Consequences Of Attacking Iran And Why Tehran Is Not Worried

[freakyfreaky]

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

Compared to these two. You have to just scratch your head and hold on for the ride.

Condi Rice meets with Iranian artists on May 10, 2007. http://www.usatoday.com/news/washing...81227588_x.htm

http://images.search.yahoo.com/images/view?back=http%3A%2F%2Fimages.search.yahoo.com%2Fsearch%2Fimages%3Fei%3DUTF-8%26p%3DCondoleezza%2520Rice%2520Iranian%2520artists%26fr2%3Dtab-web%26fr%3Dyfp-t-501&w=203&h=152&imgurl=newsimg.bbc.co.uk%2Fmedia%2Fimages%2F42910000%2Fjpg%2F_42910743_artists_203b.jpg&rurl=http%3A%2F%2Fnews.bbc.co.uk%2Fgo%2Frss%2F-%2F2%2Fhi%2Fmiddle_east%2F6645183.stm&size=12.9kB&name=Rice%20opens%20Iranian%20art%20show&p=Condoleezza%20Rice%20Iranian%20artists&type=JPG&oid=fd1c4f1965db075a&no=1&tt=1

http://exchanges.state.gov/news/2007/051007.htm

Condi appoints Iranian-American as Assistant Secretary of State for Educational and Cultural Affairs on March 19, 2008. http://exchanges.state.gov/ameribio.htm

[freakyfreaky]

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

I thought these two recent articles from Payvand were telling.

The first re: Iranians taking to the streets en masse to acknowledge their recapture of Khorramshahr during the Iraq-Iran war. http://www.payvand.com/news/08/may/1229.html

The second re: current indicators demonstrating Bush's desire to bomb Iran before his presidency ends and sooner rather than later. http://www.payvand.com/news/08/may/1227.html

[Armenian]

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

Israel proposes naval blockade of Iran

The Israeli prime minister has proposed that a U.S. naval blockade be imposed on Iran to stop the Islamic Republic from moving ahead with its uranium enrichment program, an Israeli newspaper said on Wednesday. According to the Haaretz daily, at a meeting in Jerusalem with the speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, Nancy Pelosi, Ehud Olmert said, "The present economic sanctions [against Iran] have run out of steam," and proposed "a naval blockade of Iran," using the U.S. navy to limit movement in and out of the Islamic Republic by Iranian merchant ships. As an alternative, he proposed placing restrictions on Iranian aircraft, businessmen and senior Iranian officials at airports throughout the world.

"Iranian businesspeople, unable to land anywhere in the world, would pressure the regime," Haaretz quoted Olmert as saying. Iran has defied three rounds of relatively mild United Nations Security Council sanctions over its refusal to halt uranium enrichment, which many Western countries say is being used by Tehran as a cover for nuclear weapons development. Iran says the program is of an entirely peaceful nature and is necessary for energy production. Russia and China, which have strong trade links with Iran, have so far prevented stronger sanctions against the Islamic Republic, using their vetoes on the Security Council. Olmert reiterated that drastic measures to stop Iran's efforts to obtain nuclear weapons did not necessarily mean violence.

The newspaper did not provide a U.S. response to the Israeli proposals for a naval blockade. However, the White House yesterday categorically denied a report in the Jerusalem Post that U.S. President George W. Bush intended to attack Iran before the end of his final term of office in January 2009. White House spokeswoman Dana Perino said the article was "not worth the paper it's written on." The country's nuclear program has contributed to tensions between Washington, with Bush refusing late last year to rule out military action against Teheran despite a report by the country's intelligence community which suggested that the Islamic Republic had halted attempts to create a nuclear bomb in 2003. Olmert is planning to visit Washington in June to discuss the Iranian nuclear program and prospects of U.S.-brokered peace negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians.

