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How to start a war with Iran
How start a war with Iran - simple have Israel start it then jump in and blame Iran. That's a better plan than the lie used to invade Iraq.
The release of radiation from an Israeli attack on Irans nuclear program might make the Fukushima Daiichi reactor release seem small in comparison. What will happen to the Euro when Iran stops exporting oil to them? Would a Euro crash be enough to invade Iran and take over the oil fields?
A war with Iran is inevitable because the U.S. wants one and the press is convincing the masses that war is necessary by reporting rumor as fact while ignoring the facts.
I'm disgusted with U.S. foreign war policy in the mid-east. If those costs and resources were diverted into renewable energy how long would it take to become energy independent?
Panetta: Israel Will Attack Iran
"...Administration officials caution that Tehran shouldn't misunderstand: The United States has a 60-year commitment to Israeli security, and if Israel's population centers were hit, the United States could feel obligated to come to Israel's defense..."
Iran has material for four atomic bombs, Israel says
The article above reports that Iran has the technical ability to build nuclear weapons but not enough technical capability to make isotopes to treat cancer patients.
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by Chris on -
Juan Cole has an informative web site. The Israeli's also has the weight of the U.S. military behind it too. Who's the threat to peace in the reigeon Iran, or Israel and the U.S.
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Permalink Reply by Chris on
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70% of Americans believe Iran has Nuclear weapons - that percentage was enough to start a war with Iraq.
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Permalink Reply by Chris on
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There is finally some good news being reported about Iran and Israel. If the press could keep the story straight it would help the peace process.
Israeli Minister Admits Ahmadinejad Never Said Israel Should Be "Wi...
A top Israeli official has acknowledged that Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad never said that Iran seeks to "wipe Israel off the face of the map." The falsely translated statement has been widely attributed to Ahmadinejad and used repeatedly by U.S. and Israeli government officials to back military action and sanctions against Iran. But speaking to Teymoor Nabili of the network Al Jazeera, Israeli Deputy Prime Minister Dan Meridor admitted Ahmadinejad had been misquoted.
Teymoor Nabili: "As we know, Ahmadinejad didn’t say that he plans to exterminate Israel, nor did he say that Iran policy is to exterminate Israel. Ahmadinejad’s position and Iran’s position always has been, and they’ve made this — they’ve said this as many times as Ahmadinejad has criticized Israel, he has said as many times that he has no plans to attack Israel. He simply said that if you hold a referendum in this part of the world with everybody who lives here, he will accept the outcome of that referendum."
Dan Meridor: "Well, I have to disagree, with all due respect. You speak of Ahmadinejad. I speak of Khamenei, Ahmadinejad, Rafsanjani, Shamkhani. I give the names of all these people. They all come, basically ideologically, religiously, with the statement that Israel is an unnatural creature, it will not survive. They didn’t say, ’We’ll wipe it out,’ you’re right. But 'It will not survive, it is a cancerous tumor that should be removed,' was said just two weeks ago again."
Teymoor Nabili: "Well, I’m glad you’ve acknowledged that they didn’t say they will wipe it out."
The US and Iran Are Talking. Why Is the New York Times peddling Ira...
At long last, the United States and Iran are engaged in serious talks about Iran's nuclear program. But instead of celebrating the fact that President Obama is keeping his promise to the people who voted for him to pursue diplomatic engagement with Iran, The New York Times has suggested to its readers that Iran's supreme leader is uniquely and intrinsically untrustworthy when he says that Iran will never pursue a nuclear weapon. Why? Because, according to the Times, Iran's leaders are Shiites and Shiites have a religious doctrine called "taqiyya," which allows them to lie.
No scholar or analyst was cited by The New York Times in support of this argument, which should have been a red flag for Times' editors for an argument claiming that the leadership of a country against which the United States has threatened war is essentially different from us because they belong to a different religion.
Last Saturday - the same day the United States and Iran were having "constructive and useful" discussions on Iran's nuclear program in Istanbul, according to EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton - The New York Times published a piece titled, "Seeking Nuclear Insight in Fog of the Ayatollah's Utterances," over the byline of James Risen.
More Here
The conflation of "nuclear facilities" with "nuclear weapons" in the Times' reporting on Iran is a longstanding issue of dispute.
