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Despite sanctions and pressure, India set to do more business with Iran

Indo-Asian News Service | February 14, 2012

New Delhi: In spite of sanctions by the US and the European Union and Israel linking Tehran to the attack on an Israeli embassy car here, India is set to step up its energy and business ties with Iran, with a commerce ministry team going there shortly to explore new opportunities. […]

Not just oil, India is also stepping up the refurbishing of the Chabahar Port in Iran and a strategic railway link that will offer it direct access to Afghanistan and the energy-rich Central Asia. […]

India is uneasy at Israeli accusations about Iran’s hand in the Monday bombing that targeted an Israeli embassy car, badly injuring the wife of the Israeli defence attache. India, the sources said, does not want to be drawn into a diplomatic war of words between Tehran and Tel Aviv. Iran has rubbished Israeli charges as “empty lies”.

But with Israel launching a diplomatic offensive and the American Jewish Congress (AJC) asking India to scale down its engagement with Iran, New Delhi could come under renewed pressure from the West to cut off ties with what the Americans say is a rogue regime.

India has launched a probe into the terror attack. “The probe is on,” is all Indian officials would say.

Ajai Sahni, a terrorism expert, said it was very unlikely that the attack would ever be traced to the Iranian state. But he agreed that India could be under extra pressure as Israel may leverage the incident to portray Iran as a rogue regime.

The American Jewish Congress has told Indian ambassador to the US Nirupama Rao that it was “deeply troubled” by India’s efforts to intensify trade relations with Iran “at the very moment when the US and fellow democracies are applying new economic pressures” on Tehran. […]

Last week, as the European Union asked India to broker talks with Tehran over its atomic programme, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh pitched for a resolution of the issue by giving “maximum scope” to diplomacy. – Full article

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February 14, 2012 Posted by | False Flag Terrorism, Timeless or most popular | , , | Leave a comment

Israel Blames Iran for Convenient Bombing

By Tony Cartalucci | Land Destroyer | February 13, 2012

No deaths, just long sought after provocations; a geopolitical gambit executed with the proficiency of Mossad.

“…it would be far more preferable if the United States could cite an Iranian provocation as justification for the airstrikes before launching them. Clearly, the more outrageous, the more deadly, and the more unprovoked the Iranian action, the better off the United States would be. Of course, it would be very difficult for the United States to goad Iran into such a provocation without the rest of the world recognizing this game, which would then undermine it. (One method that would have some possibility of success would be to ratchet up covert regime change efforts in the hope that Tehran would retaliate overtly, or even semi-overtly, which could then be portrayed as an unprovoked act of Iranian aggression.) ”

-US foreign policy makers in the Fortune 500 funded Brookings Institution’s 2009 “Which Path to Persia?” report, pages 84-85.

~

“U.S. officials said they have seen no intelligence to indicate that Iran is actively plotting attacks on U.S. soil. But Director of National Intelligence James R. Clapper Jr. said the thwarted plot “shows that some Iranian officials — probably including Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei — have changed their calculus and are now more willing to conduct an attack in the United States in response to real or perceived U.S. actions that threaten the regime.”

The warning about Iran’s more aggressive stance was included in written testimony that Clapper submitted to Congress on Tuesday as part of the intelligence community’s annual assessment of the nation’s most serious security threats.”

– “Iran, perceiving threat from West, willing to attack on U.S. soil, U.S. intelligence report finds,” Washington Post, January 31, 2012

~

“We predict that the threat on our sites around the world will increase … on both our guarded sites and ‘soft’ sites,” read the memo, with soft sites interpreted to mean potential targets such as synagogues and other Jewish community buildings. The letter was circulated by the head of security for Israel’s Consul General for the Mid-Atlantic States, ABC News said.”

-“‘Soft’ Target Threat Gets Community’s Attention,” The Jewish Week, February 7, 2012

Quite clearly, there is a premeditated conspiracy working ceaselessly to provoke Iran into a war it neither wants nor will benefit from in any conceivable way, and upon failing to provoke Iran, provocations will be manufactured in their stead, as seen in the recently botched “plot to assassinate a Saudi ambassador on US soil,” later revealed to be a US sting operation involving DEA agents and a duped, entrapped patsy.

Now Israel is blaming two attacks on their own embassies, one in New Delhi, India and another failed attack in Tbilisi, Georgia, squarely on Iran. There were only minor injuries reported in the New Delhi attack which was carried out in a similar manner to those targeting Iranian scientists in Iran – attacks now admittedly the work of Israeli Mossad agents and US-funded, armed, trained, and harbored Mujahedeen e-Khalq (MEK) terrorists.

Iran clearly has nothing to gain by bombing Israeli targets abroad, especially in nations like India where such an act would not only give the West the provocation it is on record trying to “goad” out of Tehran for years, but also one that would unsettle relations with India which would directly effect the conflict in Afghanistan festering on Iran’s eastern border.

Conversely, a non-lethal attack on Israeli targets gives the Wall Street-London-Tel Aviv corporate-financier elite the exact provocation they have been fishing for on record since at least 2009. Reuters reports, “a bomb wrecked a car carrying the wife of the Israeli Defence attache as she was going to pick up her children from school.” All the emotional plot points exist to manipulate public opinion against Iran, and behind a Western attack that has so far been perpetually stalled by a world increasingly irate over the West’s global warmongering.

