranian Central Bank, the first time the U.S. has directly gone after that major institution, is one way the Obama administration can show momentum now.
In Tehran, Ramin Mehmanparast, the foreign ministry spokesman, dismissed the sanctions as "propaganda." He said Iran's central bank has no financial transactions with the United States and would not be affected by the measures. "Many of these (U.S.) activities are in the sphere of psychological war and propaganda, and they cannot affect our work," he said.
"Many of these (U.S.) activities are in the sphere of psychological war and propaganda, and they cannot affect our work," he said.
Israel considers Iran to be its most dangerous enemy and has vowed to prevent it from going nuclear. But an Israeli official in Jerusalem on Monday said the country's prime minister has told Cabinet members not to be so outspoken about the possibility of attacking Iran.
The official spoke on condition of anonymity because he was discussing a closed meeting.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu himself often has commented about keeping all options on the table in dealing with Iran.
The new, stricter sanctions, authorized in legislation that President Barack Obama signed in December, will be enforced under an order he signed only now.
The U.S. and Europe want to deprive Iran of the oil income it needs to run its government and pay for the nuclear program. But many experts believe Iran will be able to find other buyers outside Europe.
The European Union announced last month it would ban the import of Iranian crude oil starting in July. The U.S. doesn't buy Iranian oil, but last month it placed sanctions on Iran's banks to make it harder for the nation to sell crude. The U.S., however, has delayed implementing those sanctions for at least six months because it is worried about sending oil prices higher at a time when the world economy is struggling. Iran exports about 3 percent of the world's oil.
White House spokesman Jay Carney denied that Monday's unexpected announcement of new banking sanctions was a sign of heightened worry about an Israeli attack.
"There has been a steady increase in our sanctions activity and this is part of that escalation," he said.
Carney said U.S. sanctions on Iran already are squeezing Iran's economy and have exacerbated tensions within the Iranian leadership.
"There is no question that the impact of the isolation on Iran and the economic sanctions on Iran have caused added turmoil within Iran," he said.
Iran is the world's third-largest exporter of crude oil, giving its leaders financial resources and leverage to withstand outside pressure. Last year, Iran generated $100 billion in revenue from oil, up from $20 billion a decade ago, according to IHS CERA, an energy consulting firm.
If Iranian oil is prevented from getting to market, other suppliers could make up the difference. The U.S. has been pressuring other Middle East and African nations to step up production for sale to Europe. Saudi Arabia has said it could increase production to make up for any lost Iranian crude.
Iran's disputed nuclear program became a global concern more than five years ago, when the extent of the country's research and uranium enrichment began to be known. Since then a web of international economic and other sanctions have failed to stop Iran's progress toward a point when it could build one or more nuclear devices.
U.S. intelligence agencies say Iran is indeed close to that ability but has not yet decided to go ahead. Iran says its nuclear program is peaceful and denounces sanctions as aggression.
The White House previously had said it would take months to evaluate the likely effect on the fragile global economy before taking the next large steps, including new penalties on the Central Bank.
Now, U.S. institutions are required to seize any Iranian state assets they come across, rather than rejecting the transaction involved.
The value of Iranian assets affected by the new order was not clear. Iran does almost no direct business with the United States after three decades of enmity, but its money moves through the world financial system and its oil is sold in dollars.
___
AP writer Donna Cassata contributed to this report.

[eaglethebeagle]

Russia is ready to roll with WW3


http://www.memritv.org/clip/en/3304.htm

[eaglethebeagle]

WASHINGTON (AP) — The prospect of conflict with Iran has eclipsed Afghanistan as the key national security issue with head-spinning speed. After years of bad blood and an international impasse over Iran's disputed nuclear program, why does the threat of war seem so suddenly upon us?
The short answer is that Iran has used the years of deadlock over whether it was pursuing a bomb to get within roughly 12 months of being able to build one. Iran claims its nuclear program is not aimed at building a bomb, but it has refused to drop suspect elements of the program.
Time is running short for Iran to back down without a fight. Time is also running short for either the United States or Israel to mount a preemptive military strike on Iran's nuclear sites, something that seemed far-fetched until fairly recently. It is still unlikely, and for the U.S. represents the last worst option to stop an Iranian bomb.
The United States has a "very good estimate" of when Iran could produce a weapon, President Barack Obama said this week. He said that while he believes the standoff with Iran over its nuclear program can still be resolved through diplomacy, the U.S. has done extensive planning on a range of options.
"We are prepared to exercise these options should they arise," Obama said during an interview with NBC. He said Israel has not made a decision about whether to launch its own strike.
Diplomacy and economic coercion are the main focus for the U.S. and its allies, and the preferred option. But the increasingly strong warnings from Obama and other leaders reflect a global consensus that Iran is closer than ever to joining the nuclear club.
In November, the International Atomic Energy Agency issued a scathing assessment of the Iranian nuclear program, calling it disturbing and possibly dangerous. The IAEA, a U.N. body, said it had "serious concerns regarding possible military dimensions" of a program Iran claims is not intended to guild a weapon.
Close U.S. ally Israel is driving much of the burst of international attention now focused on the likelihood of an Iranian bomb and what to do about it.
"When a country that refers to you as a 'cancerous tumor' is inching, however slowly, toward a nuclear weapons capability, it's understandably difficult to relax and keep quiet," said Karim Sadjadpour, an Iran exert at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu frequently draws parallels between modern-day Iran and Nazi Germany on the eve of the Holocaust. Last week, Defense Minister Ehud Barak said there is a growing global understanding that military action may be necessary.
For Obama, the threat that the United States might use military force must ring true to Iranian leaders while not sounding alarmist to Americans or jittery oil markets. He has been very cautious, which is why his recent, blunter words are notable.
With the clock in mind, the Obama administration is moving much faster than expected to apply the heaviest economic penalties yet on Iran and the oil trade it relies on. This week came a surprise announcement of new sanctions on Iran's central bank, a key to the regime's oil profits.
Previous rounds of penalties have not changed Iran's course, but the U.S. and Europe, which just approved a first-ever oil embargo, argue that they finally have Iran's attention. The new oil-focused sanctions are intended to cut the revenue Iran's rulers can collect from the country's oil business without roiling oil markets.
While Obama has until late June to make a final decision on how to implement even stronger financial sanctions, a person advising the administration on the penalties said an announcement probably would come well ahead of that deadline. The adviser spoke on condition of anonymity because the White House plan is not final.
Among the factors pushing up a decision: the possibility of a unilateral Israeli strike and the desire to avoid disrupting oil markets in the summer, when gasoline prices are usually already higher.
With Republican presidential candidates questioning Obama's toughness on Iran, the White House also has a political interest in appearing to take a proactive approach to enforce the sanctions, rather than simply responding to a congressional deadline, the adviser said.
The threat of military action is also used to strengthen the diplomacy.
Countries like China, a major buyer of Iranian oil, don't like sanctions but go along because opposing them may increase the likelihood of military action that would spike prices for the oil they buy, Sadjadpour said.
White House national security spokesman Tommy Vietor would not comment on whether the timetable is being moved up. He rejected the idea that the administration is under the gun.
"We said all options on are on the table. That is not bellicose and that is not new," Vietor said. "What we're trying to do is lead Iran to make a choice."
Israel has less time to act than the U.S. if it chose to mount a strike alone, U.S. and other officials said. Because Israel has less firepower, its leaders assess that a unilateral strike would be most effective before summer. After that, by Israeli estimates, Iran may have been able to move too much of its nuclear operation underground, beyond the range of Israeli missile and bomb attacks.
There is another reason that Israeli warnings are growing louder. Although Israel and the United States generally agree on the technical questions surrounding an Iranian bomb, they disagree about how much time that leaves for diplomacy or a last-ditch military strike.
Israeli officials who favor a strike do not want to wait for Iran to amass enough material to build a bomb, a debatable moment that could be as little as six months away. U.S. officials are concerned that the ability to make a bomb is not enough justification for a strike. They have argued there is 18 months or more of flexibility before Iran would pose an immediate nuclear threat.
Matthew Kroenig, a nuclear expert at the Council on Foreign Relations who recently spent a year advising the Pentagon on Iran options, agrees that the window for an effective strike by either country is closing.
"The game is over" when Iran amasses enough highly enriched uranium for a weapon, Kroenig said. "If you wait until they screw together a nuclear bomb, it's too late."
Administration officials are in discussions with several countries, including Japan, South Korea, China and India, to try to get commitments on how much they may be willing to reduce their imports from Iran. Iran exports about 3 percent of the world's oil and increasingly has focused on selling to customers in Asia as Western markets have dried up.
Talks are also under way with Turkey, South Africa, Sri Lanka, Pakistan and Malaysia, all main buyers of Iranian crude.
Any sanctions the U.S. ultimately levies would probably target companies in countries that purchase oil from Iran, not central banks, the person advising the administration said.

[eaglethebeagle]

Israel's mounting speculation that Iran is moving closer to developing a nuclear weapon could have "catastrophic consequences", a senior Russian foreign ministry official warned Thursday.
"The inventions" concerning Iran's nuclear programme "are increasing the tension and could encourage moves towards a military solution with catastrophic consequences," Mikhail Ulyanov told the Interfax news agency.
Speculation has risen in recent weeks, driven in part by comments made by Israeli officials, that the Jewish state may soon launch a military strike on Iran's nuclear facilities to slow or halt its controversial programme.
Israel and much of the international community believe that Iran's nuclear enrichment programme masks a covert weapons drive, a charge Tehran denies.
The "noise" about Iran's nuclear intentions "has political and propaganda objectives which are far from being inoffensive," said Ulyanov, head of the security and disarmament department in Russia's foreign affairs ministry.
Israeli Defence Minister Ehud Barak said last month that any decision by Israel on whether to attack Iran in a bid to halt its nuclear programme remained "very far away."
However Israel's chief of military intelligence, General Aviv Kochavi, told a security conference last week that Iran had enough radioactive material to produce four nuclear bombs.
And an expert on Israeli intelligence, Ronen Bergman, wrote in the New York Times last month that an Israeli attack could come this year.
But Ulyanov said: "In our evaluations we prefer to be based on the actual facts, which are that Iran's nuclear activity is under strict monitoring by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA)."
Israel, the sole if undeclared nuclear power in the Middle East, has supported tough sanctions against Iran while refusing to take the military option off the table.
Russia has so far backed four rounds of UN Security Council sanctions against Iran. But both Russia and China have made it clear that they are not prepared to back any more.
Moscow's position is that European and US sanctions against Iran are aimed at undermining fresh talks on the issue of Iran's nuclear programme.