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Permalink Reply by Chris on
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Iran Lie same as Iraq Lie.
Israel hasn't signed the nuclear nonproliferation treaty and doesn't allow IAEA inspections even though they have nuclear weapons. Israel has been engaged in clandestine sales of nuclear weapons supplies such as nuclear tipped cruise missiles to Germany for their Dolphin submarines. Clandestine sales of nuclear weapons is exactly what the nonproliferation treaty is designed to prevent. Israel and the U.S. including President Obama pretends Israel doesn't have nuclear weapons. The U.S. goes along with the deception because it is illegal to send money to countries with nuclear weapons technology under the Symington Amendment to the foreign assistance act and under the Glenn Amendment
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Permalink Reply by Matttammar on -
First Iraq, now Iran! If you are looking for Weapons of Mass Destruction; the ONLY nation in the mid-east harbouring a nuclear arsenal is Israel! If Israel attacks Iran with the blessing of the greedy American Warbarons, Armageddonists might finally get what they long for.
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Permalink Reply by Chris on
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What 371 metric tons of uranium hexafluoride could mean to Iranians
Gordon.Lubold, Situation Report, Foreign Policy, September 27, 2012
the report
Lost in the debate on Iran is the human cost of a strike against the country's nuclear sites, according to a new report published by an Iranian-American with a background in industrial nuclear waste and chemicals. Khosrow Semnani argues in "The Ayatollah's Nuclear Gamble," that striking Iran's nuclear facilities, where the IAEA has verified an inventory of 371 metric tons of uranium hexafluoride, could have devastating effects on tens of thousands, and possibly hundreds of thousands of Iranians, who would be exposed to highly toxic chemical plumes and even radioactive fallout.
Such plumes, created by strikes against Iran's nuclear facilities, could "destroy their lungs, blind them, severely burn their skin and damage other tissues and vital organs," Semnani says in his report. Unlike traditional explosions, the risks to civilians would extend "well beyond those killed from exposure to the thermal and blast injuries at the nuclear sites," Semnani writes.
This could have obvious policy implications, making a possible military strike significantly less palatable. "This material is very, very toxic in both the short-term and the long-term," Semnani tells Situation Report. "Someone has to talk about this." Semnani estimates that a minimum of 5,000 people and as many as 80,000 people could be killed or die over time as a result of strikes on these facilities holding the material, and he hopes policymakers take into account the "human dimension" when considering military action.
"The analogy for this is, you can either build a fence in front of the cliff, or hospitals at the bottom of the cliff."
Semnani is not well known in Washington. But we're told by an independent expert on Iran that Semnani, a scientist, went to "considerable lengths" to make his model as realistic as the available data allows. He funded his own research but the report was published by the University of Utah's Hinckley Institute of Politics and Semnani's Omid for Iran. http://bit.ly/QWCZIaMore Here
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Permalink Reply by Chris on
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The true reason US fears Iranian nukes: they can deter US attacks
- guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 2 October 2012
In the Washington Post today, Richard Cohen expresses surprise that Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is "starting to make some sense" and "wax rationally". Cohen specifically cites this statement from the Iranian president last week:
"Let's even imagine that we have an atomic weapon, a nuclear weapon. What would we do with it? What intelligent person would fight 5,000 American bombs with one bomb?"
Cohen's surprise notwithstanding, numerous Iranian leaders, including Ahmadinejad, have long made the same point. And it's a point so obvious it should not even need to be made. No rational person takes seriously the claim that Iran, even if it did obtain a nuclear weapon, would commit instant and guaranteed national suicide by using it to attack a nation that has a huge nuclear stockpile, which happens to include both the US and Israel. One can locate nothing in the actions of Iran's regime that even suggests irrationality on that level, let alone suicidal impulses.
That Iran will use its nuclear weapons against the US and Israel is rather obviously the centerpiece of the fear-mongering campaign against Tehran, to build popular support for threats to launch an aggressive attack in order to prevent them from acquiring that weapon. So what, then, is the real reason that so many people in both the US and Israeli governments are so desperate to stop Iranian proliferation?
Every now and then, they reveal the real reason: Iranian nuclear weapons would prevent the US from attacking Iran at will, and that is what is intolerable. The latest person to unwittingly reveal the real reason for viewing an Iranian nuclear capacity as unacceptable was GOP Senator Lindsey Graham, one of the US's most reliable and bloodthirsty warmongers.