The degree to which this likely stunt will be successful in serving as a pretext for war (or at least further escalation) for an axis that has been waging a campaign of terror against Iran for years remains to be seen. This Wall Street-London-Tel Aviv axis has openly admitted they seek to provoke war with an unwilling adversary, and all three are experts at manufacturing provocations for otherwise unjustifiable acts of aggression.

Iran is an aggressive though not reckless nation – so says the US policy think-tank Brookings Institution in their own “Which Path to Persia?” report. Iran does not lack an accurate understanding of global public opinion, evident in their English news service, PressTV. Should Iran choose to finally strike out against the West for their blatant and consistent acts of war, they would most likely do so with global public opinion in mind – likely excluding the possibility of targeting a mother on her way to pick up her children from school.

As in any crime, big or small, the first and most pressing question to answer is, “cui bono” or, “to whose benefit?” An axis of Western powers desperately seeking a pretext for a war they’ve tried to start for years? Or a nation desperately trying to avoid war, weathering constant and overt acts of aggression directed at their economy, infrastructure, civilians, military leaders, and politicians, only to end up bombing an Israeli mother on her way to pick up her children from school? With this in mind, and with Iran squarely denying any responsibility for the attacks, the burden of proof lies entirely on Israel.

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February 14, 2012 Posted by | Deception, False Flag Terrorism, Timeless or most popular | , , | Leave a comment

Azerbaijan Hub for Mossad’s Assassination & Espionage Operations against Iran

To-Be-NATO Ally Azerbaijan Proves its NATO-Worthiness

By Sibel Edmonds | Boiling Frogs Post |February 12, 2012

Today Iran’s foreign ministry summoned Azerbaijan’s ambassador to rebuke him for Azerbaijan’s alleged link to Mossad operations against the Iranian government. Earlier today, the London Times reported that Israel’s Mossad has been using Azerbaijan as a hub to spy on the Islamic Republic, citing testimony from a still- anonymous Mossad agent.

“Following the movements of the terrorists involved in assassination of Iranian scientists in Azerbaijan republic and the facilities provided to them to go to Tel Aviv in collaboration with Mossad spy network.”

Iran’s Press TV reports further on the meeting:

In a Sunday meeting with Azerbaijan’s envoy to Tehran Javanshir Akhundov, the Director General of the Iranian Foreign Ministry’ Office for Commonwealth and Caucasus Affairs voiced strong objection to the presence and unrestricted activity of Mossad intelligence agents in Azerbaijan, who are involved in espionage activities against the Islamic Republic.

The Times of London reported Saturday, citing testimony from an anonymous Mossad agent active in Azerbaijan referred to only as Shimon,

“This is ground zero for intelligence work,” Shimon told the Times. “Our presence here is quiet, but substantial. We have increased our presence in the past year, and it gets us very close to Iran. This is a wonderfully porous country.”

            …

Last month Boiling Frogs Post broke the newly brewing story-line in the war propaganda against Iran involving an alleged Iranian terror plot in Azerbaijan, and had a follow up on the emerging ‘alleged’ details in the ‘alleged’ plot claiming Israeli diplomats and religious figures were the intended targets of the alleged Iranian assassination plot. We also provided analysis on the mainstream media spin on these developments here, and emphasized the timing and way-too-familiar false flag quality of the alleged plot:

While the pressure and the venues of attacks on Iran have been growing and escalating- think nuclear arms development accusations, meddling in Iraq accusations, alleged assassination attempt against Saudi Diplomat in the US accusations …, we suddenly get a brand new allegation accusing Iran of plotting a terror act in Azerbaijan. Not only that, the targets of this alleged terror plot happen to be none other than Israel. If that doesn’t give you pause, make it a long pause, followed by firm skepticism, well, your mental faculties may be in need of a serious check-up followed by a thorough tune-up.

We were the first site in the US to break and cover the story last month. We will continue our coverage and keep you posted.

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February 13, 2012 Posted by | Deception, False Flag Terrorism, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | , , , | Leave a comment

Syria as Tonkin Gulf for Attack on Iran?

By Daniel McAdams | LewRockwell.com | February 10, 2012

Michael Lofgren, an old friend who recently retired after a long career analyzing House and Senate national security budgets, has an excellent piece in the Huffington Post, in which he admits that after dismissing the decades of scare reports on Iran by the warmongers he is suddenly a bit more worried about a possible attack on Iran.

Writes Lofgren:

During this presidential campaign season, there is on the GOP side the most toxic warmongering political dynamic imaginable: one that makes Bush look like a pacifist in retrospect. President Obama for his part is trying to triangulate à la Bill Clinton between the GOP, a Democratic base that is mostly antiwar but politically ineffectual, Israel, the military-industrial complex, and his polling numbers.

Lofgren warns that with “the U.S. and Iran…reprising the Gulf of Tonkin in the Strait of Hormuz…these factors compose a a brew potentially so toxic that one would think it would give even the most belligerent chickenhawk pause before quaffing it.”

But what if Syria itself is the Gulf of Tonkin rather than the cat and mouse games around the Hormuz Strait?

Let us consider a few points:

First: The atrocity stories are mostly cooked-up to make the case for Western military intervention.

Human rights groups like the “Syrian Observatory for Human Rights” are the sole sources of information for events on the ground in Syria, even though the SOHR is based in London, has no contact information, no street address, no e-mail address, no list of officers or employees. The sole responsible person listed, Rami Abdul Rahman, is in fact not a real person at all, as the organization admits, but rather is “just an alias that was being used by all SOHR members.” (Readers: have a good look at their website and decide if you would base a US war on Syria on the credibility of this organization providing the “atrocity stories” about Syria.) The only other mention of a real human attached to this organization is in this photo, whose caption reads, “Rami Abdelrahman, head of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, leaves the Foreign and Commonwealth Office after meeting Britain’s Foreign Secretary, William Hague, in central London November 21, 2011.” (Thanks to Land Destroyer blog for first pointing out the curiousness of the Syrian opposition coordinating with the UK government).