Source: http://en.rian.ru/world/20080521/107970678.html

[Armenian]

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

Iran's president says ties with Russia set to grow further

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said on Tuesday he thought relations with Moscow would continue to develop following the inauguration of Dmitry Medvedev as Russian president May 7. "Fortunately, relations between our countries are positive and we can see no obstacles to their development," he told a news conference. "As Russian officials have said themselves, there will be no change from Russia towards Iran. That is why we think that our relations with Russia will continue to expand," he added. He said that given recent world developments Iran and Russia will cooperate "in solving international and regional problems." The president of the Islamic Republic said he hoped to stage a return visit to Russia following Putin's visit to Iran in October 2007. On May 7, the Islamic Republic's ambassador said, "Vladimir Putin's presidency was a golden period in Iran-Russia relations," however, shortly before leaving office, Putin signed a decree implementing UN Security Council Resolution 1803 imposing new sanctions against Iran over its refusal to halt uranium enrichment. Iran's president said commenting on the issue: "This will not affect relations with Russia," adding he knew that Russia was under pressure. Russia is building a nuclear power plant in Iran's southwestern city of Bushehr. Western countries suspect Iran of pursuing a secret nuclear weapons program, but Tehran insists it needs nuclear energy for civilian purposes.

Source: http://en.rian.ru/world/20080513/107272696.html

[Armenian]

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

The New Cold War

By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN

The next American president will inherit many foreign policy challenges, but surely one of the biggest will be the cold war. Yes, the next president is going to be a cold-war president — but this cold war is with Iran. That is the real umbrella story in the Middle East today — the struggle for influence across the region, with America and its Sunni Arab allies (and Israel) versus Iran, Syria and their non-state allies, Hamas and Hezbollah. As the May 11 editorial in the Iranian daily Kayhan put it, “In the power struggle in the Middle East, there are only two sides: Iran and the U.S.” For now, Team America is losing on just about every front. How come? The short answer is that Iran is smart and ruthless, America is dumb and weak, and the Sunni Arab world is feckless and divided. Any other questions?

The outrage of the week is the Iranian-Syrian-Hezbollah attempt to take over Lebanon. Hezbollah thugs pushed into Sunni neighborhoods in West Beirut, focusing particular attention on crushing progressive news outlets like Future TV, so Hezbollah’s propaganda machine could dominate the airwaves. The Shiite militia Hezbollah emerged supposedly to protect Lebanon from Israel. Having done that, it has now turned around and sold Lebanon to Syria and Iran. All of this is part of what Ehud Yaari, one of Israel’s best Middle East watchers, calls “Pax Iranica.” In his April 28 column in The Jerusalem Report, Mr. Yaari pointed out the web of influence that Iran has built around the Middle East — from the sway it has over Iraq’s prime minister, Nuri al-Maliki, to its ability to manipulate virtually all the Shiite militias in Iraq, to its building up of Hezbollah into a force — with 40,000 rockets — that can control Lebanon and threaten Israel should it think of striking Tehran, to its ability to strengthen Hamas in Gaza and block any U.S.-sponsored Israeli-Palestinian peace.

“Simply put,” noted Mr. Yaari, “Tehran has created a situation in which anyone who wants to attack its atomic facilities will have to take into account that this will lead to bitter fighting” on the Lebanese, Palestinian, Iraqi and Persian Gulf fronts. That is a sophisticated strategy of deterrence. The Bush team, by contrast, in eight years has managed to put America in the unique position in the Middle East where it is “not liked, not feared and not respected,” writes Aaron David Miller, a former Mideast negotiator under both Republican and Democratic administrations, in his provocative new book on the peace process, titled “The Much Too Promised Land.” “We stumbled for eight years under Bill Clinton over how to make peace in the Middle East, and then we stumbled for eight years under George Bush over how to make war there,” said Mr. Miller, and the result is “an America that is trapped in a region which it cannot fix and it cannot abandon.”

Look at the last few months, he said: President Bush went to the Middle East in January, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice went in February, Vice President xxxx Cheney went in March, the secretary of state went again in April, and the president is there again this week. After all that, oil prices are as high as ever and peace prospects as low as ever. As Mr. Miller puts it, America right now “cannot defeat, co-opt or contain” any of the key players in the region. The big debate between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton is over whether or not we should talk to Iran. Obama is in favor; Clinton has been against. Alas, the right question for the next president isn’t whether we talk or don’t talk. It’s whether we have leverage or don’t have leverage. When you have leverage, talk. When you don’t have leverage, get some — by creating economic, diplomatic or military incentives and pressures that the other side finds too tempting or frightening to ignore. That is where the Bush team has been so incompetent vis-ΰ-vis Iran. The only weaker party is the Sunni Arab world, which is either so drunk on oil it thinks it can buy its way out of any Iranian challenge or is so divided it can’t make a fist to protect its own interests — or both.

