Additional factors pointing to open engagement as the most likely time for a joint US/EU endeavor:
Additional factors pointing to April 28th as the most likely time for a joint US/IDF strike:
While developments such as any US military strike on Iran are difficult to predict with certainty, an array of factors the Editor considers to be potentially important have recently emerged such that the he felt a responsibility to issue this alert in good faith, intended to heighten awareness of the significantly increased possibility, even likelihood, that the US will soon act on Iran. The factors that obliged the Editor to issue this alert are listed below. The reader should be aware of these, evaluate their importance for his/her self, and watch unfolding developments closely as the week of April 22nd, 2009 approaches....for PNAC KILLERS.
Top Bush administration officials have recently, and repeatedly, spun last year's Intelligence Assessment on Iran, which leaned toward the view that Iran had stopped its drive to acquire nuclear weapons, as signifying that Iran does indeed have a nuclear weapons program, that it has in all likelihood restarted that program, and that it will likely have a weapon by 2010 if not stopped now.
Diplomacy, as nearly everyone can see, is mostly ineffective in stopping Iran in its nuclear aims and activities. Despite enormous diplomatic pressure, and its acquiring Russian fuel for its reactor at Bushehr, Iran continues its drive to enrich its own uranium, for but one example.
Top Bush administration officials have recently resumed beating the war drums loudly with respect to Iran, regarding its nuclear activities, the ongoing and accelerating spread of its destabilizing tentacles across the Persian Gulf region, its activities in Iraq in instigating violence, calling Iran the most serious threat to stability and world peace.
Dick Cheney has recently completed a ten-day tour of the Persian Gulf region, including also Turkey, where he met with leaders to discuss Iran, which was at the top of his agenda in every stop he made. His visit included every state that hosts large US military bases in the region, bases that would be key in any US military action against Iran.
In Saudi Arabia, Mr. Cheney won the Saudi king's support for actions to ease oil prices - something the Saudis had steadfastly refused to do until now. Any US strike on Iran will produce an oil price shock. However, such a shock can be cushioned by increased supply by Saudi Arabia, it is hoped. Mr. Cheney won the cooperation of the Saudis with respect to an increase in the global supply cushion.
Key European powers, most notably Germany and France, have recently come down firmly in support of Israel's security in the face of the mounting Iranian threat, which threat has been stated by German and French leaders to be grave and totally unacceptable. Though the German leader (Ms. Merkel) stopped short of endorsing military action against Iran, she vowed total support for Israel's security. One must realize that public statements that fail to explicitly support military action do not oblige Germany to withhold clandestine, real support for the military option. The French President is firmly on board with the US in a possible military option against Iran...[Trouble in TIBET is part and Parcel of this Operation...."Fajr Natanz"!]
The sudden resignation of US CENTCOM commander Adm. Fallon, a vocal critic of the militarist policies of the Bush administration, strongly suggests that the US is now poised to exercise the military option. Exactly one year ago, when the US had placed four aircraft carrier battle groups in and around the Persian Gulf, Adm. Fallon vowed he would resign before he would carry out the command to order US forces into action against Iran. In effect, he thereby vetoed the US strike that was imminent last April. In the year that has followed until now, the US pursued diplomatic options in a futile effort to stem Iran's rise. Adm. Fallon's sudden departure raises truly ominous signs that the US administration, along with key NATO allies, has decided it must resort to the military option. Adm. Fallon, as promised, resigned before he would have any part in such a foolhardy venture. Whether he was forced out or resigned willingly is of little consequence here. He leaves his post on March 31, 2008. After that date the way is clear for a US strike.
Mr. Bush has only about 10 months left in office. If he is to deal with the swarming Iranian threat, he must do so now. He cannot risk leaving the problem to a democrat successor and thereby go down in history as a totally failed leader. In his mind, that is not an option. The window of opportunity for him to save/establish his legacy is rapidly closing.
Starting on Sunday April 6, 2008 the Israelis will conduct the largest-ever nationwide, week-long defensive war drill simulating ballistic missile strikes on Israel from Iran and Syria. The dimensions of this upcoming drill are unprecedented. This drill may well be a cover, allowing Israel to prepare for an imminent US strike on Iran and Syria, but without depriving the US of its element of surprise.