It is this organization that has been almost the exclusive source of the horror stories coming out of Syria, such as the tale of Assad’s callous murder of 18 premature babies in Homs — dutifully reported yesterday in the UK Independent newspaper AND last August on CNN! For a full and compelling report on the pro-war propaganda campaign being cooked up by the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights and dutifully amplified by our complicit media, see today’s excellent piece on Infowars.

I guess nothing says “let’s go to war” like the old babies in incubator stories. Who can forget that poor 15-year-old Kuwaiti girl, known only by her first name of Nayirah, who told us harrowing tales of Saddam’s ruthlessness: “”While I was there, I saw the Iraqi soldiers come into the hospital with guns, and go into the room where . . . babies were in incubators. They took the babies out of the incubators, took the incubators, and left the babies on the cold floor to die.”

Except, as we now know, she turned out to be the Kuwaiti ambassador’s daughter and the tale was cooked up in the PR offices of Hill & Knowlton with the collusion of the late war-loving US Rep. Tom Lantos…

Likewise, the Syria Observatory for Human Rights was the source of last week’s stories of “hundreds murdered” in Homs, conveniently on the day before the UN Security Council was to vote on US/UK/French regime change resolution. The absurdity that Assad would be insane enough to go Rambo on his cities the day before the UN/NATO’s Libya liberators decided whether or not to invade was lost on most observers, who see what they want to see in these situations once the narrative has been established. That is why just a day later when “hundreds” became “dozens” and many of those dozens turned out to be Syrian security forces killed by the famed unarmed democracy protestors, nobody noticed. The narrative was set. No matter who kills who, it is always, as Hillary Clinton says, the government murdering peaceful protestors.

Now the Syrian opposition propaganda machine warns that Assad might be “mulling” the use of chemical weapons in Homs! First the babies, then this!

Today’s bomb attacks on the Military Security Directorate in Aleppo follow a familiar pattern of rebels targeting Syrian security forces and taking out scores of civilians in the process. The Syrian opposition groups, i.e. Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, again makes the claim that in fact Assad is blowing up his own military and intelligence facilities. Rational people might judge for themselves whether a leader attempting to put down an armed insurrection in his country would start by blowing up his own military. Alas, rationality has been thrown out the window in the frenzied rush to regime change.

Second: Once burned, twice shy — or, the pitfalls of falling for the propaganda.

The Russians and Chinese, whose skepticism on Libya proved to be very well placed and who as a result vetoed the recent Syria “regime change” resolution in the UN Security Council are doubly skeptical on Syria, and having been proven right on Libya should be accorded a degree of attention this time. That is why when someone like Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov says that those pushing the UNSC resolution on Syria were “hysterical” and “indecent” the world should listen. The Russians urged that any resolution call for an end to all violence — on the part of the government and on the part of the rebels (based in Turkey and armed by Qatar and the West). Their urging that both sides stop shooting rather than just the government side was ignored by the US/UK/NATO/GCC regime changers.

Third: Western militaries and secret services are already in the vicinity.

We must consider reports of UK and Qatari special forces troops operating in Syria (alongside their US counterparts no doubt). One reason to believe these reports is that they have been denied by the British government.

Fourth: Has Iran really thrown Syria under the bus?

We have heard reports, most recently yesterday from RT, that Iran was sending some 15,000 special forces into Syria to help its government defend against rebel attacks.

Fifth, and finally: Why is Syria being readied as the next target?

The US is “reviewing military options” against the Syrian government. US bases literally surround Iran and Iran may have lent military assistance to its ally, Syria. The Israelis have been champing at the bit to attack Iran, but fear having to go it alone. When the US begins military action against Syria, what are the chances that a huge Iranian attack on US forces in Syria or vicinity might be manufactured? What would be the US response considering the “toxic” pro-war brew that Mike Lofgren points out is currently being quaffed in Washington? Smells a bit like Tonkin in Damascus?

One final note: News organizations and websites that have uncritically reported the atrocity stories from these “human rights” groups have helped set the stage for military action against Syria, and have been in fact part of the psychological preparation of the battlefield. As such, they should be considered as morally culpable for the disaster that will soon unfold for the Syrians and for us as the John McCains and the Hillary Clintons and the Sean Hannities and the Bill Kristols of the world.

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February 11, 2012 Posted by | Deception, Militarism | , , | Leave a comment

AIPAC to sic Obama on Iran

Press TV – February 11, 2012

The most powerful Zionist lobbying group in the US, AIPAC, is increasing pressure on the administration of Barack Obama to launch a military strike against Iran, a political writer says.

“It is clear that Israel and its neoconservative camp followers here in the United States are increasing pressure on President Obama to either attack Iran or let Israel do it,” M.J. Rosenberg said.

Rosenberg, who was director of policy at the Israel Policy Forum, made the suggestion in an article about a military attack against Iran’s nuclear facilities.

The author said the main reason behind his prediction is that “this is an election year and no one will say no to [Israeli Prime Minister] Benjamin Netanyahu in an election year.”

He was referring to the 2012 presidential election in the United States that will be held in November.