AFP – 4 hrs ago

[eaglethebeagle]

I am sorry to those here who are Russian and hold your country dear at this time. I have family of Russian decent. Your leader putin is your problem. The fact is Russia only cares about losing their weapons and nuclear technology buyer in Iran. China only cares about losing all the oil that they need. When both of these countries can find new partners with no trouble in reality. Russian leaders are on crack to think anyone outside of themselves believes Iran is going to change anything with more talks or more sanctions. American politicians mainly obama are stupid to think waiting further will lead to some new development.

Iran is going to create the weapon and will commit the act of war once they have that weapon there is no doubt about it as you see what they are enduring to get to that point. What other reason would they go through the years of sanctions and political alienation to achieve this goal if not to use it once they have it?

[eaglethebeagle]

TEHRAN (Reuters) - Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said Saturday that the Islamic Republic, targeted by tougher Western sanctions, would soon announce advances in its nuclear program.
He was speaking on the 33rd anniversary of the Islamic revolution that toppled the U.S.-backed Shah. Tens of thousands of Iranians joined state-organized rallies to mark the occasion.
"In the coming days the world will witness Iran's announcement of its very important and very major nuclear achievements," Ahmadinejad told a crowd at Tehran's Azadi (Freedom) Square in a speech relayed live on state television.
Demonstrators carrying Iranian flags and pictures of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei chanted "Death to Israel" and "Death to America." Ismail Haniya, who heads the Islamist Hamas administration in the Gaza Strip, also attended the ceremony.
Ahmadinejad gave no details of how Iran's nuclear work, which Tehran says has only peaceful purposes, has progressed.
The United States and Israel, a country which Iran does not recognize, have not ruled out military action if sanctions fail.
Iran has warned of a "painful" answer, saying it would hit Israel and U.S. bases in the Gulf as well as block the vital Gulf oil shipping route through the Strait of Hormuz.
"If attacked by the Zionist regime (Israel), we will turn it to dust," said a Revolutionary Guards commander, Mohammad Shirdel, semi-official Fars news agency reported Saturday.
"Thousands of our missiles will target Israel and the 40 bases of America in the region," he added.
The nuclear dispute has fuelled tension as the West tightens sanctions. The European Union has agreed to ban Iranian oil imports by July and to freeze the assets of Iran's central bank.
Its measures reinforce those imposed by the United States as the West tries to force Tehran to return to talks before it produces enough nuclear material for an atomic bomb.
Neither side has shown much appetite for compromise. Iran says it will fight EU sanctions with counter-measures and its parliament plans legislation to ban oil exports to the EU.
Iranian officials brush off the impact of sanctions, while also proclaiming that Iranians will endure any hardship in support of their country's right to nuclear technology.
"I am saying openly that if you (the West) continue to use the language of force and threat, our nation will never succumb to your pressure," Ahmadinejad said.
IMPACT OF SANCTIONS
Industry analysts say sanctions are hitting Iran's vital oil sector and say falls in crude output and exports will speed up.
Global oil flows are realigning even though the EU ban on imports from Iran only takes effect in July, the International Energy Agency said in its monthly Oil Market Report Friday.
Asia's two giants, China and India, want to head off new sanctions on Iran. China, Iran's biggest trade partner, is one of six major powers involved in nuclear talks with Tehran.
Ahmadinejad, echoing Iran's official stance, said fresh nuclear talks would be welcome. The last round collapsed a year ago over Iran's refusal to halt its uranium enrichment work.
"They say we want to negotiate. That is fine with us, we have been always ready to hold talks in the framework of justice and mutual respect," Ahmadinejad said. "The Iranian nation will not withdraw even one iota from its path."
Western nations say talking is pointless unless uranium enrichment is on the table, something Iran refuses to discuss.
Iran's economy is around 60 percent reliant on oil. The country is heavily dependent on food imports, buying 45 percent of its rice and most of its animal feed abroad.
Sanctions-linked trade snags risk fuelling already high inflation, which Iranian critics blame on Ahmadinejad's economic policies. The official inflation rate exceeds 20 percent.
But Ahmadinejad said the economy was "flourishing," reeling off figures to back his contention. Critics have in the past accused the government of falsifying economic statistics.
"We have saved over $30 billion for rainy days," he said. "Iran's non-oil exports will reach over $43 billion by March ... Iran's imports in the past 10 months dropped five percent."
Following reforms under which the government phased out hefty subsidies on staples like food and fuel since 2010, Ahmadinejad said billions were saved by not importing petrol.
"We were importers of fuel but ... now we are among main exporters of fuel and oil products," he said.
Fresh U.S. and EU financial sanctions are snarling Iranian payments for staple food and other imports, causing hardship for its 74 million people weeks before a parliamentary election.
The election will be Iran's first since a disputed presidential vote in 2009, which the opposition says was rigged to secure Ahmadinejad's re-election. That sparked eight months of street protests which the government forcibly suppressed.
(Reporting by Parisa Hafezi; Editing by Alistair Lyon)

[eaglethebeagle]

Iran has broken the "idol" of the Holocaust underpinning the creation of the Israeli state and US hegemony, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said on Saturday in a speech marking the anniversary of his country's 1979 Islamic revolution.
"The Iranian nation has smashed a new and modern idol. The world arrogance (the United States) and colonialists (the West), in order to dominate the world, created an idol called the Zionist regime (Israel)," Ahmadinejad told a crowd of thousands in central Tehran.
"The spirit of this idol was a story called the Holocaust... The Iranian nation with courage and wisdom smashed this idol to free the people of the West (of its hold)," he said.
Ahmadinejad, who in the past has rejected the Holocaust as a "myth", shared the stage with the leader of Hamas in Gaza, Ismail Haniya, who reaffirmed that his group "will never recognise Israel."
Iran denies Israel's right to exist and has said it will back any group trying to put an end to the Jewish state. Israel sees Iran as its principal foe and as the leading state sponsor of what it calls Hamas "terrorism".

[MadeInRu]

Ok, and what do you suggest beagle, what should we do about Iran?

[eaglethebeagle]

If you mean you as in Russia then that means Putin and Putin is an old school communist USSR ruler. He isnt good for Russia and his philosophies are outdated and the cause for Russia and its poor economy. Russia could reach out and try to establish a new direction with freedom and democracy as its belief. Look for a unification with the United States and Europe, Australia and all allied countries. Staying in this cold war mentality just isnt leading to advancements in commerce and technology. Does he really think being partners with Syria, China and Iran is a good path going forward into the future?

China is half assed stepping into western philosophies and yet trying to remain communist. It wont work forever although the Chinese seem less likely to be a people of revolution and more submissive than most. Chinese government is losing their vision and have come too far into commerce with America and the west that if they tried to escape its influence now they would literally commit national suicide in any attempt to reverse or end its business with the west.

Russia simply needs to cut its ties with Iran, Syria and announce their intentions to ally with the west and become more democratic. It will never happen under Putin or any of his hand picked cronies. There needs to be a leader that stands up and leads Russia away from the last century of failed politics. If it takes a war with iran or within the country itself to happen so be it. The future is not promising if Russia stays on this course. Both China and Russia easily could merge into peaceful democratic societies if they allowed it to happen. There doesn't need to be a revolution in either country. It happens either one of two ways. The people rise up and make it happen in a revolution or the leaders of the country decide to make it happen following the wishes of its people.

I am not saying they would adopt American freedoms entirely as that is not realistic. Democratic socialism would be more like it. The issue with this as it is with our own politics in America is there are always individuals wanting to change things so they can have more power and keep their power longer. Putin has been in power for a very long time and if elected (wink wink) he will be in power much longer. He is in my opinion a dictator and runs a communist politics with the false appearance that it is socialist. Even a socialist country elects new leaders so there is my argument. When will you actually take back your country from these old communist rulers?

It would seem to me he would rather enter into war against the west for an islamic country (Syria,Iran) that breeds and funds terrorism that he himself is disgusted by than change his old views on freedom and democracy.

Who does he feel he lines up with more? Freedom and democracy or communism and tyranny? He is showing that to be Syria and Iran dictators and tyrants.

[eaglethebeagle]

JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Israeli Defence Minister Ehud Barak said on Thursday Iran's announcement of new nuclear achievements was exaggerated and meant to fend off action against the Islamic republic.
"They are describing a situation that is better and more advanced than the one they are in, in order to create a feeling among all the players that the point of no return is already behind them, which is not true," Barak told Israel Radio.
Iran on Wednesday proclaimed advances in nuclear know-how, including new centrifuges able to enrich uranium much faster, a move that may heighten its confrontation with the West over suspicions it is seeking the means to make atomic bombs.
Barak said those announcements were meant to create an impression that any action taken by world powers to curb Iran's nuclear program would be too late. Iran says it is enriching uranium for peaceful purposes.
Tension between Iran and the West over Iran's nuclear work has mounted since November, when the United Nations' International Atomic Energy Agency said Tehran appeared to have worked on designing a nuclear weapon.
Israel, widely believed to be the Middle East's only atomic power, has said a nuclear-armed Iran would be a threat to its existence. Both Washington and Israel have not ruled out military action to stop Teheran developing atomic bombs.
"They are definitely making progress, but in order to deter anyone dealing with them, or perhaps even to make this seem superfluous, they are priding themselves on achievements that do not yet exist," Barak said.
The United States, which called Wednesday's Iranian announcement of nuclear progress "not terribly new and not terribly impressive," and the European Union have imposed tighter sanctions in recent weeks on both Iran's oil exports and
international financial transactions with Tehran.
Israel has called for tougher sanctions.
(Writing by Maayan Lubell; editing by Crispian Balmer)

[Sixx]

Ok, and what do you suggest beagle, what should we do about Iran?