We’re not going to war with Iran, nor should we. But it is sad to see America and its Arab friends so weak they can’t prevent one of the last corners of decency, pluralism and openness in the Arab world from being snuffed out by Iran and Syria. The only thing that gives me succor is the knowledge that anyone who has ever tried to dominate Lebanon alone — Maronites, Palestinians, Syrians, Israelis — has triggered a backlash and failed. “Lebanon is not a place anyone can control without a consensus, without bringing everybody in,” said the Lebanese columnist Michael Young. “Lebanon has been a graveyard for people with grand projects.” In the Middle East, he added, your enemies always seem to “find a way of joining together and suddenly making things very difficult for you.”

Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/14/op...3b2fe3&ei=5087

Saudi Arabia: Iran Accused of Backing Hezbollah

The Saudi government accused Iran of backing what it called a coup d’ιtat by Hezbollah fighters in Lebanon. Prince Saud al-Faisal, the Saudi foreign minister, said at a news conference that Iran’s relations with Arab countries would be affected by its support for Hezbollah. President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran responded that his country was the only one not interfering in Lebanon’s internal affairs.

Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/14/wo...html?ref=world

[Armenian]

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

Iran says mosque bombers also planned Russia attack

Iran's intelligence minister said on Wednesday those behind a bomb blast in a mosque that killed 14 people last month also planned to target a Russian consulate in the Islamic state, an Iranian news agency reported. President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad accused the United States, Israel and Britain on Tuesday of being responsible for the blast in the southern city of Shiraz that also wounded 200 people. Iranian officials had previously said the April 12 explosion during an evening prayer sermon by a prominent local cleric, was caused by explosives left over from an exhibition commemorating the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq war. Intelligence Minister Gholamhossein Mohseni-Ejei said 15 people had been arrested in connection with the incident and they were all Iranians, the semi-official Fars News Agency said. "Those behind this incident were (also) trying to cause a bomb explosion in one of Russia's consulate-generals," he told Fars, without giving further details. The Russian embassy in Tehran was not immediately available for comment. His ministry last week said it had arrested five or six members of a terrorist group with links to Britain and the United States, who it said were involved in the explosion. Iran has yet to make public evidence against those arrested and the alleged involvement of the United States and Britain. Tehran has in the past accused Washington and London of trying to destabilise the Islamic Republic by supporting rebels, mainly those in sensitive border areas. Iran and the United States are at loggerheads over Tehran's nuclear programme, which Washington suspects is aimed at making bombs but which Tehran says is for producing electricity.

Source: http://www.reuters.com/article/lates.../idUSHOS437568

[Armenian]

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

Portrait of an Oil-Addicted Former Superpower

How Rising Oil Prices Are Obliterating America's Superpower Status

Nineteen years ago, the fall of the Berlin Wall effectively eliminated
the Soviet Union as the world's other superpower. Yes, the USSR as a
political entity stumbled on for another two years, but it was clearly
an ex-superpower from the moment it lost control over its satellites
in Eastern Europe.

Less than a month ago, the United States similarly lost its claim to
superpower status when a barrel crude oil roared past $110 on the
international market, gasoline prices crossed the $3.50 threshold at
American pumps, anddiesel fuel topped $4.00. As was true of the USSR
following the dismantling of the Berlin Wall, the USA will no doubt
continue to stumble on like the superpower it once was; but as the
nation's economy continues to be eviscerated to pay for its daily oil
fix, it, too, will be seen by increasing numbers of savvy observers as
an ex-superpower-in-the-making.

That the fall of the Berlin Wall spelled the erasure of the Soviet
Union's superpower status was obvious to international observers at
the time. After all, the USSR visibly ceased to exercise dominion over
an empire (and an associated military-industrial complex) encompassing
nearly half of Europeand much of Central Asia. The relationship
between rising oil prices and the obliteration of America's superpower
status is, however, hardly as self-evident. So let's consider the
connection.

Dry Hole Superpower

The fact is, America's wealth and power has long rested on the
abundance of cheap petroleum. The United States was, for a long time,
the world's leading producer of oil, supplying its own needs while
generating a healthy surplus for export.

Oil was the basis for the rise of the first giant multinational
corporations in the U.S., notably John D. Rockefeller's Standard Oil
Company (now reconstituted as Exxon Mobil, the world's wealthiest
publicly-traded corporation). Abundant, exceedingly affordable
petroleum was also responsible for the emergence of the American
automotive and trucking industries, the flourishing of the domestic
airline industry, the development of the petrochemical and plastics
industries, the suburbanization of America, and the mechanizationof
its agriculture. Without cheap and abundant oil, the United States
would neverhave experienced the historic economic expansion of the
post-World War II era.