More Here
A nuclear armed Iran would also discourage Israel from attacking other countries.
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Permalink Reply by doone on -
The Civilian Cost Of Bombing Iran
Golnaz Esfandiari goes over a new report that indicates there would be nothing surgical about the civilian death toll:
[The study estimated there could be] up-to-70,000 people who would be killed or injured after being exposed to toxic plumes released as the result of such strikes [on sites like Isfahan's uranium-conversion facility]. [The plumes] would reach the city within an hour. Such a scenario would mean that the people of Isfahan could experience a catastrophe similar to the gas leak in Bhopal or the nuclear meltdown at Chornobyl, says Khosrow Semnani, the author of the report, which is titled, "The Ayatollah's Nuclear Gamble."
"People's skin could be burnt [when coming in contact with the plumes], they could become blind, their lung could be destroyed, their kidneys could be damaged, and in the future they could face other health problems such as skin cancer and [other forms] of cancer," Semnani says. The report analyzed the impact of preemptive conventional strikes on four key nuclear sites: Isfahan's uranium conversion facility; Natanz's fuel-enrichment plant; Arak's heavy-water plant; and Bushehr's nuclear power plant. Workers at those sites -- who include scientists, workers, support staff, and soldiers -- would be among the first victims of a bombing campaign. The report estimates that the casualty rate at the sites would be close to 100 percent.
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Permalink Reply by Chris on
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CNN Claims Iran Shot at a US Drone, Revealing Mindset
09 November 12
Its Pentagon reporter parrots significant, inflammatory government claims without an iota of skepticism or balance
arbara Starr, CNN's Pentagon reporter (more accurately known as: the Pentagon's reporter at CNN), has an exciting exclusive today. Exclusively relying upon "three senior officials" in the Obama administration (all anonymous, needless to say), she claims that "two Iranian Su-25 fighter jets fired on an unarmed US Air Force Predator drone in the Persian Gulf last week," while "the drone was in international airspace east of Kuwait . . . engaged in routine maritime surveillance." The drone was not hit, but, says CNN, "the incident raises fresh concerns within the Obama administration about Iranian military aggression in crucial Gulf oil shipping lanes."First things first: let us pause for a moment to extend our thoughts and prayers to this US drone. Although it was not physically injured, being shot at by the Iranians - while it was doing nothing other than peacefully minding its own business - must have been a very traumatic experience. I think I speak on behalf of everyone, regardless of political views, when I say that we all wish this brave hero a speedy recovery and hope it is back in full health soon, protecting our freedom.
The CNN report on this incident is revealing indeed. Every paragraph - literally - contains nothing but mindless summaries of the claims of US government officials. There is not an iota of skepticism about any of the assertions, including how this incident happened, what the drone was doing at the time, or where it took place. It is pure US government press release - literally; I defy anyone to identify any differences if the US government had issued its own press release directly rather than issuing it masquerading as a leaked CNN report.
Most notably, CNN does not even bother with the pretense of trying to include the claims of the Iranian government about what happened. There is no indication that the self-described news outlet even made an effort to contact Tehran to obtain their rendition of these events or even confirmation that it occurred. It simply regurgitates the accusations of anonymous US officials that Iran, with no provocation, out of the blue decided to shoot at a US drone in international airspace. (Although CNN does not mention it, last December Iran shot down a US drone which, it claims (and the US does not deny) was in Iranian air space).
That CNN's prime mission is to serve the US government is hardly news. But given the magnitude of these kinds of accusations - their obvious ability, if not intent, to bolster animosity on the part of the US public toward Iran and heighten tensions between the two nations - shouldn't CNN at least pretend to be a bit more skeptical and even-handed about how it is reporting these claims? Anonymous Bush officials claim Saddam is reconstituting his nuclear program; anonymous Obama officials claim Iran illegally shot at a US drone for no reason.
