Consequences Of Attacking Iran And Why Tehran Is Not Worried

[skhara]

Re: Consequences Of Attacking Iran And Why Tehran Is Not Worried

I just watched some TV highlights of Bush being drilled by reporters on Putin's Iran visit.

He said something along the lines of "Iran will continue to be isolated"

A reporter said, "But Mr President, this declaration says exactly the opposite, that Iran and Russia will do business."

"Bush says "Well, uhhh, duhhh, uhhhh"

Its funny too how there are so many commentators these days pointing out all the mistrust between Iran and Russia.

[Armenian]

Re: Consequences Of Attacking Iran And Why Tehran Is Not Worried

Gazprom Goes to Iran For Talks



Gazprom held talks in Iran on Wednesday on expanding in the region, one day after President Vladimir Putin made his first visit to the country. Deputy chief executive Valery Golubev is in negotiations with energy officials from Iran and Armenia on joint projects, Abubakir Shamuzov, head of Gazprom's Tehran office, said Wednesday. Russia is seeking to expand its control of pipeline networks outside its borders. Moscow, via Gazprom, has used a combination of threats and incentives to increase its influence in neighboring markets. Gazprom agreed last year not to raise prices for Armenia until the end of 2008. The price, $110 per 1,000 cubic meters, is less than half what Gazprom charges customers in Western Europe. In return, Gazprom's Armenian venture, ArmRosgazprom, will acquire a gas pipeline to Iran and the new generating block of a thermal power plant, Gazprom said at the time. Armenia also agreed to let the Gazprom venture oversee building a second, 197-kilometer pipeline to Iran. Armenia currently receives almost all its gas by pipeline from Russia across Georgia. Gazprom Neft, Gazprom's oil arm, has said it is considering building an oil refinery in Armenia. Also Wednesday, RIA-Novosti reported that Putin invited his Iranian counterpart, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, for talks in Moscow. No date was set for the meeting, the agency said.

Source: http://www.themoscowtimes.com/storie...10/18/043.html

[Armenian]

Re: Consequences Of Attacking Iran And Why Tehran Is Not Worried

Iran’s Ahmadinejad Due In Armenia



Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad will arrive in Armenia Monday on a first-ever official visit which the two neighboring states hope will cement their political and especially economic ties. President Robert Kocharian’s office said on Friday that the two-day trip will result in the signing of more Iranian-Armenian agreements on “bilateral cooperation.” It said Ahmadinejad will hold talks with Kocharian, deliver a speech in the Armenian parliament and meet students and professors at Yerevan State University. Ahmadinejad is also scheduled to meet with Iranians livings in Armenia and visit a 18th century Iranian mosque in Yerevan.

The outspoken Iranian leader already paid a brief visit to Armenia last March to inaugurate, together with Kocharian, the first Armenian section of a natural gas pipeline from Iran. The two men hailed the development as a new milestone in Armenian-Iranian ties. The pipeline’s second, much longer section is due to be completed by the end of next year. Yerevan and Tehran are also pressing ahead with the implementation of other multimillion-dollar energy projects. That includes the construction of two hydro-electric plants on the Arax River marking the Armenian-Iranian border and a third high-voltage transmission line linking their power grids.

Also, the foreign ministers of the two nations, who co-chair an inter-governmental commission on economic cooperation, signed a memorandum in Yerevan in July on the start of feasibility studies on the ambitious ideas of building an Armenian-Iranian railway and a Russian-owned oil refinery that would process Iranian crude. In addition, the Armenian and Iranian governments have been working on a bilateral free trade agreement that could be signed by the end of this year.

Armenia’s growing ties with Iran prompted concern from the United States recently, with a senior American diplomat warning that they might run counter to international sanctions imposed on Tehran over its controversial nuclear program.

Source: http://www.armenialiberty.org/armeni...7FC1B9923D.ASP

[Armenian]

Re: Consequences Of Attacking Iran And Why Tehran Is Not Worried

Military Resistance Forced Shift on Iran Strike


(CENTCOM commander Admiral William Fallon determined to resign if Iran attacked)

by Gareth Porter

The George W. Bush administration's shift from the military option of a massive strategic attack against Iran to a surgical strike against selected targets associated with the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), reported by Seymour Hersh in the New Yorker earlier this month, appears to have been prompted not by new alarm at Iran's role in Iraq but by the explicit opposition of the nation's top military leaders to an unprovoked attack on Iran's nuclear facilities. The reorientation of the military threat was first signaled by passages on Iran in Bush's Jan. 10 speech and followed by only a few weeks a decisive rejection by the Joint Chiefs of Staff of a strategic attack on Iran's nuclear facilities.

