Consequences Of Attacking Iran And Why Tehran Is Not Worried

[Armenian]

Hundreds of thousands of Iraqi Shiites demonstrate for Lebanon

by Ammar Karim Fri Aug 4, 12:09 PM ET

Hundreds of thousands of Iraqi Shiites thronged the streets of Baghdad chanting "Death to Israel" and "Resistance" in a massive and noisy demonstration of support for Lebanon's Hezbollah militia.

The march was the largest foreign show of support for the Lebanese Shiite guerrillas in the three weeks since Israel launched a devastating ground and air offensive against them. Elsewhere in the country Friday, 33 people died, mostly in the northern province of Nineveh, where insurgent bombers and gunmen killed 19, mostly police officers.

The demonstration passed off largely peacefully and was accompanied by large numbers of black-clad armed fighters from the radical cleric Moqtada al-Sadr's "Mehdi army". But the size and fervour of the rally will raise the temperature in Baghdad, where Sadr's movement has tense relations with the city's Sunni minority, US-led coalition forces and the fragile government of national unity.

The Shiite demonstrators wore white shrouds to demonstrate their willingness to accept martyrdom, marched over US and Israeli flags and waved hundreds of yellow Hezbollah flags in support of the militia's war against Israel. Portraits of the Lebanese Shiite group's leader, Hassan Nasrallah, were carried aloft through a massive crowd which packed a kilometre-long street in the teeming Sadr City district of the Iraqi capital.

"This million-man demonstration is to support the resistance in Lebanon," cleric Hazem al-Aariji told worshippers at Friday prayers before the march. "For 22 days the Israelis could not invade Lebanon ... Hezbollah has terrified the Israelis because they do not fear death," he declared.

The rally lasted for an hour before participants dispersed peacefully. Police reported that a Katyusha rocket was fired at the neighborhood but did not land near the march and left no casualties. Security around Sadr City was especially high with police and army units on the outskirts, while Sadr's militiamen searched bystanders and demonstrators.

"We will win by God's help, the Mehdi Army and Hezbollah," chanted the demonstrators. "We are soldiers, ready for Nasrallah's call." The Israeli bombardment of Lebanon has angered both Sunni and Shiite Iraqis, and preachers across the country brought up the issue in Friday sermons, condemning Arab governments for their meagre response to the campaign.

Tensions were raised before the rally by claims from Sadr's movement that US soldiers had fired on a convoy of protesters as it travelled north to Baghdad through the town of Mahmudiyah on Thursday, wounding 16 of them. But the US military said the soldiers had responded only after one of their watchtowers had come under fire from a passing van and that they had killed two "terrorists" in the subsequent exchange.

Sadr's show of force, feeding on the anger of many Iraqis at the actions of US ally Israel, came as coalition commanders in Iraq have been urging the Iraqi government to move against militias. General John Abizaid, the top US commander for the Middle East, said neighbouring Iran was arming Iraqi death squads, that militias have infiltrated the police and that more US troops are needed to bring Baghdad under control.

A senior coalition official, however, cautioned against treating the Mehdi Army as a monolithic entity, as it is a loosely organized body with only parts actively engaged in violent and illegal activities. "We have to careful that we don't demonize Jaish al-Mehdi, because look at the polls -- Moqtada Sadr himself is an enormously popular figure. Why? Because he is thumbing his nose at the coalition," he said.

Baghdad has been battered by a wave of bomb attacks against police patrols and crowded civilian areas, while gunmen from rival Shiite and Sunni factions carry out nightly killings and lob mortar shells across the city. Last week the Pentagon increased the number of US soldiers in Iraq to around 130,000 by extending the tours of some 3,700 combat troops by an extra 120 days to help quell the sectarian violence in Baghdad.

Meanwhile, violence continued outside the capital. Nine police, including a battalion commander were killed by a explosions in Mosul followed by attacks from insurgents. Ten more bodies were found after the fighting. The police commander for the province said the situation was under control and numerous "Al-Qaeda" insurgents had been killed.

South of Mosul, a suicide car bomber drove his booby-trapped vehicle into a soccer match, killing three policemen and seven civilians. A member of one of the former regime's security services was shot dead Friday morning in the southern city of Amara and a bystander was killed just south of the capital by a roadside bomb targeting a police patrol.