Kill the leadership in Iran

[eaglethebeagle]

Iran is to host a high-level team from the UN nuclear watchdog on Monday as part of efforts to defuse dire international tensions over its atomic activities through dialogue.
But other words being spoken in Israel, the United States and Britain -- and Iran's defiant moves to boost its nuclear activities -- underlined the prospect of possible Israeli military action against the Islamic republic.
Iran also signalled on Sunday that it is ready to hit back hard at sanctions threatening its economy, by announcing it has halted its limited oil sales to France and Britain.
Iranian Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi on Sunday said his country was keen to quickly resume mooted talks with world powers, once a place and date were agreed.
The last talks collapsed in Istanbul in January 2011, but Iran has responded positively to an EU offer to look at reviving them.
"We are looking for a mechanism for a solution for the nuclear issue in a way that it is win-win for both sides," Salehi said.
But he added that Iran remained prepared for a "worst-case scenario."
Such a scenario -- war -- remained very much the subtext of a visit to Israel on Sunday by US National Security Advisor Tom Donilon.
Israel has been gripped by speculation in recent weeks that it is closer to mounting a pre-emptive strike on Iran's nuclear programme, though Tel Aviv has denied reaching such a decision.
The United States, while not ruling out its own possible military option against Iran, was publicly being seen holding back its main Middle East ally from taking such drastic action.
"I think it would be premature to exclusively decide that the time for a military option was upon us," the chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Martin Dempsey, told CNN.
"The US government is confident that the Israelis understand our concerns," The Jerusalem Post newspaper quoted Dempsey as saying in the CNN interview.
British Foreign Secretary William Hague warned on the BBC on Sunday: "I don't think the wise thing at this moment is for Israel to launch a military attack on Iran.
Israel's calculations will take into account an announcement by Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad last Tuesday that his scientists are boosting uranium enrichment by adding 3,000 more centrifuges to a facility at Natanz.
Iran also appeared to be about to install thousands of new centrifuges in another, heavily fortified enrichment facility near the city of Qom, a diplomat accredited to the UN nuclear watchdog told the BBC.
Iran says the enrichment is part of a purely peaceful civilian nuclear programme.
Western nations and Israel, though, fear it is part of a drive to develop the ability to make atomic weapons.
A November report by the UN nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency, strongly suggested Iran's programme included nuclear weapons research.
The IAEA delegation due in Tehran on Monday is to hold two days of talks with Iranian officials on those suspicions.
A previous visit on the same issue at the end of January, though, yielded no breakthrough.
"I'm not optimistic that Iran will provide much more information because I think any honest answers to the IAEA's questions would confirm that Iran had been involved in weapons-related development work and Iran wouldn't want to admit that for fear of being penalised," Mark Fitzpatrick of the London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies told AFP.
The West has ramped up its economic sanctions on the Islamic republic in an effort to force it to halt the enrichment.
"But so far they haven't worked and we've been seeing a regime that breaks all the rules," Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said last Thursday.
Iran on Sunday added to its defiance in the face of the sanctions by declaring no more crude was being exported to France and Britain, in retaliation for an EU-wide ban on its oil that will come into full effect from July 1.
Meanwhile, Iran and Israel have shown a willingness to tangle, at least covertly.
Bomb plots to kill Israeli diplomats in India, Georgia and Thailand emerged February 13 and 14, using similar methods to those in the murder of Iranian nuclear scientists in the past two years attributed to Israeli agents.
Iran denied any involvement in the plots against the Israeli diplomats -- one of whom was gravely wounded when her car was targeted in New Delhi. Israel has neither confirmed nor denied being behind the Tehran hits.
Israel and Iran have also made preparations for open conflict.
The Jewish state in 2009 reportedly purchased 55 bunker-busting bombs made by the United States, and this year called off its biggest-ever joint military manoeuvres with the United States that were meant to have taken place around now.
The Islamic state has been conducting several war games -- the most recent, land-based ones announced on Sunday in central Iran -- and flaunted its ballistic and cruise missiles.
And two Iranian warships sailed through the Suez Canal on the weekend and were in the Mediterranean, within striking distance of Israel.

[eaglethebeagle]

MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russia warned Israel on Wednesday that attacking Iran would be a disastrous and played down the failure of a U.N. nuclear agency mission to Tehran, saying there is still a chance for new talks over the Iranian atomic programme.
"Of course any possible military scenario against Iran will be catastrophic for the region and for the whole system of international relations," Deputy Foreign Minister Gennady Gatilov told a news conference.
It was one of Russia's starkest warnings against resorting to force, an option Israel and the United States have not ruled out if they conclude that diplomacy and increasing sanctions will not stop Iran from developing a nuclear bomb.

"I hope Israel understands all these consequences ... and they should also consider the consequences of such action for themselves," Gatilov said. "I hope a realistic approach will prevail, along with a sensible assessment."
Russia, China as well as many allies of the United States are concerned that any military action against Iran could engulf the Middle East in wider war, which would send oil prices rocketing at a time of global economic troubles.
Iran has threatened to retaliate for any attack, or even if it feels endangered, by closing the Strait of Hormuz, the conduit for Gulf oil exports crucial to the global economy, and hitting Israel and U.S. interests in the Middle East.
Tehran has refused to stop sensitive nuclear work such as uranium enrichment despite four rounds of U.N. sanctions and a slew of additional measures imposed by the United States and the European Union, which fear Tehran is seeking nuclear weapons.
The Islamic Republic says its efforts to produce nuclear fuel are solely for electricity generation.

IAEA-IRAN TALKS GO NOWHERE
The failure of two days of talks between Iran and senior International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) officials, who were refused access to a military site where they believe Iran tested explosives of use in nuclear weapons, dimmed the chances of Western powers agreeing to renew broader negotiations with Iran.
A warning from Iran's clerical supreme leader on Wednesday, hours after the Tehran talks concluded, that no obstacle would derail Iran's nuclear course added to tensions.
Gatilov suggested that Iran should be more cooperative but there is more room for diplomacy. He said Iran's discussions with Russia, China, the United States, Britain, France and Germany, frozen for a year, could still be revived.
"Iran and IAEA should boost their dialogue in order to rule out the ... possibility of the existence of military dimensions in the Iranian nuclear programme. We hope that this dialogue will be continued," he said.
"I think we still have opportunity to continue diplomatic efforts, to renew the six-nation talks."
Russia, which built Iran's first nuclear power plant, has often stressed the need for talks and that too much coercive pressure on Iran is counterproductive, a stance that has prompted concerns Moscow has helped Tehran play for time.
Last week, Russia said global powers must be serious about proposing solutions Iran might accept, warning that Tehran's desire for compromise was waning as it moved closer to being technically capable of building atomic weapons.
(Reporting by Alexei Anishchuk; Writing by Steve Gutterman; Editing by Mark Heinrich)

[eaglethebeagle]

COMMENTARY | I wouldn't be surprised to wake up some morning soon to learn Israel has bombed military targets in Iran. But I'm not sure if "soon" means this week, next month or after the 2012 election.
U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Martin Dempsey recently joined Defense Secretary Panetta in public statements aimed at restraining Israel. I wish the Israelis would wait, too, but for what?
Waiting for Iran to have a nuclear weapon and a means of delivering it would be ultimately more destabilizing for the region than an Israeli or U.S. attack. For America, it's a matter of getting bad news now or horrible news later.
One nuclear bomb could virtually destroy any small country and wreak destruction and havoc on a larger country.

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad knows he is better off dealing with President Barack Obama as the likely GOP nominee would be less yielding. The New York Times reports Mitt Romney, Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum have criticized President Obama's handling of Iran.
Military analysts are uncertain about an Iranian timetable for nuclear weapons development. But the Christian Science Monitor cites a study that concludes Iran could have a 15 kiloton bomb by August.
If that is accurate, the balance of power will be drastically altered, no matter who becomes president.
The U.S. needs to strike Iran's nuclear facilities, not Israel. According to Time Magazine, a U.S. strike would be far more effective.

There remains the remote possibility, reported in the Washington Times, the Iranians could agree to inspections by the International Atomic Energy Administration. The IAEA is visiting with Iranian officials Monday for preliminary talks, not for purposes of inspection.
If past Iranian talks are prologue, those discussions won't pan out. The Obama administration has also voiced skepticism, saying sanctions would fail, according to The Guardian.
The Iranian nuclear decision will end up in the lap of another American president or President Obama will be facing a nuclear-armed Iran during a second term.

Do American presidents really delay unpopular actions until after national elections? No one's ever been able to prove that but most everyone knows they do.
Anthony Ventre is a freelance writer who has written for weekly and daily newspapers and several online publications. He is a frequent Yahoo contributor, concentrating in news and financial writing.

[eaglethebeagle]

As the U.S. and Europe place sanctions on Iran for the nuclear program suspected of having a military aim, Iran continues to insist its work is for peaceful purposes only. That claim will likely suffer a setback by an interview published Tuesday in the semi-official Fars News Agency.
The wife of slain nuclear scientist Mostafa Ahmadi Roshan tells Fars her husband wholeheartedly sought Israel’s destruction.
Roshan, a chemistry expert and a director of the Natanz uranium enrichment facility, was killed during morning rush hour in Tehran in January after a magnetic bomb was attached to his car.
No one has claimed responsibility for killing the nuclear scientist, but Iran has blamed the CIA, MI6 and Mossad for a string of assassinations targeting its nuclear scientists.
Here’s an excerpt of Fars’ report:

Iran-Nuclear-Scientist-Fars
Wife of Assassinated Scientist: Annihilation of Israel "Mostafa's Ultimate Goal"
TEHRAN (FNA)- The wife of Martyr Mostafa Ahmadi Roshan Behdast, who was assassinated by Mossad agents in Tehran in January, reiterated on Tuesday that her husband sought the annihilation of the Zionist regime wholeheartedly.
"Mostafa's ultimate goal was the annihilation of Israel," Fatemeh Bolouri Kashani told FNA on Tuesday.
Bolouri Kashani also underlined that her spouse loved any resistance figure in his life who was willing to fight the Zionist regime and supported the rights of the oppressed Palestinian nation.
This is not the first time Iranian officials have been quoted calling for Israel’s destruction. President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has said that Israel “must be erased from the page of time” and that the solution to the Middle East conflict is the “elimination” of Israel.
The combination of these calls for annihilation along with the prospects of the Islamic Republic being one day armed with a doomsday weapon is at the core of the debate over whether Israel should attempt a military attack to thwart Iran’s nuclear progress.

[eaglethebeagle]

I like how they precede his name with Martyr....LOL fuck him and fuck them he is just a dead roach.

[eaglethebeagle]

What our supreme leader needs to do is get Saudi, Qatar, and any other mid east nation not interested in seeing Iran become nuclear armed to stand up united with America and Israel and say together if action is taken it will be together jointly. If Russia is going to stand up for Iran then these allies if they are allies need to get a backbone and stand up and declare this Iranian regime illegitimate.

obama has no clue he is a patsy with less balls than his wife michelle.