Although scarcely mentioned in press reports of the speech, which was devoted almost entirely to announcing the troop "surge" in Iraq, Bush accused both Iran and Syria of "allowing terrorists and insurgents to use their territory to move in and out of Iraq." Bush also alleged that Iran was "providing material support for attacks on American troops."

Those passages were intended in part to put pressure on Iran, and were accompanied by an intensification of a campaign begun the previous month to seize Iranian officials inside Iraq. But according to Hillary Mann, who was director for Persian Gulf and Afghanistan Affairs on the National Security Council staff in 2003, they also provided a legal basis for a possible attack on Iran.

"I believe the president chose his words very carefully," says Mann, "and laid down a legal predicate that could be used to justify later military action against Iran."

Mann says her interpretation of the language is based on the claim by the White House of a right to attack another country in "anticipatory self-defense" based on Article 51 of the United Nations Charter. That had been the legal basis cited by then National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice had in September 2002 in making the case for the invasion of Iraq.

The introduction of a new reason for striking Iran, which also implied a much more limited set of targets related to Iraq, followed a meeting between Bush and the Joint Chiefs of Staff on Dec. 13, 2006 in which the uniformed military leaders rejected a strike against Iran's nuclear program. Time magazine political columnist Joe Klein, reported last May that military and intelligence sources told him that Bush had asked the Joint Chiefs at the meeting about a possible strike against the Iranian nuclear program., and that they had unanimously opposed such an attack.

Mann says that she was also told by her own contacts in the Pentagon that the Joint Chiefs had expressed opposition to a strike against Iran. The Joint Chiefs were soon joined in opposition to a strike on Iran by Admiral William Fallon, who was nominated to become CENTCOM commander in January. Mann says Pentagon contacts have also told her that Fallon made his opposition to war against Iran clear to the White House.

IPS reported last May that Fallon had indicated privately that he was determined to prevent an attack on Iran and even prepared to resign to do so. A source who met with Fallon at the time of his confirmation hearing quoted him as vowing that there would be "no war with Iran" while he was CENTCOM commander and as hinting very strongly that he would quit rather than go along with an attack. Although he did not specifically refer to the Joint Chiefs, Fallon also suggested that other military leaders were opposing a strike against Iran, saying, "There are several of us who are trying to put the crazies back in the box," according to the same source.

Fallon's opposition to a strike against Iranian nuclear, military and economic targets would make it very difficult, if not impossible for the White House to carry out such an operation, according to military experts. As CENTCOM commander, Fallon has complete control over all military access to the region, says retired Air Force Col. Sam Gardiner, an expert on military strategy who has taught at the National War College.

Douglas McGregor, a retired Army Lt. Col. who was a tank commander in the 1991 Gulf War and has taught at the National Defense University, agrees. "I find it hard to imagine that anything can happen in the area without the involvement of the Central Command," says McGregor. The possibility that Fallon might object to an unprovoked attack on Iran or even resign over the issue represents a significant deterrent to such an attack.

Former NSC adviser Mann believes the Iraq-focused strategy is now aimed at averting any resignation threat by Fallon or other military leaders by carrying out a very limited strike that would be presented as a response to a specific incident in Iraq in which the deaths of US soldiers could be attributed to Iranian policy. She says she doubts Fallon and other military leaders would "fall on their swords" over such a strike.

Gardiner agrees that Fallon is unlikely to refuse to carry out such a limited strike under those circumstances. Mann believes the Bush-Cheney purpose in advancing the strategy is to provoke Iranian retaliation. "The concern I have is that it would be just enough so Iranians would retaliate against US allies," she says.

But the issue of what evidence of Iranian complicity would be adequate to justify such a strike evidently remains a matter of debate within the administration. A story published by McClatchy newspapers Aug. 9 reported that Vice President xxxx Cheney had argued some weeks earlier for a strike against camps in Iran allegedly used to train Iraqi Shiite militiamen fighting US troops if "hard new evidence" could be obtained of Iran's complicity in supporting anti-US forces in Iraq.

But Cheney and his allies have been frustrated in the search for such evidence. Mann notes that British forces in southern Iraq patrolled the border very aggressively for six months last year to find evidence of Iranian involvement in supplying weapons to Iraqi guerrillas but found nothing. After several months of trying to establish specific links between Iraqis suspected of trafficking in weapons to a specific Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard contact, the US command has not claimed a single case of such a link. Maj. Gen. Rick Lynch, the US commander for southern Iraq, where most of the Shiite militias operate, admitted in a Jul. 6 briefing that his troops had not captured "anybody that we can tie to Iran."

Sen. Joe Lieberman, who is known to be closely allied with Cheney on Iran policy, has betrayed impatience with a policy that depends on obtaining proof of Iranian complicity in attacks. On Jun. 11 he called for "strike over the border into Iran, where we have good evidence that they have a base at which they are training these people coming back into Iraq to kill our soldiers."