The US has recently positioned an array of Aegis destroyers, which excel in ballistic missile defense, close to its Persian Gulf allies and Israel, ready to intercept Iranian and Syrian missiles. The recent installation of such a buffer against retaliatory Iran-Syria missile strikes portends that something is in the offing with regard to US military actions against both Iran and Syria.
The US has the ability, absent any significant number of aircraft carrier battle groups in the vicinity, to quickly turn Iran's nuclear and military sites and assets into a junkyard virtually overnight. From its bases in the vicinity (Iraq, Oman, Turkey, Israel), from its base in Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean, and from European and US bases, as well as from its submarine fleet, the US can employ B1, B2 and B-52 bombers, cruise missiles, ballistic missiles, and shorter range attack aircraft to mount a massive air strike on Iran and Syria without any warning whatsoever.
However, the US cannot hope to suppress all of Iran's and Syria's ballistic missile and asymmetrical retaliatory capabilities. Hence, some missiles and other forms of retaliation will likely reach their targets - US bases in Iraq, Oman, Qatar, etc; oil installations along the Gulf; Israeli cities and installations; shipping in the Strait of Hormuz. The US is playing with catastrophe in opting for a military "solution" on Iran.
It must be noted here that the US, if it does strike Iran and Syria, will almost assuredly use nuclear-tipped bunker busters to ensure the destruction of key targets buried deep underground, including nuclear assets, command and control, and the hiding places of the members of the Iranian and Syrian regimes. The US will enjoy plausible deniability as respects any use of nuclear weapons, since it can proclaim that any radiation that is released came from Iran's nuclear reactor (already fueled by Russia) and from secret underground nuclear sites in the target areas.
Why the sudden, major Iraqi/US push against the Sadr militia in Basra, especially after Al Sadr recently extended his commitment to refrain from engaging in military activities? Though the Maliki government and the Al Sadr militia are both Shiite, Iran and Al Sadr are much more intimately tied together than are Iran and the Maliki government. Iraq's government, and the US, see the Iran-backed Al Sadr movement as a pointed and grave threat to the current Iraqi government, cutting ever more deeply into its control over precious oil resources in the south. However, even if the Maliki government achieves complete control of Basra and the south, with US help, there still remains a serious risk that Iraq's government will still fall in closely with Iran, thus casting US strategic interests aside.
Nevertheless, from the US standpoint, the Basra campaign is important now because it seeks to roll back Iranian influence within Iraq - something the surge has at least temporarily accomplished farther north. This is important, since, if the US strikes Iran anytime soon, it will first have blunted Iran's ability to tip Iraq into chaos in retaliation. At least that is the hope of US leaders. Hence, the timing of the current anti-Sadr campaign is perhaps not by chance, but rather by design, intended to help buffer Iraq from the consequences of an impending US strike on Iran.
Significantly, CIA chief Michael Hayden today played down the importance of the US intelligence community assessment that concluded Iran halted its nuclear weapons drive in 2003. General Hayden, while "stand[ing] by the [official] judgment" on Iran's nuclear weapons program, asserted that Iran has a great deal to hide on the issue because it has withstood great diplomatic and financial pressures and penalties for refusing to come clean on all the issues put before it by the UN nuclear watchdog and by the world community. Why would it continue to place itself in line to suffer such penalties if it had nothing to hide? General Hayden emphasized the fact that Iran continues to develop the delivery systems for nuclear weapons and stated that his own view is that Iran is continuing its pursuit of the bomb without letup.
The US intelligence assessment that appeared to let Iran off the hook with respect to US military action continues to be systematically undermined by top Bush administration officials, who in concert are attacking (1) the popular interpretation of that assessment (that Iran is much less a danger than thought) and (2) a key part of the assessment itself - that Iran stopped its drive for nuclear weapons in 2003. Serious doubts are thus being raised with respect to the idea that Iran ever stopped its drive for nuclear weapons, and strong emphasis is being placed on the fact that it has a nuclear weapons program, despite all its denials in that regard. A renewed basis for military action is being established, therefore.
A top Saudi newspaper, Okaz, has reported on the heels of the recent visit by Dick Cheney that the Saudi government is in secret preparations to deal with the sudden nuclear fallout from an impending US missile strike on Iran's reactor and other assets. The German news agency DPA also ran the report. Other multiple reports, including one from Egyptian news sources, indicate the US has ordered nuclear submarines and other warships to the Persian Gulf.