No less important was the role of abundant petroleum in fueling the
global reach of U.S. military power. For all the talk of America's
growing reliance on computers, advanced sensors, and stealth
technology to prevail in warfare, it has been oil above all that gave
the U.S. military its capacity to "project power" onto distant
battlefields like Iraq and Afghanistan. EveryHumvee, tank, helicopter,
and jet fighter requires its daily ration of petroleum, without which
America's technology-driven military would be forced to abandon the
battlefield. No surprise, then, that the U.S. Department of Defense is
the world's single biggest consumer of petroleum, using more of it
every day than the entire nation of Sweden.

From the end of World War II through the height of the Cold War, the
U.S. claim to superpower status rested on a vast sea of oil. As long
as most ofour oil came from domestic sources and the price remained
reasonably low, the American economy thrived and the annual cost of
deploying vast armies abroad was relatively manageable. But that sea
has been shrinking since the 1950s. Domestic oil production reached a
peak in 1970 and has been in decline ever since -- with a growing
dependency on imported oil as the result. When it came to reliance on
imports, the United States crossed the 50% threshold in 1998 and now
has passed 65%.

Though few fully realized it, this represented a significant erosion
of sovereign independence even before the price of a barrel of crude
soared above $110. By now, we are transferring such staggering sums
yearly to foreign oil producers, who are using it to gobble up
valuable American assets, that, whether we know it or not, we have
essentially abandoned our claim to superpowerdom.

According to the latest data from the U.S. Department of Energy, the
United States is importing 12-14 million barrels of oil per day. At a
current price of about $115 per barrel, that's $1.5 billion per day,
or $548 billion per year. This represents the single largest
contribution to America's balance-of-payments deficit, and is a
leading cause for the dollar's ongoing drop in value. If oil prices
rise any higher -- in response, perhaps, to a new crisis in the Middle
East (as might be occasioned by U.S. air strikes on Iran) -- our
annual import bill could quickly approach three-quarters of a trillion
dollars or more per year.

While our economy is being depleted of these funds, at a moment when
credit is scarce and economic growth has screeched to a halt, the oil
regimes on which we depend for our daily fix are depositing their
mountains of accumulating petrodollars in "sovereign wealth funds"
(SWFs) -- state-controlled investment accounts that buy up prized
foreign assets in order to secure non-oil-dependent sources of wealth.
At present, these funds are already believed to hold in excess of
several trillion dollars; the richest, the Abu Dhabi Investment
Authority (ADIA), alone holds $875 billion.

The ADIA first made headlines in November 2007 when it acquired a $7.5
billion stake in Citigroup, America's largest bank holding
company. The fund has also made substantial investments in Advanced
Micro Systems, a major chip maker, and the Carlyle Group, the private
equity giant. Another big SWF, the Kuwait Investment Authority, also
acquired a multibillion-dollar stake in Citigroup, along with a $6.6
billion chunk of Merrill Lynch. And these arebut the first of a series
of major SWF moves that will be aimed at acquiring stakes in top
American banks and corporations.

The managers of these funds naturally insist that they have no
intention of using their ownership of prime American properties to
influence U.S. policy. In time, however, a transfer of economic power
of this magnitude cannot help but translate into a transfer of
political power as well. Indeed, this prospect has already stirred
deep misgivings in Congress. "In the short run, that they [the Middle
Eastern SWFs] are investing here is good," Senator Evan Bayh
(D-Indiana) recently observed. "But in the long run it is
unsustainable. Our power and authority is eroding because of the
amounts we are sending abroad for energy=80¦."

No Summer Tax Holiday for the Pentagon

Foreign ownership of key nodes of our economy is only one sign of
fading American superpower status. Oil's impact on the military is
another.

Every day, the average G.I. in Iraq uses approximately 27 gallons of
petroleum-based fuels. With some 160,000 American troops in Iraq, that
amounts to 4.37 million gallons in daily oil usage, including gasoline
for vans and light vehicles, diesel for trucks and armored vehicles,
and aviation fuel for helicopters, drones, and fixed-wing
aircraft. With U.S. forces paying, as of late April, an average of
$3.23 per gallon for these fuels, the Pentagon is already spending
approximately $14 million per day on oil ($98 million perweek, $5.1
billion per year) to stay in Iraq. Meanwhile, our Iraqi allies, who
are expected to receive a windfall of $70 billion this year from the
rising price of their oil exports, charge their citizens $1.36 per
gallon for gasoline.