Link: http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20060804/ts_afp/iraq_060804154641

[Armenian]

New Syria-Iranian defense treaty opens way for Iran`s Revolutionary Guards to deploy on Israel’s Golan border by summer’s end

Iranian defense minister Gen. Mustafa Najjar said: “Syria’s security is part of Iran’s security,” when he signed a new military treaty with his visiting Syrian counterpart, Gen. Hassan Turkmani (picture) in Tehran last Thursday June 15. Sunday, June 18, Israel’s parliamentary foreign affairs and defense committee inspected its northern border, along with the deputy chief of staff Moshe Kaplinsky and OC Northern command Udi Adam. Both Tehran and Damascus referred to the tour as Israel’s response to their new treaty. DEBKAfile’s military sources add: At the signing ceremony, the Syrian official waved away reporters’ questions on whether Iran would be establishing a military base in Syria – “The language of a (foreign) military base in our country is alien to us. I want to say that it is not on the agenda.”

Nonetheless, military sources note that he rejected the term “bases” - but did not rule out “foreign forces” in which Persian Gulf and Pakistani military sources are certain was agreed secretly between the two countries. They have learned that Iran has offered to deploy Revolutionary Guards on the Golan border with Israel by the end of summer, because as Najjar said at the signing: “We have a common front against Israel’s threats.” DEBKAfile’s Tehran sources disclose the Iranians seek to attain three objectives by deploying RG units to the Golan heights: 1. Another direct front line against Israel. 2. A forward position for an Iranian electronic warning station to sound a timely alarm of the takeoff of American warplanes or missiles from the eastern Mediterranean basin on their way to attack. 3. The station can also keep electronic track of movements on Israeli air and missile bases, covering also Arrow anti-missile missile systems. The Syrian military delegation, which spent five days in Tehran, brought a year of secret negotiations to their conclusion.

The breadth of Syrian-Iranian military relations can be measured by the military treaty’s financial scope of $800 m and the size of the delegation Damascus sent to Tehran - 60 officers representing every branch of the Syrian armed forces, including intelligence and munitions industries. For years, both countries have supported the Lebanese Hezbollah militia and anti-Israeli Palestinian factions including Hamas and Islamic Jihad, which maintain headquarters in Damascus

Source: http://www.debka.com/headline_print.php?hid=2682

[Armenian]

Venezuela Strengthens Its Relationships in the Middle East

By SIMON ROMERO

CARACAS, Venezuela, Aug. 20 — Venezuela has long cultivated ties with Middle Eastern governments, finding common ground in trying to keep oil prices high, but its recent engagement of Iran has become a defining element in its effort to build an alliance to curb American influence in developing countries.

In a visit late last month to Tehran by President Hugo Chávez and his oil minister, Rafael Ramírez, the two countries agreed to produce jointly nearly a dozen products, including crude oil and medicines. In a further sign that their ties have taken on a new dimension, the two countries are speaking in a more unified voice in their criticism of Israel and the United States.

The strengthening of ties has turned Iran into Venezuela’s closest ally outside Latin America, adding clout to Mr. Chávez’s efforts within OPEC to increase revenue through output limits by oil-exporting countries. Venezuela has also become the most vociferous defender of Iran’s nuclear program at a time when Iran feels increasingly isolated.

“We stand by Iran at every moment, in any situation,” Mr. Chávez said in Tehran, where he received the golden High Medallion of the Islamic Republic from President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Venezuela, Syria and Cuba were the only countries to oppose referring Iran to the United Nations Security Council at a meeting in February of the International Atomic Energy Agency.

Though Venezuela maintains close economic ties with the United States, relations have been strained by verbal sparring between the Bush administration and Mr. Chávez. Mr. Chávez has also shown recent interest in strengthening ties with Syria, sending his deputy foreign minister, Alcides Rondón, to Damascus last week. Mr. Chávez continues to push for tighter relations with close trading partners of the United States. He is scheduled to arrive in China on Tuesday for a six-day visit aimed at finding ways to ship more Venezuelan oil to Chinese refineries. He is also expected to visit Malaysia and Angola.

Now, with Iranian investment in Venezuela climbing fast, what began as a trickle of ventures has evolved into the most vivid example of Venezuela’s move to reshape its foreign policy and distance itself from the United States by reaching out to countries on the margins of American influence, including Belarus, Zimbabwe and Cuba. Hundreds of Iranian tractors are already rolling off an assembly line at a plant in Venezuela’s interior, and Khodro, the Iranian car manufacturer, plans to produce 5,000 Samand sedans a year at factory near Caracas starting in November.