Israel is hosting a NATO naval task force of six frigates which arrived on Monday and conducted joint missile defense drills with Israel. The NATO task force is commanded by a Turkish admiral. Israel is suddenly and significantly beefing up its ties with NATO specifically in an effort to meet the mounting Iranian threat. It is not known how long the NATO task force will be in place off Israel's coast.
This development adds to the array of developments that ever more strongly suggest that something in the way of US military action against Iran is in the offing....and Petreaus was quite uncomfortable with his Senate hearings statement today, when he had to "admit that A-Qaeda" was still a threat in Iraq...when he had said otherwise only few months back...which is a repeat of the false statements of Colin Powell to the UN... in 03.
Syria is mobilizing it forces in the face of what it believes will be an imminent Israeli preemptive strike on Hezbollah in Lebanon. With Iran and Syria's help, Hezbollah has stockpiled three times the weapons, including more dangerous long-range missiles, than it had in the 2006 war with Israel. Syria believes Israel intends to seize the initiative and attack Hezbollah positions so as to diminish its mounting threat. Syrian TV showed video of the mobilization of its forces.
Such an Israeli preemptive strike might well be coordinated with a US strike on Iran and Syria in an Western attempt to eliminate the combined threats in one fell swoop.
Today Syrian and Iranian officials said they believe the massive Israeli war drill that starts Sunday, April 6, 2008 is merely a cover for US/Israeli preparations for a preemptive war against Hibullah in Lebanon and possibly even against Syria and Iran themselves. Iran has sent Syria sophisticated eavesdropping devices over the last few months so that now it can much more effectively spy on Israeli activities in the lead-up to the week of April 6.
Saying that it is acting on intelligence that indicates Syria may have given Hezbollah missile warheads with chemical weapons, the Israeli leadership has decided to redistribute gas masks throughout the country, though the timing of when this will be done is somewhat obscure. A high state of alert now exists between Israel and Syria as both suspect the other of offensive war preparations. Hezbollah-Syrian-Iran retaliation in response for the recent Israeli assassination of a high Hezbollah official is a distinct possibility. The current Middle East situation resembles a dry tinderbox needing only a spark to set off a conflagration.
In a surprise development, China has forwarded to the UN secret intelligence on Iran's nuclear activities. An array of such Intel has been given to the UN recently by Germany, France and several other states' intelligence agencies. The fact that China has seen fit to follow suit is significant in the sense that now we see a swarm of developments that appear to contradict last year's US intelligence assessment that seemed to let Iran off the hook - evidence is coming forth of Iran's secret push to acquire nuclear weapons. The US is likely to use such evidence (whether before or after a military strike) to make the point that diplomacy with Iran is futile and that the military option is (was) justified. Both Russia and China are now pressuring Iran to come clean at the UN. Why are they doing so now?
Either it is because they themselves have become worried that Iran may acquire the bomb, or it is because they see an imminent US strike in the offing and wish to undermine the need for it by pressuring Iran toward diplomacy and capitulation on the nuclear issue, thereby undermining the US case for military action.
On the first point, if one believes that Russia and China have just now become worried Iran may be too close to getting the bomb, one would also have to believe the Russians and Chinese are so stupid that they could not see this eventuality until recently. Russia and China are largely responsible for the Iranian missile and nuclear programs. Iran is their proxy in their clever contest with the US for influence in the Middle East and beyond. That contest involves a strategy to weaken the US and undermine its interests in the region, and Iran has played a key role here.
But Iran is a loose cannon, and both Russia and China know it all too well. China, especially, does not want to see Iran attacked, for it has become too reliant upon imports of Iranian oil. And neither Russia nor China ever wanted to see Iran actually acquire nuclear weapons and their long-range delivery systems, though they have gladly played a dangerous, high-stakes game of brinkmanship on the issue, as part of their strategy to undermine US power and interests. But now the game is nearing the stage where Iran may actually acquire those deadly weapons in only a year or two, and that was always unacceptable to both Russia and China. They've used Iran as a proxy, but now appear willing to throw Iran to the wolves at the UN unless it comes more into line with the clever strategy of its two big sponsors. Those sponsors would prefer not to see the US hit Iran. They will try to forestall such an eventuality, if they can, at this very late date. That is why they are pressing Iran to make certain capitulations on the nuclear issue.