[eaglethebeagle]

MOSCOW (Reuters) - Vladimir Putin praised Cold War-era scientists on Thursday for stealing U.S. nuclear secrets so that United States would not be the world's sole atomic power, in comments reflecting his vision of Russia as a counterweight to U.S. power.
Spies with suitcases full of data helped the Soviet Union build its atomic bomb, he told military commanders.
"You know, when the States already had nuclear weapons and the Soviet Union was only building them, we got a significant amount of information through Soviet foreign intelligence channels," Putin said, according to state-run Itar-Tass.
"The were carrying the information away not on microfilm but literally in suitcases. Suitcases!"
Putin's remarks referred to the dawn of the Cold War more than half a century ago, but they echoed a message he has made loud and clear more recently: that the United States needs to be restrained, and Russia is the country to do it.
It has been known for decades that there were spies among the scientists who worked on the Manhattan Project, the U.S. atomic bomb design operation. Putin suggested those who helped Moscow build its bomb acted out of concern for humanity.
"It was the cream the scientific world that was gathered in America, and I personally have gotten the impression that they consciously gave us information on the atom bomb," Putin was quoted as saying.
"They did this consciously because the atom bomb had been used on Hiroshima and Nagasaki and scientists from mankind's intellectual elite at the time understood what unilateral possession of such a weapon might lead to."
A need for Russia to act as a counterweight to U.S. power has been a continuous theme of Putin's time in office since he - himself a former Soviet spy - became president in 2000. He stepped down in 2008 to become prime minister but is poised to reclaim the presidency in an election on March 4.
Last year he criticized the United States for helping Libyan rebels oust Muammar Gaddafi. Lately he has suggested Washington has similar designs on Syria, where Russia has vetoed U.N. action. Earlier this month Putin said the world faced a growing "cult of violence".
(Writing by Steve Gutterman)

[eaglethebeagle]

Prime Minister Vladimir Putin on Friday accused the West of seeking "regime change" in Iran and warned Washington that Russia intended to keep its nuclear weapons to keep US power in check.
"Under the guise of trying to prevent the spread of weapons of mass destruction... they are attempting something else entirely and setting different goals -- regime change," news agencies quoted Putin as saying.
"We have such suspicions," said Putin. "And we are trying to take a stand that differs from the one they are trying to force on us... concerning the ways that the Iranian nuclear problem might develop."
Russia has longstanding commercial and military ties with Iran and has condemned unilateral sanctions imposed by the United States and the European Union over its suspected pursuit of nuclear weapons.
Putin's tough talk came as he toured a nuclear research centre in the once-secret city of Sarov ahead of a March 4 presidential election in which he is widely expected to secure a return to the Kremlin.
Footage showed the former KGB spy inspect research stands and then chair a security meeting in which he lashed out at US plans to deploy a missile defence shield in Europe that Russia fears might make its nuclear forces ineffective.
Putin often clashed with the United States while president between 2000 and 2008 and has remained a key decision-maker in the past four years who spearheaded Russia's criticism of the NATO-led air campaign in Libya.
Russia now faces both Western and Arab world condemnation for its refusal to blame Syrian President Bashar al-Assad for an 11-month crackdown on street protests that the opposition says has claimed more than 7,600 lives.
The Russian strongman earlier this month accused Western powers of acting "like a bull in a china shop" in Arab conflicts and on Friday firmly defended Russia's veto of a UN Security Council resolution that blamed the violence on Assad.
"I think that our position at the UN Security Council on Syria shows that we do not intend to be anyone's yes-men. And I hope that this is how things continue," said Putin.
"Unfortunately, there are many regional conflicts and their number is only growing. But the balance of strategic forces will help avoid major conflicts," he warned.
Putin spent much of his meeting in Sarov laying out a future Russian nuclear defence strategy that kept the United States from establishing a global monopoly on power.
"This is not only our national objective, but also an obligation before all humanity -- to keep a balance of strategic forces and their capabilities," Putin said.
"This is very important. After World War II, this balance ensured the absence of global conflicts.
Putin's decision to fire his latest barb at Washington from the heart of a Soviet-era nuclear research centre was another piece of master-crafted theatre from a Russian leader who has perfected the art of populist talk.
He used passionate tones and simply language to argue that Russia was on the path to recovery from an early post-Soviet era in which its diplomatic and military might waned to new lows.
"Only a few years ago, they did not say it to us directly, but they said it to their NATO colleagues -- they said let Russia putter about, we are not even that interested anymore. All they have is a bunch of rust left," Putin said.
"Well, that is not the case. That is really not the case anymore."
He added more starkly "that the realisation that we might encounter some sort of new wave of the arms race, this must move us all to be more constructive."

[eaglethebeagle]

BEIJING, China - The United States and Europe are "harbouring hegemonistic ambitions" in Syria, China's state news agency said Saturday, a day after Beijing was condemned at an international conference held to find a way to halt the Syrian regime's nearly year-old suppression of an anti-government uprising.
At the Friends of Syria meeting in Tunisia, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton blasted Russia and China as "despicable" for vetoing U.N. Security Council resolutions backing Arab League plans aimed at ending the conflict and condemning the crackdown by President Bashar Assad's government.
"They are clearly not on the side of the Syrian people," Clinton said.
The official Xinhua News Agency said in a commentary that China's position on Syria was balanced and that "most of the Arab countries have begun to realize that the United States and Europe are hiding a dagger behind a smile."
"In other words, while they appear to be acting out of humanitarian concern, they are actually harbouring hegemonistic ambitions," it said.
Both China and Russia boycotted the Friends of Syria conference, which Xinhua said ended with a "broad consensus" on avoiding a militarization of the conflict in Syria.
The conference urged Assad to end the violence immediately and allow humanitarian aid into areas hit by his regime's crackdown. It also proposed tighter sanctions on the country and Assad's inner circle.
Calls and faxes to China's Foreign Ministry on Saturday asking for comment on Clinton's charges were not immediately answered.
Ministry spokesman Hong Lei said at several news conferences this week that China wanted more information on the goals and mechanisms of the conference before it would attend.
Xinhua quoted him as saying China was a friend of the Syrian people, and that "any action taken by the international community should help to cease tensions, boost political dialogues, resolve differences and maintain peace and stability in the Middle East."
The U.N. estimated in January that 5,400 people have died in the conflict. Hundreds more have died since, with activists saying the death toll is more than 7,300.
Assad's regime blames the violence on terrorists and armed thugs, not people who want to reform the system.
China sent a vice foreign minister to Syria last week for talks. It says it vetoed the U.N. Security Council vote on Syria because it was called before differences over the proposal were bridged.

[eaglethebeagle]

TUNIS, Tunisia (AP) — U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton has blasted Russia and China for opposing U.N. Security Council action on Syria, calling it "despicable."
Clinton says she's willing to go back to the U.N. as often as needed "but we need to change the attitude of the Russian and Chinese governments."
She spoke Friday at an international conference in Tunisia aimed at persuading Syrian President Bashar Assad and his allies into accepting demands for a democratic transition.
THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. Check back soon for further information. AP's earlier story is below.
TUNIS, Tunisia (AP) — In a move aimed at jolting Syrian President Bashar Assad and his allies into accepting demands for a democratic transition, more than 60 nations asked the United Nations on Friday to begin planning a civilian peacekeeping mission that would deploy after the Damascus regime halts a brutal crackdown on the opposition.
Still unwilling to commit to military intervention to end the bloodshed, the group offered nothing other than the threat of increasing isolation and sanctions to compel compliance from Assad, who has ignored similar demands.
Assad allies Russia and China, which have blocked previous U.N. action on Syria and are eager to head off any repeat of the foreign intervention that happened in Libya, gave no sign they would agree to peacekeepers.
In Tunisia, the Friends of Syria, meeting for the first time as a unified bloc, called on Assad to immediately end the violence and allow humanitarian aid into areas hit by his regime's crackdown. The group pledged to boost relief shipments and set up supply depots along Syria's borders, but it was unclear how it would be distributed without government approval.
The friends, led by the U.S. and European and Arab nations, also vowed to step up ties with the Syrian National Council, an opposition umbrella group. They took a tentative step toward recognition by declaring the council to be "a legitimate representative" of the Syrian people, a possible precursor to calling it "the legitimate representative."
"You will pay a heavy cost for ignoring the will of the international community and violating the human rights of your people," U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton warned the Assad regime, accusing it of having "ignored every warning, squandered every opportunity and broken every agreement."
Despite the show of unity, which diplomats said they hoped would impress upon Assad that the end of his family's four-decade autocratic rule is inevitable and at hand, there were signs of division. Some nations argued for arming Assad's foes, while others called for the creation of protected humanitarian corridors to deliver aid.
Neither idea was included in the conference's final document, which instead focused on steps nations should take to tighten the noose on the regime, including boycotting Syrian oil, imposing travel and financial sanctions on Assad's inner circle, and working with the opposition to prepare for a post-Assad Syria, including lucrative commercial deals. It also welcomed the appointment of former U.N. chief Kofi Annan to be a joint U.N.-Arab League special envoy for Syria.
On the sanctions front, France said the European Union would on Monday freeze assets of Syria's national bank held in EU jurisdictions while Clinton vowed that already tough U.S. penalties would be strengthened.
Highlighting the divisions, though, Saudi Arabia called publicly for weapons and ammunition to be sent to the opposition, including the Free Syrian Army, a Turkey-based outfit made up largely of Assad regime defectors.
"I think it's an excellent idea," Saudi Foreign Minister Saud al-Faisal told reporters as he prepared to meet Clinton on the margins of the conference. Asked why, he replied: "Because they have to defend themselves."
Clinton demurred on the question. But on Thursday in London, she said the opposition would eventually find arms from some suppliers if Assad keeps up the relentless assault.
The Obama administration initially opposed arming the opposition but has recently opened the door to the possibility by saying that while a political solution is preferable, other measures may be needed if the onslaught doesn't end.
The Syrian National Council, for its part, said it would be grateful for help in any area.
"We welcome any assistance you might offer, or means to protect our brothers and sisters who are struggling to end the rule of tyranny," council president Burhan Ghalioun told the conference. He laid out the council's goal of a free, democratic Syria free of the "rule of a Mafia family" in which the rights of all would be respected.
Qatari Foreign Minister Hamad Jassim bin Jabr al-Thani, who has been a driving force to unite Arab opinion against the Syrian regime, directly called on Assad to step down. And, together with Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu, he called for the creation of humanitarian corridors to get aid to embattled citizens.
Tunisian President Moncef Marzouki, the host of the conference who only recently assumed power after his country became the first in the Arab Spring to topple its longtime leader last year, called for an Arab peacekeeping force to ensure stability during an eventual transition.
"We have to respond to the demand of the majority of the Syrian people to get rid of a corrupt, persecuting regime," he said. "We have to stop the bloodshed, but this cannot be through military intervention."
The Friends group recognized this call by giving a green light to U.N. chief Ban Ki-moon to start drawing up plans for such a joint Arab League-U.N. peacekeeping operation that would be comprised of civilian police officers. Ban is expected to begin recruiting possible contributors to the mission and preparing its mandate.
Such an operation would not be a military intervention but would still require authorization from the U.N. Security Council, where it will likely face opposition from veto-wielding members China and Russia, neither of which attended the Tunis conference, and Iran. Russia and Iran are Syria's two biggest military suppliers.
Clinton took direct aim at all three countries, although not by name.
"If the Assad regime refuses to allow this lifesaving aid to reach civilians, it will have even more blood on its hands," she said. "So too will those nations that continue to protect and arm the regime. We call on those states that are supplying weapons to kill civilians to halt immediately."
On the sanctions front, France said the European Union would on Monday freeze assets of Syria's national bank held in EU jurisdictions and Clinton vowed that already tough U.S. penalties would be strengthened.
As the conference began, about 200 pro-Assad demonstrators tried to storm the hotel. The protest forced Clinton to be diverted briefly to her hotel.
The protesters, waving Syrian and Tunisian flags, tussled with police and carried signs criticizing Clinton and President Barack Obama. They were driven out of the parking lot by police after about 15 minutes.
___
Associated Press writers Lynn Berry in Moscow, David Stringer in London, Edith M. Lederer at the United Nations and Julie Pace in Washington contributed to this report.