When questioned about why Iraqis are paying almost a third less for
oil than American forces in their country, senior Iraqi government
officials scoff at any suggestion of impropriety. "America has hardly
even begun to repay its debt to Iraq," said Abdul Basit, the head of
Iraq's Supreme Board of Audit, an independent body that oversees Iraqi
governmental expenditures. "This is an immoral request because we
didn't ask them to come to Iraq, and before they came in 2003 we
didn't have all these needs."

Needless to say, this is not exactly the way grateful clients are
supposed to address superpower patrons. "It's totally unacceptable to
me that we are spending tens of billions of dollars on rebuilding Iraq
while they are putting tens of billions of dollars in banks around the
world from oil revenues," said Senator Carl Levin (D-Michigan),
chairman of the Armed Services Committee. "It doesn't compute as far
as I'm concerned."

Certainly, however, our allies in the region, especially the Sunni
kingdoms of Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates (UAE)
that presumably look to Washington to stabilize Iraq and curb the
growing power of Shiite Iran, are willing to help the Pentagon out by
supplying U.S. troops with free or deeply-discounted petroleum. No
such luck. Except for some partially subsidized oil supplied by
Kuwait, all oil-producing U.S. allies in the region charge us the
market rate for petroleum. Take that as a striking reflection of how
little credence even countries whose ruling elites have traditionally
looked to the U.S. for protection now attach to our supposed
superpower status.

Think of this as a strikingly clear-eyed assessment of American
power. As far as they're concerned, we're now just another of those
hopeless oil addicts driving a monster gas-guzzler up to the pump --
and they're perfectly happy to collect our cash which they can then
use to cherry-pick our prime assets. So expect no summer tax holidays
for the Pentagon, not in the Middle East, anyway.

Worse yet, the U.S. military will need even more oil for the future
wars on which the Pentagon is now doing the planning. In this way, the
U.S. experience in Iraq has especially worrisome implications. Under
the military "transformation" initiated by Secretary of Defense Donald
Rumsfeld in 2001,the future U.S. war machine will rely less on "boots
on the ground" and ever more on technology. But technology entails an
ever-greater requirement for oil, as the newer weapons sought by
Rumsfeld (and now Secretary of Defense Robert Gates) all consume many
times more fuel than those they will replace. To put thisin
perspective: The average G.I in Iraq now uses about seven times as
much oil per day as G.I.s did in the first Gulf War less than two
decades ago. And every sign indicates that the same ratio of increase
will apply to coming conflicts; that the daily cost of fighting will
skyrocket; and that the Pentagon's capacity to shoulder multiple
foreign military burdens will unravel. Thus are superpowers undone.

[...]

Source: http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/1749...ica_out_of_gas

[Armenian]

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

The Prime Directive
U.S. war plans targeting Iran are all about "protecting" Israel

It looks like the War Party is victorious, at least according to Philip Giraldi writing on The American Conservative blog: "There is considerable speculation and buzz in Washington today suggesting that the National Security Council has agreed in principle to proceed with plans to attack an Iranian al-Quds-run camp that is believed to be training Iraqi militants. The camp that will be targeted is one of several located near Tehran. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates was the only senior official urging delay in taking any offensive action." Alarm bells ought to be going off across the nation. The presidential candidates ought to be debating whether or not this is the right course. Obama, the "antiwar" candidate, ought to be speaking out.

Instead, what we hear is… silence. If ever there was a scoop, then this is a major one. Yet not a word is being spoken about it in the "mainstream" media. So much for the supposedly highly competitive nature of the news business. While I'm a very big fan of The American Conservative – hey, they made me an associate editor! – one has to wonder: why do we have to read this on their blog and nowhere else? Of course, the reason could be because it's not true, but my sources are telling me that this isn't just "speculation and buzz" – it's for real. War is imminent. The markets sense it, too, which is why the price of oil keeps climbing to record levels.