However, the US is likely to seize upon the new Intel as justification for casting aside diplomacy in favor of military action now, before it is too late to stop Iran. If military action against Iran comes, Russia will be the large benefactor, because as the Middle East descends deeper into chaos in the aftermath of such a development, Russia and its comparatively far more stable and reliable energy exports will be thrust into first place on the global stage. Both Russia and China will benefit from the US becoming entangled in yet another quagmire, though China will be forced to come much further directly under the Russian energy yoke, since it will have seen its Middle East sources of energy imports significantly impaired. The fact that Russia is essentially in a win-win situation as respects Iran (it wins if the US strikes Iran and it wins if the US does not do so because it can continue to use Iran to keep a level of instability going in the Middle East and it can continue to weaken the US interests there) means that Russia may largely sit back and let the US act, picking up the pieces afterward. China will tend to work harder than Russia to prevent any US strike on Iran.
The fact that both Russia and China are now pressuring Iran bespeaks that they know a US strike on Iran is becoming a very real possibility.
China has denied reports that it handed over intelligence about Iran's secret nuclear program to the UN. This public denial is not surprising, however. Both Russia and China have today reaffirmed their support for Iran's "peaceful" nuclear pursuits - a statement packed with diplomatic doublespeak that can be taken to mean various things, depending upon the particular audience. Both Russia and China pointedly criticized US policy on Iran and stated that the US should negotiate with, rather than threaten, Iran. Of course, in their statement "negotiate" means "compromise", which would only further weaken an already weakened US, and strengthen the position of an already ascendant Iran. Yet, military strikes are no solution either, because the US is ill-prepared to handle their aftermath and to win the "peace" after the bombs stop falling.
Top Bush administration officials, including even those in high positions in the intelligence community who drafted last year's report, continue to undermine last year's intelligence assessment that had appeared to let Iran off the hook, as it were. A unified message of condemnation of Iran's nuclear activities and its al ledged responsibility for US deaths in Iraq is ever more powerfully emanating from the Bush administration. So much so that British officials today openly expressed concern that this is a concerted effort to lay the foundation for an imminent US strike on Iran.
Additional factors pointing to April 28th as the most likely time for a US strike:
The Pentagon has procured a large inventory of sophisticated bunker-buster bombs and their delivery systems. When the contracts for these systems were initiated last year, a clause required their complete delivery by the start of April, 2008.
Mr. Bush initiated a program to fill completely America's Strategic Petroleum Reserve with the stipulation that it must be completed by the start of April, 2008. It is now completely filled.
Against a dangerous enemy in possession of significant and deadly air defenses, the US always launches air strikes under the dark cover of an astronomical new moon so as to give its pilots every advantage and protection. Iran is such an enemy. Iraq in 1991 was also such an enemy, and US air strikes began at 3:00am local time on January 17, 1991 - the day of the astronomical new (darkened) moon. While the US did begin its air strikes against Iraq in 2003 on the night of a full moon (March 18, 2003), that was due to the fact that it had received credible Intel as to Saddam Hussein's location, and it attempted to take him out, thus starting operations earlier than planned. Additionally, Iraq of 2003 possessed only a small fraction of the air defense capabilities it had in 1991, and thus posed little real threat to US air forces. The next astronomical new moon is April 6, an optimal date for utilizing cover of darkness for air operations. The next astronomical new moon after that is May 5....[ 04/28 ]is it.
It is reported by Scott Ritter, former chief US arms inspector, as well as by other sources, that now-former CENTCOM commander Adm. Fallon recently got into a dispute with the Bush administration over orders to deploy a third aircraft carrier battle group to the vicinity of the Persian Gulf, to be on station in early April. Adm. Fallon took the position that a third group was unnecessary unless a strike on Iran was in the offing, and refused to carry out the order. His partly forced/partly voluntary "resignation" followed immediately. The third carrier group is being deployed to within striking distance of Iran...
Remembrance: Same old Tactics, criminal minds never change...
The climatic battle between Islam and Western civilization in Europe took place in Vienna...in the 7th century, and later in the 16th and 17th centuries...