Rosenberg also pointed out to an upcoming meeting of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC).

“War enthusiasm will rise to a fever pitch by March, when AIPAC holds its annual policy conference,” he wrote.

AIPAC, which has an influential and undeniable role in US policies, advocates pro-Israel policies to the Congress and Executive Branch of the United States.

The group urges all members of Congress to support Israel through foreign aid.

The US and Israel have repeatedly threatened Tehran with the “option” of a military strike, based on their allegation that Iran’s nuclear program may include a covert military aspect, a claim strongly rejected by Tehran.

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February 11, 2012 Posted by | Progressive Hypocrite, Wars for Israel | , , | Leave a comment

‘Seoul trade with Iran will continue despite sanctions’

Press TV – February 9, 2012

A top official at Korea’s banking sector says Seoul’s trade flow with Iran will not be constricted by western sanctions despite causing a halt in cooperation with Iran’s Bank Tejarat.

“We halted wire transfers of cash to accounts of Bank Tejarat, but this doesn’t hurt exporters at all. Most of exporters take payments from the Central Bank of Iran anyway,” Korea Herald reported Jeon Gwang wook head of the foreign exchange desk at the Industrial Bank of Korea (IBK) as saying.

Jeon added that the extended sanctions are unlikely to slow trade flows with Iran as most Korean exporters can still make settlements with Iran’s Central Bank using accounts based on the won (Korea’s national currency).

On December 31, 2011, US President Barack Obama signed into law new sanctions against Iran, which seek to penalize foreign institutions that do business with Iran’s central bank and oil sector.

Under pressure by US-led sanctions against Tehran, two state-run South Korean banks, Woori Bank and the Industrial Bank of Korea, halted transactions with Iran’s Bank Tejarat as of January 23.

The US demands that Seoul halt trade activities with Iran which would reportedly jeopardize over $7 billion in South Korea’s annual exports and about 10 percent of its crude imports.

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February 9, 2012 Posted by | Economics, Wars for Israel | , , , | Leave a comment

Did the Ayatollah Really Say: Kill all Jews, Annihilate Israel?

By Keith Johnson | Revolt of the Plebs | February 8, 2012

The short answer: Absolutely not!

Part of the long answer comes from Muhammad Sahimi, who recently told Antiwar Radio host Scott Horton that the inflammatory article published by World Net Daily (WND), entitled Ayatollah: Kill all Jews, Annihilate Israel is “totally bogus.”

Muhammad Sahimi is a Professor of Chemical Engineering and Materials Science at the University of Southern California (USC). He also frequently writes on Iranian politics for Payvand, the Huffington Post, Antiwar.com and several mainstream news outlets. He has a regular column for the Tehran Bureau of the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) and is fluent in Farsi.

According to Sahimi, the WND piece by Reza Kahlili is based entirely on an article by Alireza Forghani, who is described by Kahlili as “an analyst and a strategy specialist in [Ayatollah Ali] Khamenei’s camp.”

However, Kahlili provides no proof of this and expects the reader to take his word for it. In response, Sahimi says that Alireza Forghani is nothing more than an “Iranian blogger” who has “no ties to the Iranian government…no official post anywhere…doesn’t even have a job.”

Forghani’s article first appeared on the website Alef, which Sahimi says is indirectly linked to an Iranian Member of Parliament but has no connection whatsoever to Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. According to WND’s Kahlili, the fact that Forghani’s article “now is being run on most state-owned sites, including the Revolutionary Guards’ Fars News Agency,” shows that the regime endorses Forghani’s doctrine.

And what is Forghani’s “doctrine,” pray tell? According to Sahimi, Forghani does talk about a pre-emptive strike on Israel, but only because Israel is threatening to attack Iran. Sahimi compares this to the “Bush Doctrine”—“…take the fight to the enemy overseas before they can attack us again here at home.”

Sahimi goes on to say that Forghani talks about different population densities in various parts of Israel and postulates that if Iran were to attack Israel, these are some of the places Iran’s Shahab-3 missles can reach. “Then [Forghani] talks about—if Iran is to attack Israel—places like railroads, airports, nuclear facilities and so on can also be attacked by Iranian missles,” says Sahimi. “That is what he is saying.”

When Horton asks Sahimi, “Does he say kill all the Jews in Israel?”

“No,” he replies. “I don’t see anything that says that.”

As for Kahlili’s assertion that Forghani’s article contains quotes from Ali Khamenei that calls for the killing of all Jews, and the annihilation of Israel, Sahimi says, “There are no quotes from Khamenei—the current Supreme Leader—but there are two quotes from Khomeini, the leader of the [Iranian] Revolution.”

The first quote, according to Sahimi, basically states that most problems that Muslims are suffering in the Middle East are because of Zionism and U.S. support for Israel. “This is well known,” adds Sahimi. “Khomeini has said this many times. Then there is a second quote: ‘If the enemy attacks the lands of the Muslims or their borders, it is the duty of all Muslims to defend them by any means possible, including the sacrifice of one’s life and expenditure of one’s wealth.’”

One important thing to note: In the WND piece, Kahlili claims to be quoting from Forghani’s article, and writes in the third paragraph:

It is a “‘jurisprudential justification” to kill all the Jews and annihilate Israel, and in that, the Islamic government of Iran must take the helm.”