Giraldi has more:

"The White House contacted the Iranian government directly yesterday through a channel provided by the leadership of the Kurdish region in Iraq, which has traditionally had close ties to Tehran. The U.S. demanded that Iran admit that it has been interfering in Iraq and also commit itself to taking steps to end the support of various militant groups. There was also a warning about interfering in Lebanon. The Iranian government reportedly responded quickly, restating its position that it would not discuss the matter until the U.S. ceases its own meddling employing Iranian dissident groups. The perceived Iranian intransigence coupled with the Lebanese situation convinced the White House that some sort of unambiguous signal has to be sent to the Iranian leadership, presumably in the form of cruise missiles."

A decision to go to war, sub rosa back-and-forth between Washington and Tehran using the Kurds (probably the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, which has close ties to Iran) as intermediaries, missile strikes near Tehran, the dissent of Robert Gates: all of this is very big news. Yet not a word is reaching the general public. The same pattern that characterized the run-up to war with Iraq is being employed in the case of Iran. We're acting on intelligence that is so overcooked the stench is overpowering. There is no evidence these alleged training camps even exist, or, if they do, that their purpose is to train Iraqi "militants." Indeed, all efforts to show the media hard evidence for this phantom threat seem to have evaporated into thin air: these charges are the intelligence community's equivalent of "vaporware."

The irony is that this "training camp" tale is coming a bit late, because the Iranians did train, equip, and otherwise succor Iraqi "militants" all through the 1980s and '90s – such as the militants of the Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (now known simply as the Islamic Council), which is today the biggest of the parties in Baghdad's governing Shi'ite coalition. This is also true of the second largest component of the coalition, the Da'wa party – whose most prominent member is Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki. Virtually all the present leaders of the government U.S. soldiers are laying down their lives for, including Maliki, lived in Iran for years, where they were given sanctuary and sustenance by the mullahs. On the other hand, the Mahdi Army of Moqtada al-Sadr, which is presently taking on the government's armed forces, is anti-Iranian and vehemently nationalist, the only viable counterweight to Tehran's all-pervasive influence in postwar Iraq. Yet we are providing air support to the Iraqi army and police units battling them in the streets of Sadr City. What sparked the decision to strike Iran wasn't anything happening on the ground in Iraq, however. It's all about Lebanon. As Giraldi puts it:

"The decision to go ahead with plans to attack Iran is the direct result of concerns being expressed over the deteriorating situation in Lebanon, where Iranian ally Hezbollah appears to have gained the upper hand against government forces and might be able to dominate the fractious political situation." Translation: The Israelis are demanding war with Iran, and the national security bureaucracy – thoroughly riddled with and corrupted by the neocons – has capitulated. The Israeli failure to dislodge Hezbollah from its Lebanese fortress and subvert their growing political dominance – a direct result of the 2006 war – has Tel Aviv in a tizzy. The whole point of their "Clean Break" strategy, the linchpin of the American neocons' decade-long drive to embroil us in Iraq, has been compromised and even reversed by Hezbollah's continuing defiance. Tel Aviv wants them taken out – by the U.S., which alone has the firepower to do it.

This has been the real purpose of the "surge" all along – to prepare the ground for the final assault on Israel's deadliest enemy in the region, which is Iran. This is why Israel's lobby in the U.S. has made ratcheting-up tensions with Tehran their number-one priority, and clearly their relentless campaign is succeeding. Once again, the prime directive of U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East stands revealed for all with eyes to see: it's all about Israel. It is surely not in our interests to go after Tehran: ideologically, the Shi'ite mullahs are a necessary counterweight to the Sunni fanatics who are swelling the ranks of al-Qaeda. Yet we are actively encouraging and even funding similar groups, such as Jundallah, an Iranian Sunni terrorist group that apes al-Qaeda's tactics, such as beheading its victims. As Seymour Hersh has reported, the same crazy covert operation is being carried out in Lebanon.

None of this makes any sense, until and unless one realizes that the purpose of the Great Middle Eastern War has nothing to do with the pursuit of American interests and everything to do with Israeli interests. Our foreign policy has been hijacked and placed at the disposal of a foreign power, one with a very powerful American lobby – so powerful that no U.S. politician dares defy it, including the sainted Obama. In the early years of the war hysteria that enveloped the U.S. after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, I was met with a large degree of skepticism when I maintained that the main force behind the U.S. attack on Iraq was the Israel lobby's influence. Even my fellow anti-interventionists, including many on the Left, viewed this focus as an unreasonable and quite possibly unhealthy fixation, an exaggeration of a partial truth, rooted in a special animus for Israel. Perhaps, they thought, it was even evidence of anti-Semitism.