By 1683, the Moslems (Turks from the Ottoman Empire) were literally at the gates of Vienna. The West won and went forward. Islam lost and went backward.... Interestingly, the date of that battle was September 11..., 9/11
Now, the PNAC crowds of CIA want to recreate the conditions...for the "WEST" to defeat Islam again..., although Islam was not even looking for a FIGHT!!!
Hezbollah says has solid proof of WHO Murdered Imad Mughniyah...
PAR L'ASSASSINAT ET L'ENLEVEMENT....
"This is the hard stuff. The above is French for assassination.
28 years ago (April 25....War With Iran will start again)? Target Tehran is set: April 28th/08.
Think, ACT, Marvel and Analyze....just like our CIA does since the advent of the enlightened age of Robert Gates, Georges Herbert Walker BUSH Sr., and the latest jerk on the Block of PNAC....G.W. Bush
- "Espionage's Most Wanted: the top 10 book of
malicious moles, blown covers, and intelligence oddities"
by Tom e. Mahl
Desperate Deception: British Covert Operations in the United States, 1939-44 and Espionage's Most Wanted.... is a must read...
In Espionage's Most Wanted, you will learn that America’s first spy-masters included Benjamin Franklin and John Jay. Otto von Bismarck’s chief spy, Wilhelm Stieber, posed as an itinerant peddler and sold religious artifacts and pornography to enemy troops as a cover for collecting intelligence... During the cultural competition of the Cold War, the CIA helped popularize abstract expressionism by spending millions to promote the careers of artists such as Jackson Pollock. The East Germans once traded two captured West German agents for one dead East German agent. CIA officer E. Howard Hunt cleverly disrupted an intimate dinner meeting between Mexican Communists and a Soviet delegation by distributing party invitations to the general public. During the 1980s and early 1990s, the CIA employed psychics to “remotely view” places of interest in the Soviet Union...
Espionage's Most Wanted, chronicles 500 of the most daring spies, ingenious plots, bungled operations, and surprising facts about the history of espionage and intelligence from around the world. Its fifty lists include the top-ten intelligence agencies, master spies, traitors, false flag ops., code-breaking coups, covert operations blunders, and colorful dirty tricks. History buffs and espionage enthusiasts will enjoy this irreverent but illuminating look at the world of spies and intelligence....
Mahl does an excellent job unearthing data that the British secret services sorely wish had remained secret.... With copious footnotes, Mahl shows how Britain manipulated public opinion, lied to the American people, and subverted the democratic process. Mahl also demonstrates how Britain could not have pulled this off without the complicity of American Anglophile elites with stronger devotion to a foreign power than to their own country.... sounds very much like feudal Lebanese "intelligence families" intermarried by "elites" with total devotion to foreign powers than to their own country, which has been going on for over a century and a half...reinforced by the new PNAC...and its nemesis still in its infancy...
While the information is interesting and well-supported, the writing style of this book is tedious. Despite the fascinating material, this book is written in a way that grabs your attention for a sustained read. Still, it's history, not a novel, so this is to be expected in the intelligence field, and particularly the effect of covert operations on politics..., war, deceit, deception, Blowback.... policy and civil society..., PAR L'ASSASSINAT ET L'ENLEVEMENT..... !!!
Hizbullah says has solid proof, that CEO of the White House Murder Inc. Asef Shawqat, murdered Imad F. Mughniyah in downtown Damascus, on behalf of his sponsors of PNAC, Elliott Abrams and CIA/MOSSAD...
Hezbollah's deputy secretary general Naim Qassem has again accused the White House Murder Inc. & Assef Shawkat, the official representative of Israel in Syria's highest echelons..., of direct responsibility for the assassination of the organization's senior military figure Imad Mughniyeh.
In a speech Friday to mark the birthday of the Prophet Mohammed, Qassem said "we have clear proof, of 100 percent that cannot be doubted, that Israel/MOSSAD/CIA, are the lead assassination teams, of the White House Murder Inc. & Assef Shawkat, the official representative of Israel in Syria's highest echelons...in charge of MURDERS in Syria and Lebanon since 2000...."
Qassem said there is no basis for the claims that other services were behind the assassination...although many have helped "convince" Shawqat to do it....including DGSE , DST, and DIA/CIA2, offering many many carrots for his faction in Syria..... "Know that Israel's assassination team, of the White House Murder Inc. & Assef Shawkat are responsible and it must bear the whole responsibility..."