[gazzthompson]

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/25/world/middleeast/us-agencies-see-no-move-by-iran-to-build-a-bomb.html?_r=1

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-iran-intel-20120224,0,1164870,full.story

Just sounds like pre-iraq war fear and warmongering

It just seems That current America needs an enemy, needs to have their lives threatened and face impending death. I don't know why? but it seems you do... If its not from iran, its from muslims, or the left wing, or communism, or maxism, or socialists , war on drugs, war on religion, war on this and that, invade this country, nuke that county , or obama the african communist marxist alien from space hell bent on killing america (or what ever the current trend is). Its the state of fear, i don't know why but it seems people need this fear...

[jamieooh]

Gazz,
We don't need or want any enemies,but there are plenty out there.
Whether they are internal like Barry or external like Iran.
The war on drugs is mostly a waste. The war on religion ? It sure seems like NBC, CBS, ABC, NPR get there panties in a wad when someone (rick santorum who I don't care for) questions Barry's cult of environmentalism and man made global warming cult. Odd how they have never heard of the sun, maybe the earth is still flat to them.
They are allowed to question other peoples belief . I think if you are going to run for public office your belief system should be questioned but not for just one side.

[eaglethebeagle]

Yeah gazz that whole needing an enemy is so true I mean iran isnt on video chanting death to America while they simulatiously are developing nuclear weapons. The Americans were not just hit by islamic terrorist on Sept 11th 2001 just a short 10 years ago. We were not the victims of Pearl Harbor and then being thrust into WW2. We dont have al-qaeda attacking us and the world with bombs...Right gazz its just our made up shit....Great that is your opinion. The world sat and waited for hitler and japan to really get rolling before stepping up what did that teach? if you are gazz then history taught your nothing not even history from 10 years ago. All the terrorist being corralled by the FBI and CIA are just figments of our imagination.

as for obama facts are facts they passed the ndaa and it is what it is a measure that can bypass the 4th amendment. That is real that is happening gas is going to historic levels and obama has cut off the canadian gas line and drilling in areas that were previously used for oil drilling. He actually is doing things that hurt this country but I guess these facts are just imagination. He is an appeaser and regardless if he is an American appeaser or European appeaser or any other appeaser they are all bad.

Go ahead keep up the deep thoughtful observations.

[eaglethebeagle]

MOSCOW - Vladimir Putin has accused the United States and its Western allies of supporting the Arab Spring revolts in its own interests and strongly warned against a military intervention in Syria.
Putin said in an article published Monday in the Moscow News daily that the Western push for sanctions against Syrian President Bashar Assad's government was "cynical." He insisted that both the government and opposition forces should pull out of cities to end bloodshed.
Putin defended a Russia-China veto of a U.N. resolution condemning Assad's crackdown on protests, saying that Moscow wouldn't allow the replay of what happened in Libya, where a NATO air campaign helped Libyans end Moammar Gadhafi's regime.
He also warned strongly against any attack on Iran, saying its consequences would be "catastrophic

[eaglethebeagle]

MOSCOW (AP) — Prime Minister Vladimir Putin warned against military intervention in Syria or an attack on Iran in scathing criticism of the West on Monday as he laid out his foreign policy priorities less than a week before Russia's presidential election.
Putin said the West had backed the Arab Spring to advance its interests in the region, and that instead of promoting democracy the revolts had given rise to religious extremism.
Anti-Western rhetoric has been a key part of Putin's campaign, aimed at rallying support among his core electorate of blue-collar workers, farmers and state employees widely suspicious of the West after years of government propaganda.
In criticizing the Arab Spring and accusing the U.S. of trying to encourage a similar uprising in Russia, Putin on Monday played on patriotic feelings by posturing as a defender of national interests in the face of potential unrest.
His lengthy article, brimming with criticism of the United States and its Western allies, was the latest in a series of manifestos Putin has published in Russian newspapers ahead of Sunday's election. Although none of the other four candidates poses a challenge and Putin is all but certain to win, he has been rattled by an unprecedented outburst of public discontent in Russia.
Putin defended the Russia-China decision earlier this month to veto a United Nations resolution condemning Syrian President Bashar Assad's crackdown on protests, saying that Moscow wouldn't allow a replay of what happened in Libya, where NATO airstrikes helped Libya's rebels oust Moammar Gadhafi's regime.
"Learning from that bitter experience, we are against any U.N. Security Council resolutions that could be interpreted as a signal for military interference in domestic processes in Syria," Putin said in the article published in Moscow News.
He said that any attempt to launch military action without U.N. approval would undermine the world body's role and hurt global security.
"I strongly hope that the United States and other nations will learn from the sad experience and won't try to resort to a forceful scenario in Syria," Putin said. "I can't understand that bellicose itch."
Activists estimate that close to 7,500 people have been killed in the 11 months since the Assad regime's brutal crackdown on dissent began.
Putin said both the Syrian government and opposition forces must pull out of populated areas to end bloodshed, adding that the Western refusal to demand that from Assad's opponents was "cynical."
Syria is Russia's last remaining ally in the Middle East. Moscow has maintained close ties with Damascus since the Cold War, when Syria was led by the current leader's father, Hafez Assad.
Putin said that Russian companies have lost ground in the countries engulfed by the Arab Spring uprisings and are being replaced by firms from the nations that backed the regime change.
"That raises the thought that the tragic events to some extent had been driven not by concern about human rights, but a desire by some to redistribute markets," he said. "We mustn't watch that with an Olympian calm."
Putin also warned against an attack on Iran.
"Russia is worried about the growing threat of a strike on Iran," Putin said. "If it happens, the consequences will be truly catastrophic. Their real scale is impossible to imagine."
He said the international community must acknowledge Iran's right to conduct uranium enrichment in exchange for placing the program under close supervision by the U.N. nuclear watchdog.
Iran has insisted that its controversial uranium enrichment program is aimed at producing energy and medical isotopes, but the West believes it's a cover for developing nuclear weapons.
"The West has gotten carried away trying to 'punish' some nations," Putin said. "It reaches out for sanctions or even a military club at the drop of a hat."
He said the Western emphasis on using force could encourage more countries to seek nuclear weapons in a bid to protect themselves: "If I have a nuclear bomb in my pocket, they wouldn't touch me because it would cost them. And those lacking a bomb should wait a 'humanitarian' intervention."
Putin also accused the U.S. of using non-governmental organizations as an instrument of "soft power" aimed at destabilizing regimes.
"It's necessary to draw a clear distinction between the freedom of speech, normal political activities on the one hand, and illegal instruments of soft power on the other," he said, adding that U.S. attempts to interfere in Russian elections have strained ties.
The statement follows Putin's earlier claims that the U.S. was behind the protests against his rule.
In Monday's article, Putin again criticized the U.S.-led plans for a NATO missile defense system in Europe, saying it's aimed against Russian nuclear forces.
"The Americans are obsessed with the idea of ensuring absolute invulnerability for themselves, which is utopian and unfeasible from both technological and geopolitical points of view," he said. "An absolute invulnerability for one means an absolute vulnerability for all the others. It's impossible to accept such a prospect."

[eaglethebeagle]

Putin is clearly as insane as Ahmadinejad that is why they are allies. He has created his own fantasy about what is happening in the world. He blames the U.S. for his people tired of him....he is a dictator just like Ahmadinejad.

[eaglethebeagle]

I was wrong in titling this thread as Ahmadinejad is not capable of starting a world war Iran has not the military to push a world war. The fact is Iran and Ahmadinejad are actually the catalyst for a world war. It will be Vladimir Putin that starts a world war from his dark and deranged mind. He would push the button on a nuclear attack and he feel threatened by democracy becoming a world wide phenomena. He has confused freedom with utopia.

Freedom and democracy are opposites of anti-freedom and anti-democracy. You have a ruler(dictator) when there is no democracy. You are told by your government what the laws are in all aspects of your life when there is little freedom. Look to North Korea, China, Cuba for these things. Russia is going backwards and at a very fast rate if not they are already there. Putin will be "elected" LOL :lol: or re-titled back to president again. He has ruled for how many years now? That isnt a democracy its another communist rule dictator.

[eaglethebeagle]

http://www.cnn.com/2012/02/27/world/meast/iran-crackdown/index.html?hpt=hp_t3



A new Amnesty International report documents what is described as repression in Iran.
STORY HIGHLIGHTS
A new Amnesty International report documents what is described as repression in Iran
The human rights advocacy group urges the international community to take action
"We are ordered to crush you," one interrogator told a detainee, according to the report
Things may get worse with elections around the corner, Amnesty says
(CNN) -- While the world's attention has been focused on tumult in the Arab world, Iran has cracked down with impunity on dissent and is feared to come down even harder as elections approach, Amnesty International said in a sweeping report.
The global human rights monitor documented "widespread and persistent human rights violations in Iran."
"It is essential if further mass human rights violations are to be avoided that the international community act on behalf of the hundreds, if not thousands, of prisoners of conscience and political prisoners imprisoned after unfair trials in Iran," Amnesty International said in the report.
Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khameini celebrated the popular revolts in Tunisia, Egypt and Bahrain, saying that they reflected an "Islamic awakening" based on Iran's 1979 revolution.
But since the 2009 election, the Islamic republic has repressed similar voices within its own borders, Amnesty International said.
"Since the 2009 crackdown, the authorities have steadily cranked up repression in law and practice, and tightened their grip on the media," according to the Amnesty International report, which came out just hours after the United Nations Human Rights Council convened for its latest session in Geneva.
"In Iran today, you put yourself at risk if you do anything that might fall outside the increasingly narrow confines of what the authorities deem socially or politically acceptable," said Ann Harrison, of Amnesty's Middle East and North Africa program.
"Anything from setting up a social group on the Internet, forming or joining an NGO or expressing your opposition to the status quo can land you in prison," she said.
Iran has defended its record before the United Nations Human Rights Council and charged that Western critics are politicizing the issue of human rights for their own gain.
Yet Amnesty International said Iran has deemed demonstrations, public debate and the formation of groups and associations a threat to "national security" punishable by long prison sentences or even death.
"Lawyers have been jailed along with their clients. Foreign satellite television channels have been jammed. Newspapers have been banned," the advocacy group said.
Mahdieh Mohammadi Gorgani, wife of detained journalist Ahmad Zeidabadi of Radio Farda, describes in the report how an interrogator told her husband, "We are ordered to crush you. And if you do not cooperate, we can do anything we want with you. And if you do not write the interrogation papers, we will force you to eat them."
Amnesty International said blogger Mehdi Khazali was this month sentenced to four and a half years in prison followed by 10 years in "internal exile," plus sentenced to pay a fine on charges believed to include "spreading propaganda against the system," "gathering and colluding against national security" and "insulting officials."
Amnesty International called on the world to pressure Iran to amend laws that restrict rights of expression and assembly, as well as to allow for public debate before Iranians cast their votes in March.
It also called for an end to jail time for people who protest peacefully and independent investigations of alleged human rights violations.
The issue of human rights, said Amnesty International, can get lost as the international community scrutinizes Iran's nuclear program.
"For Iranians facing this level of repression, it can be dispiriting that discussions about their country in diplomatic circles can seem to focus mainly on the nuclear program at the expense of human rights," Harrison said.