But nothing can top this sentence from CNN, intended to explain the significance of this alleged event: "Iran has, at times, been confrontational in the region." Yes, indeed they have - in stark contrast to the peaceful United States, which never is. Or, as Jeremy Scahill put it today, anticipating how Starr might present her report on-air on CNN later today: "Iran, which has launched airstrikes in Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia and [holding earpiece] -- wait, what's that, Wolf? Oh, right. The US, which has..." Scahill was being a bit generous to Wolf Blitzer there, who would be far more likely to add; "yes, that's right, Barbara: and we should also remind our viewers how Iran, just a few short years ago, attacked its neighbor Iraq, destroyed the country, and then occupied it for almost a decade, showing how aggressive the mullahs are willing to be in this region."
In case any of you thought the US media would change its future behavior in light of the debacle during the run-up to the Iraq War - and, really, were any of you thinking they would? - this is your answer. The pre-Iraq-War behavior wasn't an abandonment of their purpose but the supreme affirmation of it: to drape the claims of the US government with independent credibility, dutifully serve its interests, and contrive an appearance of a free press. This is our adversarial, watchdog media in action.
Iranian Evil
This all reminds me of a debate I did a couple years ago on MSNBC with Arianna Huffington and the Washington Post's Jonathan Caephart over Iran and whether it should be viewed as an aggressor and enemy of the US. For most of the debate, MSNBC kept showing scary video footage of a test of a mid-range missile which Iran had just conducted, and then Capehart picked up on that to tell me, in essence: how can you say Iran isn't aggressive when they're testing these missiles? Yes, because, clearly, countries of peace (such as the US and Israel) would never do something as belligerent as testing missiles, much like no real Country of Peace would ever want to acquire a nuclear weapon.
UPDATE
The Washington Post's report describes the incident as having taken place "near Iranian airspace", and then posts a map to illustrate just how close. Like CNN, though, the Post bases all of its "reporting" on what the US government claims, and does not indicate that it even attempted to obtain comment from the Iranians, simply noting instead that "Iranian media had not reported on the Nov. 1 incident as of Thursday afternoon."
Moreover, if it turns out that the claim of the US government is accurate and the drone was just outside of Iran's airspace: does anyone have any thoughts on what the fate would be of an Iranian drone that was found just outside the airspace of the US on the Eastern seaboard, or right near Israeli airspace? I suspect that a lot more than an Iranian drone would be shot at. I'm also quite certain that, in reporting on such an incident, CNN and the Washington Post would be certain to include the views of the US or Israeli governments.
UPDATE II [Fri.]
The Christian Science Monitor this morning reports that an Iranian general on Thursday did not deny the incident but "appeared to hint that the US drone was in fact over Iranian waters - less than 12 nautical miles from the coastline - and that Iran would take on any intruder." CSM quotes Brig. Gen. Masoud Jazayeri, deputy chairman of the Iran Chiefs of Staff, as saying this about the incident, as reported by Iran's media: "If any aircraft seeks to enter our country's airspace, our armed forces will confront it."
Moreover, CSM acted like a real journalistic outlet by prominently noting: "There was no way to independently confirm the Pentagon's account, and correct facts have not always been initially forthcoming in past US-Iran incidents in the Persian Gulf." It then detailed several historical events when the US government's claims about Iran were proven to be false, including: "the US Navy was found to have covered up critical details of the 1988 shooting down by the USS Vincennes of an Iranian commercial jet over the Persian Gulf, which killed all 290 on board." That is what skepticism in journalism is.
Meanwhile, the Iranian defense minister today confirmed that Iran shot at a US drone, which he said had "entered the space over the territorial waters of the Islamic Republic of Iran in the Persian Gulf area". It will likely never be known for certain whether the US drone was within Iran's airspace or just outside of it (though even the Post, citing a US spokesman, notes: "An Iranian Su-25 fighter jet pursued the U.S. drone as it retreated from Iranian airspace"). But recall that last month, Israel shot down a surveillance drone in its airspace launched by Hezbollah. The difference in reaction to that incident and this one is stark and telling indeed. It is incidents like this one when the imperial mentality of the US government, its media and some of its citizenry becomes manifest: it is completely different when we do it than when it is done to us.
Finally, note that the CNN article has been changed substantially since it was first posted, and now includes a reference to the December 2011 incident where Iran shot down a US drone. These multiple changes did not, however, improve on any of the fundamental flaws in its reporting on this incident. Read the CSM account to see how responsible adversarial journalism is done.
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