According to Arab media reports, Hezbollah secretary general Hassan Nasrallah is to give an address Monday to mark to 40th day since Mughniyah's assassination.
Last week, security forces were on high alert as Israel's intelligence community has gained possession of fragments of information hinting at plans for a Hezbollah revenge attack in coordination with Iran's and Syria's factions, harmed by the confluence of carrots for the Shawkat factions....and "sticks" within Syria....all
designed to be part and parcel of the False Flag operation...
Although this intelligence was direct and focused...., since the source of the information is Assef Shawkat himself from deep within Syria's power structure as usual...., it was more than enough to send into high alert troops of the Israel Defense Forces at the northern border....in new camouflage tactics of the day...
The climatic battle between Islam and Western civilization in Europe took place in Vienna...in the 7th century, and later in the 16th and 17th centuries...
By 1683, the Moslems (Turks from the Ottoman Empire) were literally at the gates of Vienna. The West won and went forward. Islam lost and went backward.... Interestingly, the date of that battle was September 11..., 9/11
Now, the PNAC crowds of CIA want to recreate the conditions...for the "WEST" to defeat Islam again..., although Islam was not even looking for a FIGHT!!!
The USA Constitution and our rights as US Citizens...! 28 years ago (April 25) a stupid dust storm stopped America from Rescuing it's own people held as Hostages by the Iranians...! An act of God? NO, An act by the criminal CIA and BOB Gates in person, and Zbigniew Brzezinski,....who is the master in Deceit...deception and intrigue....in Geostrategies and he's back!
These War Criminals have too much blood on their hands to walk away from power on their own. I expect another False Flag to justify a ground invasion -- the bombing campaign will not cut it....Another major False Flag to usher in Martial Law. IF we hit their nuke facilities, and the fallout reaches China; expect the Reds to have their puppies in NK launch a missile at Hawaii. Bad vibes are swirling about all of these earthquakes; will they be sad to usher in Martial Law, then attack Iran? I see where some government official has asked for all nukes to be accounted for.... Why; are we missing one? Was Minot a False Flag gone wrong that was stopped....?
Watch our Forces in the Middle East; a set up for a False Flag; stationed too close together, and too many of them. A couple of missiles and we could lose more Soldiers in a couple of days than we lost in either Nam or Korea....A nuke carrier exploding could wipe out the ships around her too. This all goes back to a satanic Federal World Government/Order where the Constitution is swept off the land -- seemingly; God will help us if we do....Exciting times to live; on the verge of a controlled demolition of our economy to help break the backs of the country....with "Collateral Crunch"
While it's true that nukes can cause terrible destruction, a box cutter can be pretty dangerous as well. People who's hearts are filled with hate will always find a weapon to use. It's time to find a new way to deal with Just causes of peoples under occupation, and the ensuing obvious Resistance to tyranny...The US is a fascists society (by definition) and it has been increasingly so for at least 40 years. Politicians don't care; it's not there sons and daughters dying. Its the sons and daughters of the poor, mostly Mexican and other nationalities...looking to get a permanent residency in the USA, the uneducated, the underprivileged. Humans are NOT equal to the powers that be.
Bush/Cheney are worse than any Saddam Hussein or Assad or any other tyrant. No wonder the world thinks Americans are idiots. I know he cheated, but it was still a close election. If republicans are re-elected yet again, I have no doubt it will mean world war III...Iran is nothing like Iraq. The results of an attack would be on a completely different scale.Iraq was isolated in the region and was led by an anti-Islamic dictator, yet look how the Islamic world has descended on it and made it their war. Iran is looked up to as a symbol of defiance (of the Pnac) in the mid-east region and around the Muslim world. Attacking Iran would consolidate Muslims across the globe against the PNAC even more than they are now....and that would make Israel's day...since it is Israel who is looking to shed the YOKE of the American shackles...in order to make friends with its natural environment, M.E., Central Asia, Africa, China, Russia....the US is a tried, used and abused "falling" entity...milked long enough for now....time for a new venture.