[eaglethebeagle]

The United States has powerful bombs at the ready in the case of possible military action against Iran and work is under way to bolster their firepower, the air force chief said Wednesday.
General Norton Schwartz, air force chief of staff, declined to say whether US weapons -- including a 30,000-pound massive ordnance penetrator (MOP) bomb -- could reach nuclear sites in Iran that were concealed or buried deep underground.
"We have an operational capability and you wouldn't want to be there when we used it," said Schwartz, when asked about the MOP bomb.
"Not to say that we can't continue to make improvements and we are," he told defense reporters.
Amid speculation that a nuclear site dug into the side of a mountain near Qom is beyond the reach of American weapons, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta has acknowledged shortcomings with the giant MOP bomb and said the Pentagon was working to improve the explosive.
"The bottom line is we have a capability but we're not sitting on our hands, we'll continue to improve it over time," Schwartz said.
Asked about recent comments from retired senior officers that some targets in Iran are immune from US air power, Schwartz said: "It goes without saying that strike is about physics. The deeper you go the harder it gets."
But he added that the US arsenal "is not an inconsequential capability."
The former vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, retired general James Cartwright, suggested last week that one nuclear facility in Iran could not be taken out in a bombing campaign.
Cartwright appeared to be referring to the Fordo plant built deep inside a mountain near the Shiite shrine city of Qom, some 150 kilometers (90 miles) south of Tehran.
Schwartz also declined to say whether air power would be effective against Iran's nuclear program but said that the outcome of any preemptive attack would depend on the goal of the strike.
"What is the objective? Is it to eliminate, is to delay, is to complicate? I mean what is the national security objective. That is sort of the imminent argument on all of this," he said.
"There's a tendency I think for all of us to get tactical too quickly and worry about weaponeering and things of that nature."
The general's carefully calibrated remarks coincided with a visit to Washington this week by Israel's defense minister, Ehud Barak, amid renewed speculation of a potential Israeli strike on Iran's nuclear program.

[eaglethebeagle]

Iran has offered to supply Pakistan with 80,000 barrels of crude oil per day and a $250 million loan to help build a gas pipeline from the Iranian border, a Pakistani official said Wednesday.
A Pakistani delegation will visit Iran in the middle of March to discuss the mode of payment, the official from the petroleum ministry told AFP.
Although the United States objects strongly to the pipeline project, Pakistan appears determined to press ahead importing fuel from its western neighbour under a deal expected to start providing gas in 2014.
Nuclear-armed Pakistan suffers from a crippling energy shortage and insists it cannot do without the fuel from Iran, subject to increasing EU and US sanctions over its controversial nuclear programme.
"Iran has offered to supply 80,000 barrels of crude oil per day on deferred payment to Pakistan," said the official, speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not authorised to speak to the media.
"Iran has also agreed to provide $250 million as credit to Pakistan for the gas pipeline project," he added.
Pakistani Oil Minister Assem Hussein was quoted in the local media as confirming the 80,000 barrels and $250 million loan.

[eaglethebeagle]

Only the credible threat of military action against its nuclear weapons sites will deter Iran
Nobody knows better than the Israelis what a mortal threat a radical Iranian regime will be when it is armed with the nuclear weapon it pretends it is not devising and the ballistic missiles it does not even bother to conceal. The combination will give the people of Israel 10 to 12 minutes' warning that they are faced with extinction.
Aggressive regimes tend to be hypocritical, professing peace while planning war. (The classic case is Hitler and his nonaggression pact with the Soviets.) But the Iranian leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, having wrecked his own country, is open in his manic obsession with Israel: "From now onward, we will support and help any nations, any groups fighting against the Zionist regime across the world. ... The Zionist regime is a true cancer tumor on this region that should be cut off" and "it definitely will be cut off."
[See a collection of political cartoons on Iran.]
As Shimon Peres, the president of Israel and architect of the Oslo peace agreements, has pointed out, Iran already has such huge oil and gas reserves that there can be little doubt its nuclear endeavors are aimed at constructing a bomb rather than producing energy. Iran, as he dryly added, is also the only country in the world threatening to wipe out another country. Not just to hurt it, or to damage it, but to wipe it off the face of the Earth. And while no other country was threatening it, Iran chose to become a center for global terrorism. It sent--and is still sending--both munitions and money to murderous outfits, first and foremost such radical groups as Hamas and Hezbollah, also intent on killing Israelis. This clearly suggests that the Iranians would also be willing to transfer nuclear materials to their terrorist allies. Of course, Iran doesn't scruple at assassinating its own citizens and goes abroad in search of perceived enemies.
Wiping out Israel is but one objective. If successful in its nuclear efforts, Iran would wield power as the dominant force in the energy-rich Persian Gulf region. By terror and proxy warfare, it would undermine and seek to destabilize moderate regimes, embolden the radicals, and bring an end to any possibility of Middle East peace.
[See pictures of Iran participating in War Games.]
What can stop Iran's palpable determination to be a nuclear-armed power? Only the threat of military action against its weapons sites. Iran has shown continual contempt for any kind of negotiation regarding nuclear energy for a peaceful purpose. Sanctions, too long delayed, create hardship for its people, but the regime reckons it can keep the lid on unrest until it is too late. It bars U.N. inspectors and continues its deadly work, calculating to give the world a nasty shock. The possibility of a pre-emptive strike is now the only credible deterrent. It's crucial for the whole region, the whole world, but if the United States forswears military intervention, or seems to forswear it, the Israelis and everyone else can only conclude that nothing will stand in the way of Iran becoming a nuclear power. Except Israel.
What may happen is that one day the Israeli defense minister will telephone the White House and the Pentagon to inform them that the prime minister has just ordered the Israeli Air Force to fly east toward Iran with the intention of dealing with the gravest menace since Hitler to the physical survival of the Jewish people. For a country as small as Israel, even a small-scale nuclear attack would be an existential catastrophe. The Israelis believe that if they make a pre-emptive strike they have a reasonable chance of at least delaying the Iranian nuclear program for three to five years. They will reasonably assert that Israel was left with no choice.
[Read the U.S. News debate: Should the United States Consider Military Action to Hinder Iran's Nuclear Program?]
Nobody can expect Israel to sit back and do nothing substantial to defend itself when it alone stands between its people and a potentially apocalyptic Islamic regime. Otherwise, Israel's status as a safe haven for the Jewish people would evaporate and with it the core raison d'?tre of the Zionist state. This time, the Jewish people at least have the power to attempt to save themselves; they could not when Hitler's war machine rolled over Europe. For the Jews, the balance of risks is grotesquely lopsided. The Iranian demand is not "Money or your life!" It's just "Your life!"
As for the risks to Iran, former President Hashemi Rafsanjani, speaking in 2001, was quite blunt about the balance. "The use of an atomic bomb against Israel would destroy Israel completely, while [a nuclear attack] against the Islamic countries would only cause damage." No wonder the Israelis fear that a theocratic regime that embraces the Shiite culture of martyrdom and responds to the imperatives of jihad would not be deterred by a nuclear balance of terror, in spite of Israel's secure nuclear response capabilities. In other words, rational deterrent theory or the threat of mutual assured destruction would not apply to Iran.
If Iranian leaders wanted simply to scare Israel and pose as the good guys to the other anti-Semitic regimes in the region, they have pressed all the wrong buttons on Israel's sensitive national psyche. Since the Holocaust, the Israelis' primary conviction has been "never again." Perhaps the most famous picture in Israel is the one of Israeli jet fighter-bombers flying over Auschwitz with the intention of making clear Israel's determination to defend itself against threats of horrors to come. Never again will they consign their fate to their enemies. Never again will they live or die at the whim of others. As the former head of the Mossad put it, Israel can't afford to wonder every night if Tehran "will go crazy and throw a bomb on us."
[See a collection of political cartoons on the turmoil in the Middle East.]
Israeli prime ministers took action against Iraq in 1981 and Syria in 2007 to eliminate those countries' nuclear capacities. It worked. The Israelis have even stronger reasons now not to take the risk that someone else will come to the rescue. If President Obama is spending energy to make it known to the Israelis--and the Iranians!--that the United States is opposed to an Israeli last-chance effort, what confidence can Israel have that the United States will wake up in time or even then act with resolution? The Israelis cannot be expected to put full faith and confidence in an American president who fails to recognize the critical threats to Israel.
The Israelis cannot live on that hope. They know the consequences of nuclear bombs hitting Tel Aviv and Haifa: There would be no more Israel. Who would bet his life on the chance that reason might dawn in Tehran and it would hold back from a promised attack? Yes, if Iran were so treacherous as to bomb, the day will live in infamy--but not the victims.
Of course, a nuclear-armed Iran is a threat not only to Israel but to all of Western civilization. When a messianic cult grabs the reins of power and the weapons of mass death, there is no knowing what mad things it will do. It is not restrained by world opinion and still less by opinion at home, not restrained by treaty nor inhibited by constraints of decency. After all, the ayatollahs view most of their critics as infidels; the United States is the "Great Satan."
[See pictures of the U.S. Military in the Persian Gulf.]
Iran is not Israel's problem. It is the world's problem. The world, led by the United States, should grapple with it. But if Israel concludes that Obama will not under any circumstances launch a strike on Iran soon enough to prevent it from achieving a breakout nuclear capacity, then it will have no choice but to begin the countdown for a unilateral Israeli attack.
It is not just an outright nuclear attack from Iran that concerns Israel. Iran could raise the stakes by firing conventional rockets. What is more, Iran's sheer possession of nuclear arms would undermine the confidence of the Israeli people in their security at home and so undermine Israel's attraction for creative and productive citizens.
Israel enjoys the support of others. French President Nicolas Sarkozy has criticized Obama as the purveyor of a false hope. At the U.N. Security Council in 2009, he said: "I support the extended hand of the Americans, but what good have proposals for dialogue brought the international community? More uranium enrichment and declarations by the leaders of Iran to wipe a U.N. member state off the map."
What will the United States do if sanctions fail to force an early resolution? What will Iran do if it does not think the United States will use military force? The permutations of peril are daunting, but there is one virtual certainty. If there is no credible alternative to stopping a nuclear Iran, then the Israelis will do it.
--Check out the U.S. News national security blog DOTMIL.
--Check out U.S. News Weekly: an insider's guide to politics and policy
--Read Mort Zuckerman: Barack Obama's Middle East Miscalculation.