Notice that Kahlili does not put full quotations around part of this sentence: no opening quotation>> to kill all Jews and annihilate Israel, and in that, the Islamic government of Iran must take the helm.”<<only a closing quotation

That’s because Forghani never wrote that, according to Sahimi. He goes on to say, “The Alef website itself says that this is the personal view of the author. The website does not support it, and it is not the policy of the Iranian government. This is one man’s opinion, and we should condemn it.”

Sahimi then points out the hypocrisy of those who are demonizing Iran over Forghani’s piece. “We have this kind of propaganda everyday among Israelis. Remember, for example in the 1980’s, Rafael Eitan, who was Chief of Staff for Israeli Defense Forces said, [“When we have settled the land, all the Arabs will be able to do about it will be to scurry around like drugged cockroaches in a bottle.”] We have had all sorts of racist statements by citizens of Israel against Palestinians, against Muslims, against Iranians. But they don’t represent (at least officially) the view of the Israeli government. It’s the same case here. Some guy…somewhere…wrote a blog and said something…and all of a sudden this has become the official view of the Supreme Leader and the Iranian government? That’s just nonsense.”

As for the author of the WND piece, Sahimi describes Reza Kahlili as an “Iranian charlatan” who has no credibility. In fact, no one knows his true identity. He goes by a pseudonym and wears masks to conceal his identity when he gives talks. Kahlili claims to have been a member of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard in the 1980’s, and that he worked as a double agent for the CIA, but decided to leave Iran in 1989. Sahimi points out that that was 23 years ago, and that the Revolutionary Guard of that era (during the Iran/Iraq War) was entirely different than what it is today. “So he has no insight or knowledge of what is going on in the Revolutionary Guard” says Sahimi. “More importantly, since he has arrived in the U.S., he has allied with the most extreme, warmongering factions. These guys look for anybody who may sound intelligent, and may be from Iran, in order to give credibility for the advocacy of war against Iran. Reza Kahlili is one of those.”

According to Sahimi, “In the Iranian community in the U.S., we have people who support sanctions against Iran. But even within that segment, [Kahlili] has no credibility. For instance, there are many Iranian satellite television stations here in L.A. that are constantly engaged in propaganda against the Iranian government. These stations have never interviewed this guy. It is totally amazing and frightening that the public is being this easily fooled by this propaganda.”

In other words, Kahlili is the type of guy that only fools the gullible Americans who have never met an Iranian, and get their daily dose of lies fed to them from the likes of Glenn Beck, Michael Savage and other nut jobs who have interviewed this creep.

In October 2011, Kahlili wrote a piece for The Washington Times, entitled KAHLILI: Iran already has nuclear weapons, where he asserts that “Not only does the Islamic Republic already have nuclear weapons from the old Soviet Union, but it has enough enriched uranium for more. What’s worse, it has a delivery system.”

WND is the bottom of the barrel, and they have now taken center stage as America’s foremost purveyor of yellow journalism.

February 8, 2012 Posted by | Deception, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | , , , | Leave a comment

WARS FOR ISRAEL: A REMINDER OF WHO IS GIVING THE MARCHING ORDERS

By Damian Lataan | February 07, 2012

As the West prepares to march off to yet another war in the Middle East, we should perhaps remind ourselves of who is giving the West their marching orders.

In February 2003, just weeks before the US and their allies launched their attack on Iraq and her peoples, a delegation of US congressmen, together with the US Ambassador to the United Nations, John Bolton, a well known pro-Zionist and neoconservative war-hawk, were in Israel at the invitation of the Israeli government then led by Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon.

Addressing the congressmen, Sharon told them ‘that Iran, Libya and Syria should be stripped of weapons of mass destruction after Iraq’. Later, Sharon told John Bolton ‘that Israel was concerned about the security threat posed by Iran, and stressed that it was important to deal with Iran even while American attention was focused on Iraq’.

Things didn’t quite work out as planned in Iraq. The Iraqi populace, instead of greeting the coalition forces as ‘liberating armies’ as they marched up the road to Baghdad, chose instead to resist the invaders. The neocons who had insisted on the war and were hoping to get their man Ahmed Chalabi into the Iraqi presidency before the summer holidays, found instead that their simplistic fantasies about the venture being a ‘cakewalk’ were turning into a nightmare that is still being played out today nine years later.

But all this hasn’t dulled the neoconservative’s enthusiasm to belatedly do as Ariel Sharon has demanded. Libya has been taken care of; Syria looks like it’s going to get the same treatment; and the whole shebang will reach a crescendo when the Final Confrontation against Iran occurs at some time in the future – and, judging by the way things are going at the moment, it could be in the very near future.

The point I really want to make here is that all of the events of the last twelve years or so haven’t been a series of unrelated or spontaneous occurrences but, rather, have been part of a grand plan carefully instigated by Israeli Zionists and their supporters in the US and around the world designed to eliminate all of Israel’s enemies who so far have successfully been able to resist the Zionist dream of creating a Greater Israel at the expense of the Palestinian people.

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February 7, 2012 Posted by | Timeless or most popular, Wars for Israel | , , , , , | Leave a comment

Iran honestly cooperating with IAEA: Britain’s former IAEA envoy to Iran

Mehr News Agency | February 4, 2012

Britain’s former representative to the International Atomic Energy Agency Peter Jenkins has said that Iran has honestly and sincerely been cooperating with the UN nuclear watchdog.

Jenkins made the remarks in a recent interview with the BBC Persian service in reply to a question about claims that Iran has not provided answers about the alleged weapons studies.

Jenkins, according to a translation of his comments, said that he does not think that is the case and that he believes Iran has been honestly and sincerely cooperating with the IAEA and its inspectors.