Iran can't be compared to North Korea at all. Iranians have been struggling for democracy and human rights from more than 100 years ago (2 revolutions in 1905, 1953, 1979). Still Iran is the most democratic country in Persian Gulf region and it's people are the closest to western values....
Iran wants and needs to have relations with US and EU. But they are pushing Iran to rely on its military by isolating this country. Iran is ready to halt its nuclear program during negotiations (as they did 4 years ago) but US and EU ask them to halt their program as a condition to start negotiations!! (so negotiation for what?!) WWIII: Muslims vs. Christians; Winner gets the dwindling supply of oil in the desert and the charred remains of Jerusalem. woohoo!
War With Iran: What Would It Look Like? Here it is: We hit them, they hit US, we hit them and they glow, their sleepers hit US here, we get Martial Law, we rebel and a Bloody Second American Revolution ends with a return to our great Constitution and millions of innocent US and Iranians dead! During the Iranian/Iraq war, Iran lost a million people and took it on the chin and built a blood fountain that is still there today. Give Peace a chance and stop this Iraq/Afghan War and leave Iran alone! If US children in DC do not mind a Second American Revolution..., !
Want to know how a U.S. strike on a newly nuclearized Iran might actually work? Turn to page 154 of Francois Heisbourg's extraordinary new book, Iran, the Choice of Arms, published in French but, alas, not yet in the English-speaking world.
It's frightening, but as accurate as only an insider's insider can possibly be--down to the actual weapons America might launch and their impact on the military machine and civilian infrastructure and population of the nation that is perhaps the world's most dangerous and unpredictable power.
In one of three densely conceived, though, the author is careful to warn, utterly fictitious scenarios, President Bush launches Operation Boundless Fortitude after Iran's religious leader Ali Khameini announces baldly that his nation has manufactured weapons-grade fissionable material enriched to nearly 100% (in lieu of 5% enrichment for peaceful nuclear reactors).
In an effort to show the world that the U.S. has not been paralyzed by its disastrous adventure in neighboring Iraq, on Aug. 16, 2008, Bush orders a massive aerial bombardment, flights of Tomahawk cruise missiles streaking from submarines and naval warships to strike Iranian command and control centers, ministries, telecommunications facilities and Iranian air defenses, especially Russian-made TOR M-1 missile emplacements, while B-2 stealth bombers destroy all access to the subterranean enrichment facilities at Natanz.
American warplanes and missiles carefully avoid striking research reactors in Teheran and Isfahan as well as the nuclear reactor at Bousher--less than 100 kilometers from Kuwait--as well as the centrifuges themselves at Natanz in an effort to prevent the spread of radioactive material to nearby population centers. However, other missiles producing electromagnetic pulses do knock out virtually all of Iran's electric grid and computer systems.
By Sept. 4, less than three months after the first flight of Tomahawks, Iran is reduced to a state of near paralysis, unable in any sense to retaliate militarily, its entire economic infrastructure in shambles. The president's near-term goal is satisfied to the letter. But if you think that's the end, well then, read on.
For there are some extraordinary surprises in this consummate, if brief, but brilliantly conceived work by the man who is perhaps Europe's leading global thinker--chairman of the London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies, adviser to French presidents and ministers of defense and foreign affairs going back to Valery Giscard d'Estaing and top adviser to French arms makers from Thompson to Matra.
Indeed, if you read no other book on Iran, its nuclear ambitions and its threat to a world that is still struggling desperately to wrap its collective mind around the consequences, this is the one. In under 200 pages, you have the history of Iran's entire nuclear program, back to the Shah, Dwight D. Eisenhower and his 1953 "Atoms for Peace" program and beyond.
In the course of his narrative--colossally authentic as only the head of the world's leading think tank dealing with strategic and military affairs could provide--Heisbourg weaves us expertly through a thicket populated with such Dr. Strangelove characters as Pakistan's Dr. A.Q. Khan, who brought the nuclear arms race to the subcontinent and far beyond, and the riveting details of the arrival on the scene of other major players from Russia and China through Libya and North Korea.
"Iran could produce a nuclear weapon within the years 2008 to 2010, if that is its objective. It remains for us to determine whether that is the case. It's here that we must ask ourselves what are the motivations and the intentions of Iran," Heisbourg says.
