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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsWar Clouds Darken: Russia Warns of US Strike on Iran
War Clouds Darken: Russia Warns of US Strike on IranCommon Dreams Staff Report
January 12, 2012
UPDATE: Robert Baer, the long-time senior CIA officer who spent 21 years working the Middle East, was on MSNBC's 'Hardball' this evening saying that he believes Israel is assassinating Iranian scientists in an attempt to provoke Iran to fight back and draw the US into a full-scale war.
The day after a young Iranian scientist was assassinated, US President Barack Obama and Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu spoke by phone Thursday, January 12, 2012. The White House said Obama "reiterated his unshakable commitment to Israels security." (AFP/Menahem Kahana) Earlier today, Baer made the same case to the Guardian/UK:
Baer argues that the impact on the nuclear program itself is likely to be so minimal, it is unlikely to be the aim of the murder campaign.
"It's a provocation," he says. "My theory is that Israel couldn't get the White House to agree to bombing. It is not satisfied with sanctions, so the Israelis are trying to provoke the Iranians into launching a missile and starting a war."
"It's a provocation," he says. "My theory is that Israel couldn't get the White House to agree to bombing. It is not satisfied with sanctions, so the Israelis are trying to provoke the Iranians into launching a missile and starting a war."
http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2012/01/12-5
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Real danger of US strike on Iran: Russia
January 12, 2012
Russian Security Council secretary Nikolai Patrushev warned that military escalation is likely in Iran, with "real danger" of a US strike, in an interview published on Thursday. "There is a real danger of a US military strike on Iran," the senior Russian security official said.
"At present, the US sees Iran as its main problem. They are trying to turn Tehran from an enemy into a supportive partner, and to achieve this, to change the current regime by whatever means," he added.
"They use both economic embargo and massive help to the opposition forces."
Patrushev said that "for years we have been hearing practically next week that the Iranians are going to create an atomic bomb, (but) still nobody has proved the existence of a military component of Iran's nuclear programme."
Read the full article at:
http://www.indianexpress.com/news/real-danger-of-us-strike-on-iran-russia/898881/0
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Clinton Revives Dubious Charge of "Covert" Iranian Nuclear Site
Analysis by Gareth Porter
January 11, 2012
U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton's charge Tuesday that Iran had intended to keep the Fordow site secret until it was revealed by Western intelligence revived a claim the Barack Obama administration made in September 2009.
Clinton's charges were part of a coordinated U.S.-British attack on Iran's enrichment at Fordow. British Foreign Minister William Hague also argued that Fordow is too small to support a civilian power programme. Hague also referred to its "location and clandestine nature", saying they "raise serious questions about its ultimate purpose".
That administration claim was quickly accepted by major media outlets without any investigation of the facts. That story line is so deeply entrenched in media consciousness that even before Clinton's remarks, Reuters and Associated Press had published reports from their Vienna correspondents that repeated the official Obama administration line that Iran had revealed the Fordow site only after Western intelligence had discovered it.
But the administration never offered the slightest evidence to support that assertion, and there is one major reason for doubting it: the United States did not inform the IAEA about any nuclear facility at Fordow until three days after Iran's Sep. 21, 2009 formal letter notifying the IAEA of the Fordow enrichment facility, because it couldn't be certain that it was a nuclear site.
Read the full article at:
http://ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=106419
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'Merely Targeted Killings' or Terrorism?
Iran and the Terrorism game
By Glenn Greenwald
January 12, 2012
In the few venues which yesterday denounced as Terrorism the ongoing assassinations of Iranian scientists, there was intense backlash against the invocation of that term. That always happens whenever Terrorism is applied to acts likely undertaken by Israel, the U.S. or its allies rather than its traditional use: violence by Muslims against the U.S. and its allies because accusing Israel and/or the U.S. of Terrorism remains one of the greatest political taboos (even when the acts in question involve not only assassinations but also explosions which kill numerous victims whose identities could not have been known in advance). But the case of these scientist assassinations particularly highlights how meaningless and manipulated this term is.
But to really see whats going on here, lets look at how a very recent, very similar assassination plot was discussed. That occurred in October when the U.S. accused Irans Quds Forces of recruiting a failed used car salesman in Texas to hire Mexican drug cartels to assassinate the Saudi Ambassador at a restaurant in Washington, D.C. Lets put to side the intrinsic ridiculousness of the accusation and assume it to be true. That plot did not involve anything remotely approaching indiscriminate killing; it was very specifically targeted at one person: the Saudi Ambassador, a government official of a country which has extreme tensions with Iran. Indeed, the targeted Ambassador is an official in a government that has engaged in all sorts of acts of war and is even linked to an actual Terrorist plot: the 9/11 attacks. As Jonathan Schwarz put it at the time: The funny thing is, Id bet the Saudi ambassador to the US has closer ties to Al Qaeda than 90% of the people weve killed with drones.
Nonetheless, when that plot to kill the Saudi Ambassador was revealed, virtually every last media outlet and government official branded it Terrorism. It was just reflexively described that way. And I never heard anyone anywhere object to the use of that term on the ground that targeted assassinations arent Terrorism, or on any other ground. One of the nations alleged leading Iran experts, Ken Pollack of the Brookings Institution, immediately announced that the plot, if proven, would represent a major escalation of Iranian terrorist operations against the United States. And that claim was repeated in almost every major media outlet:
Does anyone have any doubt whatsoever that if Iran were sending hit squads to kill Israeli scientists in Tel Aviv, or was murdering a series of American scientists at Los Alamos (while wounding several of their wives, including, in one instance, shooting them in front of their childs kindergarten), that those acts would be universally denounced as Terrorism, and the only debate would be whether the retaliation should be nuclear, carpet-bombing, or invasion? As always, Terrorism is the most meaningless and thus most manipulated term of propaganda; its always what They do and never what We do.
This undated photo released by Iranian Fars News Agency, claims to show Mostafa Ahmadi Roshan, who they say was killed in a bomb blast in Tehran, Iran, on Wednesday, Jan. 11, 2012, next to his son
Read the full article at:
http://www.salon.com/2012/01/12/iran_and_the_terrorism_game/singleton/
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War Clouds Darken: Russia Warns of US Strike on Iran (Original Post)
Better Believe It
Jan 2012
OP
Iranian Speed Boats “Harass” USS New Orleans. Scary. But the New Orleans will prevail!
Better Believe It
Jan 2012
#2
Gman
(24,780 posts)1. What is John Bolton & Co.'s role in this?
And who is investigating? If not, why not? This includes Cheney et al.
Better Believe It
(18,630 posts)2. Iranian Speed Boats “Harass” USS New Orleans. Scary. But the New Orleans will prevail!
Iranian Speed Boats Harass USS New Orleans
By Mike Schuler
January 13, 2012
This video released today by the Pentagon shows Iranian naval patrol vessels harassing the USS New Orleans while sailing in the Strait of Hormuz on January 6. In the video you can see at least 3 vessels speeding alongside the New Orleans and a closeup of one of the vessels reveals an Iranian flag and front mounted machine gun. I can confirm there was some harassment, a senior U.S. Defense official told AFP, confirming CNN, who first reported the incident.
The same report by CNN said that there was also a second, similar incident involving a US Coast Guard cutter off the Kuwaiti coast.
Iranian "Speed Boats" armed with machine guns! Scary!
The USS New Orleans
http://gcaptain.com/iran-navy-harrasses-orleans/?37416