On the main bone of contention between Iran and the West, he said that the West maintains that Tehran should halt the uranium enrichment component of its nuclear program, but Iran is opposed to such a view.

And Iran is right according to the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty because every country has the right to develop nuclear energy for peaceful purposes under the NPT, Jenkins stated.

Britain’s former representative to the IAEA also commented on the pressure exerted and the sanctions imposed by the West on Iran, saying that experiences of the past few years have shown that the continuation of this trend cannot help resolve the dispute over Iran’s nuclear program.

It would be better if the Western countries learn a lesson from their past mistakes and engage in open negotiations with Iran, he stated, adding that a peaceful solution can be worked out to Iran’s nuclear issue based on the NPT.

Asked about the fact that he used to believe that Iran’s nuclear activities have a military dimension, Jenkins said that he used to think that Tehran is pursuing nuclear weapons, but the reports prepared by U.S. intelligence institutions and the IAEA on Iran’s nuclear activities made him change his mind.

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February 6, 2012 Posted by | Timeless or most popular | , , , | Leave a comment

The Daily Beast disavows patriotic American’s website; Jeffrey Goldberg smears both as anti-Semitic conspiracy theorists

By Maidhc Ó Cathail | The Passionate Attachment | February 5, 2012

On January 30, The Daily Beast published an article entitled “Newt Gingrich’s Deep Neocon Ties Drive His Bellicose Middle East Policy.” In the well-researched piece on the Republican presidential hopeful’s ties to the Israel partisans who devised the influential “Clean Break” plan to destabilize the Middle East, Wayne Barrett warns:

If elected, Gingrich would be the first American president to emerge from the dark think-tank world born in the Reagan era that gave us the Iraq War and lusts now for an Iranian reprise.

Some time after its publication, The Daily Beast appended the following note to Barrett’s article:

Correction: The original version of this story included an embedded link in the text to a blog called the Neocon Zionist Threat. The author did not use this site in the reporting of the piece, and does not support the views expressed. The link has been redirected to the correct source.

The following day, The Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg commented on the correction to what he described as “a Daily Beast story that might have been entitled ‘The Jews are Coming.’” In a snide post entitled “Correction of the Day, International Jewish Conspiracy Edition,” Goldberg, a former prison guard in the Israeli army, claimed:

The website “Neocon Zionist Threat” argues that a cabal of Jews is trying to drive the U.S. into a war with Iran. The Daily Beast article, on the other hand, argues that a cabal of Jews is trying to drive the U.S. into a war with Iran. (h/t Jamie Kirchick)

Contrary to Goldberg’s smearing of “Neocon Zionist Threat” as an anti-Semitic site, a cursory look at neoconzionistthreat.com shows that its critique is based primarily on the research compiled in three eminently respectable sources: James Bamford’s A Pretext for War: 9/11, Iraq, and the Abuse of America’s Intelligence Agencies; John J. Mearsheimer and Stephen M. Walt’s The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy; and Stephen J. Sniegoski’s The Transparent Cabal: The Neoconservative Agenda, War in the Middle East, and the National Interest of Israel.

Considering that Goldberg’s award-winning March 25, 2002 “exposé” in The New Yorker on the supposed ties between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda made a significant contribution to the push for war with Iraq, it’s not surprising that he would resort to such disingenuous smear tactics. The same goes for Kirchick who is currently a fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, whose “advocacy of U.S. military intervention in the Middle East, its hawkish stance against Iran, and its defense of right-wing Israeli policy,” according to a 2011 Think Progress report, “is consistent with its donors’ interests in ‘pro-Israel’ advocacy.”

What is surprising, however, is that Wayne Barrett felt it necessary to disavow the more extensive efforts of a patriotic American blogger and YouTube video producer to expose the same people he had just written about.

Perhaps it has something to do with the fact that the news-and-commentary website he writes for is part-owned by former Congresswoman Jane Harman, whose service on Capitol Hill allegedly included a promise to an Israeli agent to lobby the Department of Justice to reduce espionage charges against two former officials at the American Israel Public Affairs Committee for trafficking in classified information on Iran — information AIPAC used to push for a war that Barrett’s article professes to oppose. As a patriotic former CIA officer wrote of the Harman case, some might call it treason.

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February 5, 2012 Posted by | Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Wars for Israel | , , , , | Leave a comment

Eliot Cohen, Mitt Romney’s Man on Iran

By Max Blumenthal | Al Akhbar | February 3, 2012

Should Mitt Romney make it to the White House, his Middle East policy and plan for Iran may be as hawkish as that of Bush Junior, thanks to Eliot Cohen.

In 2005, a group of graduate students at Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced and International Studies (SAIS) participated in the school’s annual diplomatic simulation. The high-pressure scenario required the students to negotiate a resolution to a standoff with a nuclear-armed Republic of Pakistan. Mara Karlin, a student known for her hawkish politics on Israel and the Middle East, played President of the United States.

Though most of the participants were confident they could head off a military conflict with diplomatic measures, Karlin jumped the gun. According to a former SAIS student, not only did Karlin order a nuclear strike on Pakistan, she also took the opportunity to nuke Iran. Her classmates were shocked. It was the first time in 45 years that a simulation concluded with the deployment of a nuclear weapon.

That year, Karlin received a plum job in the Bush administration’s Department of Defense where, according to her bio she was “intimately involved in formulating U.S. policy on Syria, Jordan, Lebanon, and Israel-Palestinian affairs.” Lebanon was a special area of focus for Karlin. She claims to have helped structure the Lebanese Armed Forces and coordinated relations between the US and Lebanese militaries.