The key motive, he argues, is "respect." Iran isn't unique here. France, India and China all went nuclear for similar reasons. The "ummah," Iran's religious powers who follow their own Shiite agenda, dream of an "Islamic Bomb," that will restore Iran's leadership role in the Muslim world.
Still, there were various points along the road to the brink of membership in the nuclear club when a different path might have been taken, Heisbourg seems to suggest--but none more significant than the moment with President Bush welcomed Iran into his own, quite exclusive club--the "Axis of Evil." Suddenly, on Jan. 29, 2002, the leadership in Teheran saw itself directly in the cross-hairs of the American military machine. There seemed to be only one possible response.
And so we arrive at the most riveting, and frightening pages of this brief work--Heisbourg's three "scenarios"--each, alas, more chilling than the last. What could happen should the world, or at least the part of the world that is immediately concerned about the future of mankind and the planet, lose sight of the fact that any further expansion of membership in the "nuclear club" could have catastrophic consequences for the very existence of life as we know it?
His first scenario he labels "Cooperation," and envisions a newly inaugurated President Hillary Clinton meeting at the UN with her moderate Iranian homologue Mohamed Qalibaf immediately after he defeats Ahmadinejad in the June 2009 Iranian presidential elections, followed by her triumphal state visit to Teheran a few months later that recognizes Iranian supremacy in the region, ushering in a nuclear-free age. In this case, Iran becomes a bona fide member of the community of nuclear-free and stable nations, a leader in its region and the world.
In the second scenario, which Heisbourg dubs "Compromise," Iran successfully launches a Shahab rocket and orbiting satellite, proving it has a functioning delivery vehicle, then announces it has produced sufficient fissionable material at its Natanz facility to build two nuclear bombs in 2009 and begins work on underground test facilities in the basalt formations beneath the great salt desert of Dacht-e-Kavir. (Another nod to the database of the IISS.) Heisbourg calls even this option one with "disastrous consequences from every angle." Non-proliferation is all but totally discredited, North Korea resumes its nuclear program and Japan reopens its nuclear debate, Saudi Arabia decides it needs a bomb and buys a dozen or so from Pakistan, which desperately needs the oil.
Next up? Egypt, then Turkey, and by 2020 the Middle East is a nuclearized region hurtling toward Armageddon "without brakes." And yet again, Iran is as isolated as it was in 1979.
But there's more, much more to even this "Compromise" scenario. Iran, to show that it still is master of the region, launches a raid by Iranian commandos under the thinly veiled smokescreen of Hezbollah--using a tramp steamer to bring a small nuclear weapon into the harbor of Haifa, exploding it on the beach with apocalyptic consequences. The third scenario is "Confrontation." And difficult as it may be to imagine any more chilling than the previous scenario, Heisbourg manages.
Here, the radicals lose dramatically in the March 2008 Iranian parliamentary elections (in fact they did not, but the book was written last fall). So they perceive a need to move rapidly. By mid-2008, 10,000 enrichment centrifuges are in operation, pumping out weapons-grade uranium. Bush, still in office as a lame-duck in August 2008, launches Operation Boundless Fortitude, though, horrified, not a single nation, even Israel, agrees to join in. The result? Nothing good.
The irony of all this, of course, is that Iran, without a nuclear weapon, is well placed to claim leadership as the single most powerful nation of the Persian Gulf and perhaps of the Middle East itself. Yet, as Heisbourg so compellingly points out, if armed with a nuclear weapon, its advantage evaporates, as a nuclear arms race in the region would find a host of other neighboring states buying their way into the nuclear arms club and aligning themselves with the superpowers. Iran would again find itself isolated, alone, shunned and boycotted. Indeed the Iranian people, while they might accept being bashed by the Great Satan (George Bush's America), they "take badly their country being perceived by the world as a sort of leprous regime of the North Korean type rather than as a great nation," Heisbourg points out.
As Heisbourg's final chapter ("The Hour of Choices") concludes, we must continue to hold firm on non-proliferation, treat Iran in all respects like North Korea (negotiate where appropriate, but from a position of strength). Otherwise, the West would seem to be in a position of simply stumbling along behind an America that's been crippled by its multiple failures in Iraq but which must, at all costs, restore its credibility. Heisbourg's scenarios, he admits, are written "without joy," but from a profound sense of reality by one who has, quite frankly, seen it all.... !
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