Lieberman repeated that position on Jul. 2, but thus far it has not prevailed.

Source: http://www.antiwar.com/porter/?articleid=11781

[Azad]

Re: Consequences Of Attacking Iran And Why Tehran Is Not Worried

Talking of Gabig.

"I hate all Iranians, US aide tells MPs

Britsh MPs visiting the Pentagon to discuss America's stance on Iran and Iraq were shocked to be told by one of President Bush's senior women officials: "I hate all Iranians.

The all-party group of MPs say Debra Cagan (Garmir Gabig), Deputy Assistant Secretary for Coalition Affairs to Defence Secretary Robert Gates, made the comments this month."

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/news.html?in_article_id=484762&in_page_id=1770&ito=newsnow

[Armenian]

Re: Consequences Of Attacking Iran And Why Tehran Is Not Worried

Iran warns it can fire 11,000 rockets in one minute if attacked



Iran has the capability to fire 11,000 rockets at enemy bases within one minute if the country is attacked, a top commander in the Revolutionary Guards Corps said on Saturday.

"Within the first minute of any attack by enemies against our country, the missile and artillery unit of the ground force is capable of firing 11,000 missiles and shells at targets that are known to us," Gen. Mahmoud Chaharbaghi, the top missile commander of the Revolutionary Guards, said on national TV. Iran has precise data on the deployment of potential attackers' military bases in the region, he said.

"A possible war will not last long, because within days we will reduce our enemies to ashes. The enemy must ask himself what losses he is prepared to suffer for his stupidity," the commander said.

The commander's comments come four days after United States President George W. Bush's warning that if Iran's nuclear program is not stopped, World War III could break out. The United States has military bases in several countries near Iran, including thousands of troops in Iraq and Afghanistan, which share borders with the Islamic Republic. In response to Bush's comments, Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Mohammad Ali Hosseini said on Thursday: "Statements of this kind reflect America's expansionist goals, which will surely weaken international security and ignite the U.S. government's militarist policy."

Washington, which along with many other Western nations accuses Iran of pursing a secret nuclear weapons program, despite Iranian denials, has refused to rule out military action against the country in the long-running international dispute. Bush's comments at a White House news conference came a day after President Vladimir Putin's visit to Tehran, where the Russian leader said he saw no evidence that Iran was developing nuclear weapons.

Putin's trip to Iran for a summit of Caspian littoral states, the first visit by a Russian or Soviet leader since Joseph Stalin traveled to Iran in 1943, provoked concerns in the West over increasingly close ties between Moscow and Tehran. The summit resulted in a five-way agreement that no Caspian nations would allow the use of their territories for a military strike against any of them.

Source: http://en.rian.ru/world/20071020/84750087.html

[Armenian]

Re: Consequences Of Attacking Iran And Why Tehran Is Not Worried

Iranian president visits Armenia as economic and political ties grow



October 22, 2007 YEREVAN, Armenia: Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad arrived Monday on his first official visit to the Armenian capital as the two neighboring countries steadily strengthen economic and political ties. During the two-day visit, Ahmadinejad was to meet with Armenian President Robert Kocharian, address parliament and speak with professors and students at Armenian State University.

The Iranian leader also was to step into the controversy over the World War I-era killing of Armenians by Ottoman Turks by laying a wreath Tuesday at the memorial complex commemorating the victims. Scholars view the killing of 1.5 million Armenians, who are Christians, as the first genocide of the 20th century. But an attempt in the United States to recognize the killings as genocide has angered Turkey, which says the toll has been inflated and that those killed were victims of civil war and unrest.

Ahmadinejad has caused outrage by suggesting that the Holocaust is a "myth" invented by xxxs. An estimated 6 million xxxs were killed in what most consider to be the worst genocide of the 20th century. Kocharian was Ahmadinejad's guest last year in Tehran, and in March the two presidents formally opened the first Armenian section of a natural gas pipeline between the two countries. The ceremony was held near the Armenian town of Meghri, just over the border from Iran. During Ahmadinejad's visit to Yerevan, he and Kocharian were expected to discuss plans to expand energy and transportation cooperation further.

The two sides may sign an agreement for the construction of an oil pipeline from Iran to Armenia, an Armenian official said on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak publicly. Russian companies have expressed interest in building an oil refinery in Armenia. Iran and Armenia also intend to build two hydro-electric plants on the Araks River, which forms the border between the two countries. Earlier this month, Iran opened its borders to Armenian trucks transporting goods to Iranian ports on the Caspian Sea, a more direct route for goods destined to Central Asia or southern Russia than the alternative route through Georgia.