According to the former SAIS student, Karlin was a favorite of Eliot Cohen, an ultra-hawkish professor of strategic studies at SAIS, which is regarded in American foreign policy circles as a training ground for the neoconservative movement. Through Cohen’s connections among the neocons occupying key civilian posts in Bush’s Defense Department, the former student claims Cohen was able to arrange an attractive sinecure for Karlin. Besides Karlin, the ex-SAIS student told me Cohen has promoted the career ambitions of many former pupils, including Kelly Magsamen, who worked under Cohen in the Bush administration and now oversees the Iran portfolio in the Obama administration’s State Department.

Today, Cohen is among Republican presidential front-runner Mitt Romney’s top campaign advisers. He is the primary author of Romney’s foreign policy white paper, which attacks Obama for “currying favor with [America’s] enemies” and “ostentatiously shunning Jerusalem.”

The paper urges a policy of regime change in Iran including possible coordination with Israel on military strikes to prevent the Iranian regime from developing a nuclear weapon. It is an aggressive Republican election season document presenting a concoction of post-9/11 unilateralism and unvarnished neo-imperialism as the antidote to a sitting president Cohen accused of “unilateral disarmament in the diplomatic and moral sphere.” More importantly, it suggests that a Romney administration’s foreign policy might look remarkably similar to – and perhaps more extreme than – that of the Bush administration.

Stephen Walt, a professor of international affairs at Harvard University’s School of Government who has been on the receiving end of aggressive attacks by Cohen, called Cohen “a classic neoconservative.” Walt said, “He is constantly fretting about alleged U.S. vulnerabilities, consistently supportive of increased defense spending, and generally inclined to favor U.S. intervention in other countries. Second, like virtually all neoconservatives, he is also deeply attached to Israel, as well as to the United States. I do not question his patriotism, but I think he tends to see U.S. and Israeli interests as more-or-less identical and doesn’t see a trade-off between support for one and support for the other.”Cohen rose through the ranks of the Republican foreign policy elite as a protégé of Paul Wolfowitz, the former Assistant Secretary of Defense who is credited with playing a central role in the push for invading Iraq. In 1990, Wolfowitz secured a position for Cohen working beside him on the policy planning staff of the Office of the Secretary of Defense. Three years later, when Wolfowitz was appointed dean of SAIS, he began using his influence to propel Cohen’s career. According to a former State Department official who graduated from SAIS, it was through the beneficence of Wolfowitz that Cohen earned an endowed teaching position at SAIS as the Robert E. Osgood Professor of Strategic Studies.

In 1997, Wolfowitz and Cohen joined forces to form the Project for a New American Century, a neoconservative umbrella group that served as the key non-governmental vehicle for promoting the case for invading Iraq after 9/11. In the immediate wake of al-Qaeda’s attack on the World Trade Center in New York and the Pentagon in Washington, D.C., Cohen took to the media to map out the next phase of a grand global military venture that he coined, “World War IV.”

Describing Iraq as “the big prize,” Cohen urged a unilateral invasion of Iraq that would advance the ambitions of the now-discredited political charlatan Ahmed Chalabi and his Iraqi National Congress. Like so many of his neoconservative peers, Cohen claimed Saddam Hussein’s regime maintained “a connection with the 9/11 terrorists.” With the war deteriorating into a chaotic bloodbath and as his own son was called up for duty, Cohen criticized the Bush administration for “happy talk and denials of error.” However, he refused to admit fault for his role in selling Americans on the invasion.

Despite mildly dissenting from the White House line, Cohen continued his ascent, replacing Philip Zelikow as counselor to then-Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice in 2007. According to the former State Department official, Rice had almost no role in Cohen’s appointment. Instead, Cohen was recommended for the position by Vice President Dick Cheney and his daughter Liz. Cheney’s daughter headed the Iran Syrian Operations Group, a newly created, neoconservative-inspired initiative burrowed within the State Department’s Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs. At the time of Cohen’s appointment, Rice was attempting to open diplomatic lines to Iran, North Korea, and Syria – a move Cohen and the Cheneys fiercely opposed.

A few months after Bush left office, the former State Department official said Cohen and Wolfowitz rewarded their neoconservative fellow traveler Eric Edelman – a former Defense Department official during the later Bush years – with a visiting scholarship at SAID. In private, Johns Hopkins alumni expressed outrage at the installment of Edelman, a career diplomat with no academic background, accusing the neoconservatives of exploiting SAIS to create a system of political patronage.

Cohen’s extensive web of foreign policy and military connections forms a seamless line to Tel Aviv. There, on the top floor of one of the office buildings known as “HaKirya,” is the office of one of Cohen’s former pupils, Aviv Kochavi. Kochavi is now the director of Israeli military intelligence, making him one of the most quietly influential figures in the country. In 2006, Kochavi, who also holds a philosophy degree, boasted to the Israeli architect and anti-occupation activist Eyal Weizmann about how he and his troops crushed Palestinian resistance cells in Nablus through the use of “inverse geometry” and “micro-tactical actions” inspired by the theories of post-structuralist philosophers like Deleuze and Guattari. On February 2, Kochavi appearedat the annual Herzliya Conference to issue grave warnings about the rapid progress of Iran’s nuclear program, suggesting that sanctions and diplomacy have failed, and that more aggressive action might be required.Despite Cohen’s deep Israeli ties, he has proven extremely sensitive to critiques of the connection. When Stephen Walt and John Mearsheimer, the latter a professor of International Relations at the University of Chicago, published their widely debated paper on the Israel lobby in 2006, Cohen authored one of the first attempts to discredit their thesis about a loose coalition of individuals and organizations creating political pressure to move US foreign policy in a pro-Israel direction. In an op-ed in the Washington Post, Cohen accused the authors of “kooky academic work” and “obsessive and irrationally hostile beliefs about Jews.”