Yet as the years wear on and the facts pointing to the validity of my thesis accumulate, the reality can no longer be ignored. Why, in the name of all that's holy, are we expanding a war that has proven to be such a monumental failure? Why are our leaders ignoring the evaluation of our own National Intelligence Estimate on the question of Iran's nuclear program – which shows that they abandoned their nascent nukes, just as Saddam did – and insisting that Tehran will soon wield a nuclear sword, perhaps against Israel? Why are American politicians defying their own war-weary people and launching a conflict that will doubtless prove even less popular than the one in which we are currently engaged? None of this makes any sense unless we accept the hijacking thesis: U.S. policy is the captive of foreign interests, specifically Israeli interests. We are, all of us, held hostage by the Israel lobby, which has a stranglehold on the political establishment in this country. That's not a "conspiracy theory," because it's no secret: the effort to mold U.S. policy to suit Israeli interests is open to the point of brazenness.

That's why Hillary Clinton can get away with threatening to "obliterate" an entire country – Iran, of course – in the name of "protecting" nuclear-armed Israel. And that's why Obama is silent on this issue, except to take Hillary to task for voting in favor of the Kyl-Lieberman resolution. That resolution – passed overwhelmingly in both the House and the Senate – designated the Iranian Revolutionary Guards a "terrorist" organization and gave the president advance permission to bomb those "training camps," i.e., Iranian military installations on Iranian territory. "The decision to proceed with plans for an attack is not final," Giraldi writes. "The president will still have to give the order to launch after all preparations are made." If it's down to George W. Bush, who reportedly fears that Iran's acquisition of nukes will be his lasting legacy, then we're really in trouble. An attack on Iran before his term is up seems a veritable certainty.

Where is the antiwar movement? Where are the supposedly "antiwar" politicians of the Democratic Party? These folks are nowhere to be seen, and certainly they are not being heard. The reason? They're cowards, who are – to a man and woman – beholden to the Lobby. MoveOn.org, for example, is running ads against a war that is already five years old and widely abhorred, but is silent when it comes to the next war, which could break out at any moment. The antiwar movement, such as it is, had better get up off its collective ass. Because we don't have much time. As the sand in the hourglass rapidly diminishes, the war cries of the neocons and their allies in both parties are getting louder and more insistent. It's time to start making some noise of our own – before it's too late.

Source: http://www.antiwar.com/justin/?articleid=12827

[Armenian]

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

Robert Fisk: Hizbollah rules west Beirut in Iran's proxy war with US

Another American humiliation. The Shia gunmen who drove past my apartment in west Beirut yesterday afternoon were hooting their horns, making V-signs, leaning out of the windows of SUVs with their rifles in the air, proving to the Muslims of the capital that the elected government of Lebanon has lost. And it has. The national army still patrols the streets, but solely to prevent sectarian killings or massacres. Far from dismantling the pro-Iranian Hizbollah's secret telecommunications system – and disarming the Hizbollah itself – the cabinet of Fouad Siniora sits in the old Turkish serail in Beirut, denouncing violence with the same authority as the Iraqi government in Baghdad's green zone. The Lebanese army watches the Hizbollah road-blocks. And does nothing.

As a Tehran versus Washington conflict, Iran has won, at least for now. Walid Jumblatt, the Druze leader and MP and a pro-American supporter of Mr Siniora's government, is isolated in his home in west Beirut, but has not been harmed. The same applies to Saad Hariri, one of the most prominent government MPs and the son of the murdered former prime minister Rafik Hariri. He remains in his west Beirut palace in Koreitem, guarded by police and soldiers but unable to move without Hizbollah's approval. The symbolism is everything. When Hamas became part of the Palestinian government, the West rejected it. So Hamas took over Gaza. When the Hizbollah became part of the Lebanese government, the Americans rejected it. Now Hizbollah has taken over west Beirut. The parallels are not exact, of course. Hamas won a convincing electoral victory. Hizbollah was a minority in the Lebanese government; its withdrawal from cabinet seats with other Shias was occasioned by Mr Siniora's American-defined policies and by their own electoral inability to change these. The Lebanese don't want an Islamic republic any more than the Palestinians. But when Sayed Hassan Nasrallah, the Hizbollah chairman, told a press conference that this was a "new era" for Lebanon, he meant what he said.