[OperationOak]

In terms of military capability and intent I find Pakistan to be far more worrying than Iran, almost to the point that Iran isn't even worth thinking about.

1/ Not only does Pakistan already have a sizeable arsenal of nuclear weapons it has also shown that it is willing to trade the technology leading up to these weapons to our enemies.
2/ Pakistan is much more politically unstable than Iran. Actual assassinations or attempted assassinations of leading political figures are commonplace in Pakistan. Some areas of the country are not even under the control of the central government.
3/ Fundamentalist Islam is much more commonplace among the (poorer) people of Pakistan than it is in Iran.
4/ We are already in a tepid (for want of a better word) war with Pakistan. Drone strikes are a daily occurrence with the Pakistani military at best turning a blind eye at worst assisting terrorists in evading our strikes.
5/ Iran talks about killing us and uses its quaint great Satan imagery etc while Pakistan demonstrates its intent to the USA by deliberately hiding a terrorist responsible for the deaths of thousands of our civilians and sharing nuclear secrets (and perhaps its limited missile tech) with our enemies.

So tell me, why should i give a damn about Iran? Please bear in mind that i am american and not an israeli.

[eaglethebeagle]

@Oak
First welcome to AC as it looks like you are new here.

Second to your question why worry about iran? Let me say this before I respond ...I agree with everything you just said about pakistan they are not our ally and they are not to be trusted and like you said they should be viewed as an enemy for the proof that they certainly understood bin laden was living right there in there suburbs among them. I think the fact our government didnt give them notice that we would capture or kill bin laden as we did last year says that you and I are correct in our opinions on this matter.

Now to iran and let me say that iran isnt just a threat to America or Israel but to the world and they have been for a long time. iran sponsors terrorism more than any other country in the world in my opinion. You could make a case that they should have been target number one before a-stan and iraq. They are involved with terror globally with weapons, cash, man power etc. The recent news of them targeting Israelis in Thailand is proof on this point if someone wants proof.

They are supporting the Chechen terrorist that are killing and waring with the russians which is ironic as russia is allied with iran. I guess the saying "keep your friends close and your enemies closer" is what putin subscribes to.

Iran from their own words from their own mouths from their top religious leader the oyatollah and ahmedijad both publicly chant to the destruction of America and Jews. You have heard this I am sure.

My stance is it sounds like some people your self here are making an argument that we must focus on just one terrorist nation at a time. Well as you and I know and the world knows terrorist come from multiple nations in the world not excluding the United States. We must attack terrorism worldwide and must make war with terrorism ongoing. To say that the war in astan or iraq is over when it truly will never be over is lunacy by obama or anyone that makes that statement.

We will never see an end to terrorism and there has been terrorism for as long as well islam has been around. That is a method of war and tactic to their efforts to become a dominate ideology in the world.

So to clarify iran is important because two wrongs dont make a right. Yes pakistan has nukes and that is a danger if not today in the future with the trouble that country has politically and militarily. Not to be taken lightly you are correct.

Iran must not be allowed to arm itself with nukes because they are radical in politics and militarily already. They cannot be counted on to behave like pakistan has or north korea. The fact that those countries have nukes is not good and should make us nervous constantly. Look at the change of rule in North Korea with the new tub of shit. He could be coo coo for coco puffs and decide he is going to push his nuclear buttons on South Korea or some one else. Its just not something we can say hey we should trust iran give them a chance to show us they will not use nukes.

This is my opinion.

[gazzthompson]

http://www.haaretz.com/news/national/iranians-respond-to-israeli-facebook-initiative-israel-we-love-you-too-1.419505

Coupled with Israel agreeing Iran hasn't even decided to make a nuke shows everyone needs to calm down before we get another country destroying war (and not just Iran)

[eaglethebeagle]

http://www.haaretz.com/news/national/iranians-respond-to-israeli-facebook-initiative-israel-we-love-you-too-1.419505

Coupled with Israel agreeing Iran hasn't even decided to make a nuke shows everyone needs to calm down before we get another country destroying war (and not just Iran)

this is strategic flow of information....not always telling the truth to your enemies is a good idea.

[eaglethebeagle]

A classified Pentagon war game this month forecast that an Israeli strike on Iran's nuclear facilities would likely draw the United States into a wider regional war in which hundreds of American forces could be killed, the New York Times reported Tuesday.
The war games' results have "raised fears among top American planners that it may be impossible to preclude American involvement in any escalating confrontation with Iran," the Times Mark Mazzetti and Thom Shanker wrote.
Defense experts said the reported war games results are another attempted warning signal to Israel not to go it alone or risk harming relations with the United States.
"The apparent results of the war game reported by the Times suggest that it will be much more difficult than Israeli leaders assume to keep the United States out of the conflict," former Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for the Middle East Colin Kahl told Yahoo News by email. "In the retaliatory spasm following an Israeli strike, the odds that Iranian actions and miscalculations could drag the United States military are substantial."
The two-week war simulation exercise—dubbed "Internal Look"—was conducted by the U.S. Central Command in Tampa, Fla. It posited a scenario in which an Israeli strike on Iran's nuclear facilities led to Iran retaliating by striking a U.S. "Navy warship in the Persian Gulf, killing about 200 Americans," thus drawing the United States into the war, the Times' report said.
"Internal Look" is designed to "refine the command's battle rhythm and assess the staff's ability to coordinate and communicate on a modern battlefield," U.S. Central Command spokesman Col. John Robinson told Yahoo News in an email Tuesday. The classified exercises took place between Feb. 26 and March 3 at the MacDill Air Force base in Florida and at some overseas locations, he said.
But some former officials urged caution when interpreting the war games' reported results. "It's clear the administration believes an Israeli strike on Iran would be extremely problematic," Ken Pollack, a national security expert at the Brookings Institution Saban Center for Middle East studies and a former director for Persian Gulf affairs at the National Security Council, told Yahoo News in a telephone interview Tuesday. "But it is not at all clear that the game demonstrates that an Israeli strike could produce American casualties." Pollack, who has designed and directed many such war games, explained that the designers of the game could simply have created an Iranian attack on the U.S. Navy ship as a method for testing America's control system to see if it could handle it.
The report on the war games comes as Israeli Defense Forces Chief of Staff Gen. Benny Gantz is in Washington for consultations. Meantime, the State Department's lead international Iran nuclear negotiator, Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs Wendy Sherman, is in Brussels Tuesday for meetings with her international counterparts to prepare for upcoming high-stakes talks with Iran over its nuclear program, a State Department official told Yahoo News Tuesday.

[eaglethebeagle]

http://news.yahoo.com/video/opinion-15749653/israel-iran-and-potential-mideast-devastation-28592187.html

[jamieooh]

see this story yet?
http://www.nypost.com/p/news/local/nypd_says_iranian_spies_have_conducted_eeJK35zlbA2 0w7AkNXtPdK

[eaglethebeagle]

America's most sophisticated stealth jet fighters have been quietly deployed to an allied base less than 200 miles from Iran's mainland, according to an industry report, but the Air Force adamantly denied the jets' presence is a threat to the Middle East nation.
Multiple stealth F-22 Raptors, which have never been combat-tested, are in hangars at the United Arab Emirates' Al Dafra Air Base, just a short hop over the Persian Gulf from Iran's southern border, the trade publication Aviation Week reported.

Air Force spokesperson Lt. Col. John Dorrian would not confirm the exact location of the F-22s, but told ABC News they had been deployed to a base in Southwest Asia -- a region that includes the UAE. Dorrian also stressed that the F-22s were simply taking part in a scheduled deployment and are "not a threat to Iran."
"This is a very normal deployment to strengthen military relationships, promote sovereign and regional security, improve combined tactical air operations and enhance interoperability of forces," Dorrian said.
The F-22 has only been in the UAE once before for training missions in 2009 with "coalition partners."
Dorrian declined to say what the Raptors' mission was in the region this time around or how many planes had been deployed, citing operational security. However, Dorrian said that because of the F-22's next-generation capabilities, any number of planes deployed to the region is "significant."

Though the F-22 has been officially combat operational since December 2005, no planes from the Air Force fleet -- which are made by defense contracting giant Lockheed Martin and cost an estimated $79 billion -- have seen combat. The plane was not used in Iraq, Afghanistan or in the U.S.-led no-fly mission over Libya. The Air Force has said the sophisticated jets simply haven't been needed yet.
But Jeff Babione, Lockheed Martin's vice president for the F-22 program, told ABC News last year that the plane was "absolutely" suited for taking on more sophisticated adversaries and could be used in deep penetration strike missions in well-defended combat zones inside places like North Korea or Iran.

Air Force: F-22s Ready for War, Despite Mystery Problem
The new deployment comes in the midst of the Air Forces' continuing battle with a rare but sustained oxygen problem plaguing the F-22. Since 2008, nearly two dozen pilots have reported experiencing "hypoxia-like symptoms" in mid-air. The problem got so bad that the Air Force grounded the planes for nearly five months last year in hopes of fixing the problem but never could.
The service also does not know what caused the malfunction that cut off F-22 pilot Capt. Jeff Haney's oxygen shortly before he fatally crashed during a training mission in Alaska in 2010.
But despite the ongoing issues, the Air Force says the F-22 is ready for war, should it be called.