“Cohen’s rather hysterical reaction to our work was both typical and easy to explain,” Walt remarked. “Given that he and other neoconservatives had played a key role in convincing George Bush to invade Iraq in 2003, he was understandably upset when we pointed this out and provided extensive documentation of their role in the run-up to this disastrous war. He could not refute our logic or our evidence, however, so he chose to misrepresent our views and smear us falsely as anti-Semites and conspiracy theorists.”

With the last battalions of US troops preparing to redeploy from Iraq to other conflict zones, Cohen is homing in on Iran. In a September 2009 editorial for the Wall Street Journal, he dismissed diplomacy and sanctions as feasible means of curbing Iran’s nuclear ambitions. “Pressure, be it gentle or severe, will not erase that nuclear program,” he wrote. “The choices are now what they ever were: an American or an Israeli strike, which would probably cause a substantial war, or living in a world with Iranian nuclear weapons, which may also result in war, perhaps nuclear, over a longer period of time.” While not ruling out the necessity of an American strike on Iranian facilities, Cohen advised that the “US actively seek the overthrow of the Islamic Republic…through every instrument of U.S. power, soft more than hard.”

As tensions between Israel and Iran rise to unprecedented levels, and Israel’s leadership beseeches the US to join a military strike on Iran, Cohen’s visions of regime change seem closer to realization than ever before. For him and the neoconservative policy elite, a Romney victory in November might deliver the next “big prize.”

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February 4, 2012 Posted by | Timeless or most popular, Wars for Israel | , , , , , , | Leave a comment

New thinking in India’s Iran policy

By M K Bhadrakumar | Rediff | February 2, 2012

Finally, India is getting its act together in its Iran policy. The ‘breaking news’ that India proposes to robustly explore expanding its trade with Iran signals a new approach to stepping up oil imports from Iran while at the same time rectifying the imbalance in trade, which heavily favours Iran traditionally, and to make this happen within a paradigm that resolves the current problem over the payment mechanism.

The new thinking is an acknowledgement of Iran’s importance as a strategic partner. That is where the rub lies. Delhi has lumped far too long the blackmail tactic by Washington with the malicious intention to erode India’s ties with Iran. Indeed, as result, for no real fault of Tehran, the India-Iran relationship suffered needless setbacks in the recent years.

Delhi should never accept that this is a zero sum game – India’s relationships with the US and Iran respectively. Iran is far too important a regional power in India’s extended neighbourhood to be neglected. There is no need to dilate on this thought.

Other Asian countries like Japan, South Korea or Malaysia have successfully managed to have positive relationships with both Iran and the GCC states. Also, GCC states themselves have maintained highly nuanced relationships with Iran. In a long term perspective, it is far from inevitable that Iran’s rise is an irreconcilable eventuality for the GCC states.

Much of the present-day tensions in the Persian Gulf is also to be attributed to the imperial policy of ‘divide-and-rule’ that the West continues to pursue in the region for the sake of perpetuating their hegemony. Finally, the US-Iran standoff itself is increasingly becoming unsustainable if Washington is to optimally develop a regional strategy. The point is, Iran has already bolted away.

China sees all these trends very clearly and is successfully developing a multi-tiered regional strategy that creates space for pursuing fruitful relations with Iran and GCC –  and even Israel – alike.

Indeed, it is also best for a healthy US-India partnership that it is an equal relationship where neither side takes undue advantage or tries to browbeat or resorts to prescriptive approaches and arm-twisting. In this case, the US policy toward Iran also happens to be vacuous, lacking sincerity of purpose; it is opaque and brittle – and increasingly, US comes to realise that even its European allies are reluctant to follow its lead. Therefore, it is simply appalling that US has chosen to harbour expectations of dictating to Delhi the directions and content of its Iran policy.

Of course, the American side is not to bear the entire blame, either. Somehow, the Indian elites (including bureaucrats) and strategic pundits have come to develop an atavistic fear that US-Indian partnership is highly perishable unless Delhi keeps harmonising its policies with the US global strategies even by sacrificing its interests. This sort of inferiority complex is completely unwarranted.

The heart of the matter is that the US is a highly experienced practitioner of diplomacy. If it began abandoning its historic cussedness toward India sometime during Bill Clinton administration’s second term, it was because Washington saw the growth potential of India and the great possibilities that would arise for a beneficial relationship.

Even today, that consideration is the prime mover of the US polices toward India. It is a well-known fact that after being grumpy for a few weeks after India spurned the US offer for the 10-billion dollar multi-purpose aircraft tender, Washington moved on.

We could also learn from the Americans – how doggedly they keep pursuing their regional strategies through the Afghan endgame, no matter what Delhi thinks of it. Suffice to say, the high probability is that India’s Iran policy may displease Washington for a while and then life will move on. As for the fear complex of the Indian elites or pundits, it is borne more out of their own insecurities vis-a-vis the US establishment and it should remain their private affair.

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February 3, 2012 Posted by | Economics | , | Leave a comment

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