Iran and Armenia also plan to build a railroad linking the two countries, and the details should be hammered out by the end of the year, Deputy Transportation Minister Grant Beglarian said. The railroad link would give landlocked Armenia an outlet to the Persian Gulf. Armenia has looked to Iran as it struggles to overcome the economic difficulties posed by the closing of its borders with Turkey and Azerbaijan. The borders were closed in the wake of the conflict over Nagorno-Karabakh, a region of Azerbaijan occupied by Armenian and ethnic Armenian Karabakhi forces.

Source: http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2007/...menia-Iran.php


In related news:

Energy Relations To Dominate Ahmadinejad's Armenia Visit

October 22, 2007 (RFE/RL) -- Iranian President Mahmud Ahmadinejad arrives in Armenia today for a two-day visit. On the agenda is a natural-gas pipeline between the two countries and other energy issues. Federico Bordonaro, a senior analyst with the Rome-based Power and Interest News Report, spoke to RFE/RL about the geopolitical implications of the growing ties between Armenia and Iran.

RFE/RL: Given the problems between Armenia and Azerbaijan, which is predominantly Shi'ite like Iran, why is Iran so eager to forge good ties with Armenia?

Bordanaro: Contrary to the expectations of those who follow the theories of Samuel Huntington [the author of "The Clash of Civilizations"] we can see in this case that it is not really civilizations that drive alliances or strategic partnerships, but sheer geopolitical arrangements.

Iran does not want a very strong Azerbaijan -- first of all, because Azerbaijan is pro-United States, and second, because the Azeri minority in Iran must be checked by the Tehran central government.

RFE/RL: Ahmadinejad's visit comes shortly after Russian President Vladimir Putin's trip to Tehran. Moscow also has its own interests in Armenia. Is a three-way partnership developing here?

Bordanaro: Russia finds in Armenia and Iran a kind of axis that projects Russian influence in the [Persian] Gulf. And of course, Russia has the same problem with Azerbaijan. The problem is that Azerbaijan is becoming too pro-NATO and pro-Western for Moscow.

RFE/RL: So this is part of the larger geopolitical struggle between Russia and the West for influence in the region?

Bordanaro: A Russian-Armenian-Iranian strategic partnership in terms of energy security, energy projects, and intelligence sharing is very profitable for Russia if Russia is to check the U.S. and NATO penetration in the South Caucasus. I think that the alignment that we are seeing today is dictated mainly by energy routes and by the fact that Russia and Iran find it interesting to put yet another irritant in the geo-strategy of the West. But I think it is more tactical and could be reversed.

RFE/RL: Why would it be reversed?

Bordanaro: Russia for the moment sees Iran as more of a cooperator than a competitor in Armenia. But I would say in the medium to long term, Iran is a competitor to Russia in the Caspian region. So I would not be surprised to see a reversal. I would not be surprised [if] Russia drops Iran once Russia, for example, has succeeded in negotiating something with the United States in Eastern Europe or the South Caucasus.

RFE/RL: Armenia's position here is also quite interesting since they have good relations with the United States and the West. Can you comment on that?

Bordanaro: Armenia is very interesting because it does not reason in terms of bloc against bloc. Armenia is also pro-Western, we should not forget this. There are many reasons. There are cultural reasons. There are successful Armenian diasporas in the United States and France, for example. Armenia is sympathetic to the European Union. But at the same time, Armenia is not scared by Russia and Iran in the same way that the West is. So it is a very complex and interesting situation.

RFE/RL: How does Armenia's geographic situation explain Yerevan's readiness to work so closely with Moscow and Tehran?

Bordanaro: It is a landlocked country. When you are landlocked, you need access to the sea via [another country]. This is a powerful drive in the foreign policies of landlocked countries. And Armenia has no strategic resources. It is very dependent upon Russia and Iran. This is why Armenia cannot afford to make as dramatic a pro-Western turn as Georgia or Azerbaijan.

Source: http://www.rferl.org/featuresarticle...EC13965CA.html

[Armenian]

Re: Consequences Of Attacking Iran And Why Tehran Is Not Worried

Ahmadinejad on Genocide: any nation should remember its history it and face the future



“Iran’s stand on the events of early 20th century in the Ottoman Empire bases on two principles,” Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said at a meeting with students and teaching staff of Yerevan State University. “The first principle is that each nation should remember its history but face the future and this must not lead to repetition of the past. Second, Iran will always be by Armenia’s side,” he said. Mr Ahmadinejad added that every year the Armenian community in Iran commemorates the events. He said Iran condemns infringement of human rights but did not use the term ‘genocide’.

Source: http://www.panarmenian.net/news/eng/?nid=23802

[skhara]

Re: Consequences Of Attacking Iran And Why Tehran Is Not Worried

Does Iran have a specific reason for not using "genocide".

[Armenian]

Re: Consequences Of Attacking Iran And Why Tehran Is Not Worried

Does Iran have a specific reason for not using "genocide".

Billions in trade with Turkey and Ankara's cooperation regarding Kurds and Azeris.