"If our nation needs a capability to enter contested air space, to deal with air forces that are trying to deny our forces the ability to maneuver without prejudice on the ground, it will be the F-22 that takes on that mission," Air Force Maj. Gen. Noel Jones, Director of Operational Capability Requirements, said at a special briefing at the Pentagon in March. "It can do that right now and is able to do that without hesitation."
The Al Dafra base is approximately 800 miles from the Iranian capital of Tehran, well within the range of the F-22, which can "supercruise" at one and a half times the speed of sound.

http://news.yahoo.com/us-stealth-fighters-now-irans-back-door-142931425--abc-news-topstories.html

[eaglethebeagle]

TEHRAN, Iran (AP) — A prominent Iranian lawmaker says the reported basing of America's most sophisticated stealth jet fighters in the United Arab Emirates is a U.S.-Israel plot to create regional instability.
Kazem Jalali was reacting to media reports of the recent deployment of F-22 Raptors at the UAE's Al Dafra Air Base, which has long hosted U.S. warplanes.
The deployment was first reported in the journal Aviation Week, but U.S. and UAE officials have not publicly commented.
Jalali was quoted by the semiofficial ISNA news agency Sunday.
Tehran and Washington are at odds over Iran's nuclear program. The U.S. and Israel say Iran is seeking nuclear weapons, a charge Tehran denies. The two countries have not ruled out military action against Iranian facilities.

[sidewinder]

Free johnathon pollard!!!

[eaglethebeagle]

Free johnathon pollard!!!

Really your a day late and a dollar short as well as its not productive to be a troll or try to be witty after they have performed the lobotomy.

[eaglethebeagle]

MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev warned on Thursday that military action against sovereign states could lead to a regional nuclear war, starkly voicing Moscow's opposition to Western intervention ahead of a G8 summit at which Syria and Iran will be discussed.
"Hasty military operations in foreign states usually bring radicals to power," Medvedev, president for four years until Vladimir Putin's inauguration on May 7, told a conference in St. Petersburg in remarks posted on the government's website.
"At some point such actions which undermine state sovereignty may lead to a full-scale regional war, even, although I do not want to frighten anyone, with the use of nuclear weapons," Medvedev said. "Everyone should bear this in mind."
Medvedev gave no further explanation. Nuclear-armed Russia has said publicly that it is under no obligation to protect Syria if it is attacked, and analysts and diplomats say Russia would not get involved in military action if Iran were attacked.
Russia has adamantly urged Western nations not to attack Iran to neutralize its nuclear program or intervene against the Syrian government over bloodshed in which the United Nations says its forces have killed more than 9,000 people.
Medvedev will represent Russia at the Group of Eight summit in place of Putin, whose decision to stay away from the meeting in the United States was seen as muscle-flexing in the face of the West.
Putin said previously that threats will only encourage Iran to develop nuclear weapons. Analysts have said that Medvedev also meant that regional nuclear powers such as Israel, Pakistan and India could get involved into a conflict.
As president, Medvedev instructed Russia to abstain in a U.N. Security Council vote on a resolution that authorized NATO intervention in Libya, a decision Putin implicitly criticized when he likened the resolution to "medieval calls for crusades".
Medvedev rebuked Putin for the remark, and some Kremlin insiders have said the confrontation over Libya was a factor in Putin's decision to return to the presidency this year instead of letting his junior partner seek a second term.
Russia has since accused NATO of overstepping its mandate under the resolution to help rebels oust long-time leader Muammar Gaddafi, and has warned it will not let anything similar happen in Syria.
Since Putin announced plans last September to seek a third presidential term and make Medvedev prime minister, Russia has vetoed two Security Council resolutions condemning Assad's government, one of which would have called on him to cede power.
Russia's G8 liaison Arkady Dvorkovich said Russia will try to influence the final version of the G8 statement at a summit in Camp David this weekend to avoid a "one-sided" approach that would favor the Syrian opposition.
"In the G8 final statement we would like to avoid the recommendations similar to those which were forced upon during the preparations of the U.N. Security Council resolutions," Dvorkovich said. "A one-sided signal is not acceptable for us."
Russia successfully managed to water down the part of the statement on Syria at a G8 summit in France in May 2011, removing the calls for action against the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.
"We believe that the United Nations is the main venue to discussing such issues," Dvorkovich said.
LAST APPEARANCE
The G8 summit is likely to be the last appearance among all the leaders of industrialized nations for Medvedev, who embraced U.S. President Barack Obama's "reset", improving strained ties between the nations.
Dvorkovich said Putin's absence from the summit, the first time a Russian president has skipped one, would not affect the outcome: "All the leaders, I saw their reaction, are ready to comprehensively work with the chairman of the government (Medvedev)."
Dvorkovich said that at a bilateral meeting with U.S. President Barack Obama, Medvedev will raise opposition to attempts by some U.S. lawmakers to introduce legislation which will address human rights violations in Russia.
Such legislation could take a form of the so-called Sergei Magnitsky bill, named after the Russian lawyer who died in prison in 2009. The Kremlin human rights council says he was probably beaten to death.
The bill would require the United States to deny visas and freeze the assets of Russians or others with links to his detention and death as well as those who commit other human rights violations.
"New legislation which will address new political issues as imagined by some U.S. congressmen or senators is unacceptable," Dvorkovich said, promising a retaliation.
(Editing by Michael Roddy)



Oh Russia now it seems more clear why you are so against the missile defense system...... Funny how its ok for Russia to threaten a nuclear war while supporting iran and their nuclear ambitions while America talks about cutting 80% of our nukes....obama is clueless.

[eaglethebeagle]

UN agency finds higher enrichment at Iranian site
By GEORGE JAHN | Associated Press – 54 mins ago
Email
5
Print
RELATED CONTENT

World powers negotiators arrive …

EU Foreign Policy Chief Catherine …
VIEW SLIDESHOWS

Hurricane Bud hits Mexico
4 photos - 1 hr 9 mins ago

Snapshots
216 photos - Tue, May 22, 2012

Soldiers between battles
16 photos - 2 hrs 8 mins ago
See latest photos »
VIENNA (AP) — Inspectors have located radioactive traces at an Iranian underground bunker, the U.N. atomic agency said Friday — a finding that could mean Iran has moved closer to reaching the uranium threshold needed to arm nuclear missiles.
In a report obtained by The Associated Press, the International Atomic Energy Agency said it was asking Tehran for a full explanation. But the report was careful to avoid any suggestion that Iran was intentionally increasing the level of its uranium enrichment, noting that Tehran said a technical glitch was responsible.
Analysts as well as diplomats who had told the AP of the existence of the traces before publication of the confidential report also said the higher-enriched material could have been a mishap involving centrifuges over-performing as technicians adjusted their output rather than a dangerous step toward building a bomb.
Still, the finding was bound to resonate among the 35 IAEA board members for whom the report was prepared, among them the six world powers that had just concluded talks with Iran on its enrichment activities. The negotiations in Baghdad left the two sides still far apart over how to oversee Tehran's atomic program but resolved to keep dialogue going next month in Moscow as an alternative to possible military action.
The report also expressed in opaque terms what diplomats accredited to the IAEA first started mentioning more than a month ago: The agency fears a massive cleanup under way at buildings at the Parchin military complex southeast of Tehran. The site is suspected of housing a pressure chamber and related equipment used to test ways of detonating a nuclear charge.
"Based on satellite imagery at this location ... the buildings of interest to the agency are now subject to extensive activities that could hamper the agency's ability to undertake effective verification" at the site, said the report. Separately, a senior international official familiar with the issue said satellite photos showed trucks at the site and streams of liquid suggesting the interiors were being hosed down to wash away evidence of possible nuclear-related work.
The report said that over the past five months the agency had "obtained more information" buttressing its suspicions about the Parchin site, which it has asked repeatedly to visit, only to be turned down by Iran.
On enrichment, the six world powers trying to engage Iran are already concerned about its output of uranium at the 20 percent level because material that high can be turned into weapons-grade much more quickly than its main, low-enriched stockpile.
The higher the enrichment, the easier it becomes to re-enrich uranium to warhead quality at 90 percent. As a result, the finding of traces at 27 percent at the Fordo enrichment plant in central Iran sparked international interest.
Iran denies any plans to possess nuclear weapons but has for years declined offers of reactor fuel from abroad, including more recent inducements of 20-percent material if it stops producing at that level. The Islamic Republic says it wants to continue producing 20 percent uranium to fuel its research reactor and for medical purposes.
But its refusal to accept foreign offers has increased fears it may want to turn its enrichment activities toward producing such arms. The concerns have been fed by IAEA suspicions that Iran has experimented on components of an atomic arms program — suspicions Tehran also denies.
The report cited a May 9 letter from Iranian officials suggesting any enrichment at 27 percent was inadvertent. The letter said the particles were produced "above the target value" and could have been for "technical reasons beyond the operator's control."
David Albright, whose Washington-based Institute for Science and International Security looks for signs of proliferation, said a new configuration at Fordo means it tends to "overshoot 20 percent" at the start.
"Nonetheless, embarrassing for Iran," he wrote in an email to the AP.
Mark Fitzpatrick, director of the Non-Proliferation and Disarmament Program of the International Institute for Strategic Studies, described such a surge as a "naturally occurring development," adding that "it's very usual to go above envisaged enrichment levels at startups of centrifuges.
In Washington, State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said "there are a number of possible explanations for this, including the one that the Iranians have provided. But we are going to depend on the IAEA to get to the bottom of it."
Others were more skeptical.
"It's not surprising because they have the technology," a senior Israeli defense official said.
"Iran doesn't intend to stop its nuclear weapon program, and the fact that they are at 27 percent shows the Iranian intentions," said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he is not allowed to speak with the media.
International concerns have increased since Iran started higher enrichment at Fordo, which is carved into a mountain to make it impervious to attack. Israel and the United States have not ruled out using force as a last option if diplomacy fails to curb the Islamic Republic's nuclear program.
Iran already has about 700 centrifuges churning out 20-percent enriched uranium at Fordo. The report noted that although Iran has set up about 350 more centrifuges since late last year at the site, these machines are not enriching.
While the reason for that could be purely technical, it could also be a signal from Tehran that it is waiting for progress in the negotiations.
The latest attempt to persuade Iran to compromise ended inconclusively Thursday after two days of talks in Baghdad. The six world powers — the United States, Russia, China, Britain, France and Germany — failed to persuade Tehran to freeze its 20 percent enrichment.
Iran, for its part, failed to persuade the West to scale back on recently toughened sanctions, which have targeted Iran's critical oil exports and have effectively blackballed the country from international banking networks. The 27-nation European Union is set to ban all Iranian fuel imports on July 1, shutting the door on about 18 percent of Iran's market.
But the IAEA report did detail some progress in separate talks between the U.N. nuclear agency and Iran that the agency hopes will re-launch a long-stalled probe into the suspicions that Tehran has worked on nuclear-weapons related experiments.
The report said that since 2002, the IAEA "has become increasingly concerned about the possible existence in Iran of undisclosed nuclear-related activities involving military-related organizations, including activities related to the development of a nuclear payload."
Without more openness on the part of Iran, said the report, the IAEA "cannot conclude that all nuclear material in Iran is in peaceful activities."
___
AP writer Ian Deitch in Jerusalem contributed this report.