Mr Hariri's Future Television offices were invested by the army after Hizbollah surrounded it on Thursday night, its staff evacuated and the station switched off. When I turned up there yesterday morning, I joined a queue for manouche – Lebanon's hot cheese breakfast sandwiches – at Eyman's bakery in Watwat Street. I patiently waited behind four black-hooded gunmen from Hizbollah's allied (but highly venal) Amal movement only to find uniformed Lebanese soldiers representing the government patiently queuing at the next window. Law and disorder, it seems, both have to eat. But I found far more powerful symbolism in Hamra Street, one of west Beirut's two main commercial thoroughfares. More than 100 Hizbollah men were standing or patrolling the highway, clad in new camouflage fatigues, wearing new black flak jackets and new black, peaked, American-style baseball caps and – more to the point – what appeared to be equally new American sniper rifles..

No, this is not a revolution. No, this is not a "hijacking" of west Beirut or the airport, which remains cut off by burning tyres on roads guarded by Hizbollah militiamen. But the government's supporters deserve some space. Several pointed out that the Israelis closed Beirut airport in 2006. So what right did Hizbollah have to do the same to the Lebanese now? And, according to Saad Hariri, Mr Nasrallah – when he called Mr Jumblatt "a thief and a killer" – was "authorising his murder and clearly stating that, 'I am the state and the state is me'." No wonder, then, that Mr Jumblatt fears for his life and that Mr Hariri claims the Hizbollah's coup de folie is a form of fitna, the Arabic for chaos. "I invite you, Sayed Nasrallah, to take back your fighters from the streets and to lift the siege of Beirut to protect the unity of Muslims," he said. "Israel will be rejoicing at the blockade of the country and the collapse of its economy."

Marwan Hamade, Mr Siniora's Telecommunications Minister – and victim of an attempted assassination in 2004 – admitted he had turned a blind eye to Hizbollah's underground phone system but could no longer when he realised that Hizbollah now maintains 99,000 numbered lines. Mr Nasrallah also insisted on the reinstallation of Brigadier General Wafiq Chucair as head of security at Beirut airport, since he was not a member of Hizbollah. General Chucair was suspended after Mr Jumblatt claimed he worked for Mr Nasrallah's outfit, a demand which prompted Mr Jumblatt to say he did not know General Chucair was so important to Mr Nasrallah that it was worth closing the international airport.

And so it goes on. There was an unusually good editorial in the French-language daily L'Orient Le Jour, which asked how the Hizbollah – literally "the party of God" in Arabic – could have war as its raison d'etre yet be a factor of stability and security in Lebanese domestic affairs. "And this party, can it really call itself the 'Party of God' without creating, in the long term, the distrust of all those other children who count themselves to be from the same unique and one God?" No, this is not a civil war. Nor is it a coup d'etat, though it meets some of the criteria. It is part of the war against America in the Middle East. The Hizbollah "must stop sowing trouble," the White House said rather meekly. Yes, like the Taliban. And al-Qa'ida. And the Iraqi insurgents. And Hamas. And who else?

Source: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/fi...us-825430.html

[Armenian]

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

Iran's influence in Latin America worries U.S.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Iran is making allies in Latin America to counter Washington's traditional influence in the region and could use them to threaten U.S. security, a top U.S. diplomat said on Wednesday. "We are worried that in the event of a conflict with Iran, that it would attempt to use its presence in the region to conduct such activities against us," Thomas Shannon, the U.S. assistant secretary of state for the Western Hemisphere, told Reuters. Left-wing governments in Venezuela, Cuba, Nicaragua and Bolivia have all become allies of Iran in recent years, and other countries in Latin America have diplomatic ties with the Islamic republic. Shannon said Iran wants to ease its international isolation by showing it is able to win friends in Latin America, which has been historically in the United States' "sphere of influence". Washington accuses Iran of supporting terrorist groups and secretly trying to produce nuclear bombs, and is concerned by its courting of allies in Latin America. Shannon urged the region's governments to respect U.N.-backed sanctions against Iran over its nuclear program and recalled accusations that Iran was involved in attacks on the Israeli embassy and a xxxish community center in Argentina's capital Buenos Aires during the 1990s. "We urge our friends and partners in the region to be vigilant," he said, adding that those attacks show Iran is able "to conduct terrorist operations within the Americas". Iran has denied any involvement in the Buenos Aires attacks, which killed well over 100 people.

Source: http://www.reuters.com/article/topNe...29088020080507