With Venezuela vying for a nonpermanent seat on the United Nations Security Council, the ties with Iran have led to additional friction with the United States. In testimony last month before the House Subcommittee on International Terrorism and Nonproliferation, Frank Urbancic Jr., the principal deputy coordinator for counterterrorism in the State Department, said Venezuela’s close relations, including intelligence operations, with Iran and Cuba helped illustrate a “near complete lack of cooperation” with American efforts to fight terrorism.

The Bush administration further irked Mr. Chávez last week by appointing J. Patrick Maher, a longtime Central Intelligence Agency official, to oversee intelligence-gathering operations on Venezuela and Cuba. A comparable post had existed previously only for Iran and North Korea. Mr. Chávez ridiculed the move and said he had captured four people accused of spying for the United States, though the American Embassy here said it had no knowledge of such apprehensions.

The Bush administration’s more aggressive stance has drawn sharp rebuttals from officials here, who contend the United States is planning military action against Venezuela with an eye to controlling the country’s petroleum resources, the largest conventional reserves outside the Middle East. Petropars, the Iranian national oil company, said it could invest as much as $4 billion in petroleum ventures in Venezuela to produce crude oil and natural gas. “We want to help them,” said Mohammad Ali Talebi, a Petropars representative in Venezuela and director of a venture that may extract sulfur-laden heavy oil in an eastern region there.

Venezuela has also supported Iran’s effort to price oil in euros instead of dollars, a move aimed at weakening the influence of American investment banks and hedge funds, and the creation of an oil exchange in Iran to trade such contracts. “Geopolitically, the most important front for Chávez in the world at this moment is Iran,” said Alberto Garrido, a historian who is writing a book on Venezuela’s ties to Muslim countries. “Chávez, together with his closest advisers, have defined the strategic alliance with Iran as a means with which to counter American power.”

The ties with Iran have fueled theories among Mr. Chávez’s fractious opponents — though without any substantiation — that Venezuela could be sending uranium from its Amazonas state to Iran in exchange for nuclear technology. There have also been unsubstantiated claims that Mr. Chávez wants eventually to replay the Cuban missile crisis. Venezuela has repeatedly said it has no plans to develop nuclear weapons. Mr. Chávez said in Tehran that he would support an effort to develop a nuclear energy program by Mercosur, the South American trade bloc that Venezuela recently joined.

A strong relationship between Venezuela and Muslim countries is nothing new, dating to the formation of OPEC in Baghdad in 1960, largely the brainchild of a Venezuelan oil minister. An approximation with Iran may have gotten under way in the mid-1990’s by Norberto Ceresole, an Argentine sociologist known for his anti-Semitic views who was a Chávez adviser. Mr. Chávez later distanced himself from Mr. Ceresole, who died in 2003. After Mr. Chávez was elected in 1998, he made relations with Iran a priority in his push for OPEC to raise oil prices.

Recent statements by Mr. Chávez in Iran and other Muslim countries, however, are increasing concern here in Caracas that Mr. Chávez is aligning himself too closely with Muslim leaders who have little in common with Venezuela’s generally inclusive and pluralistic political system. While in Qatar, Mr. Chávez said in an interview with Al Jazeera that Israeli military actions in Lebanon were “being carried out in the style of Hitler, in a fascist fashion.” After the fighting between Israel and the Lebanese Hezbollah militia began, Mr. Chávez recalled his highest-ranking diplomat in Israel. Then, in his weekly television program, Mr. Chávez accused Israel of a “new Holocaust.” The authorities in Jerusalem responded by recalling Israel’s ambassador in Venezuela, Shlomo Cohen, for consultations.

“We have to categorically reject the comments for attempting to make the Holocaust banal,” said Fred Pressner, president of the Confederation of xxxish Associations of Venezuela. But some xxxish leaders here also said earlier this year that comments by Mr. Chávez about the “descendants of the same ones who crucified Christ” were too hastily interpreted as anti-Semitic. Political analysts here said the comments about Israel and other recent moves, like the appointment of Nicolas Maduro as foreign minister, were evidence of a radicalization of foreign policy that had stronger ties with Iran at its center. Mr. Maduro, who has stepped down as speaker of the National Assembly to take the post, had traveled to Iran in February to show explicit support for its nuclear program.

Link: http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/21/world/americas/21venez.html?ref=americas

[Armenian]

"Blow of Zolfaqar" wargames begin in southeastern Iran


Iran Fires Practice Missiles and Affirms Nuclear Stance

By NAZILA FATHI Published: August 21, 2006

TEHRAN, Aug. 20 — As Iran fired 10 short-range missiles on the second day of a large-scale military maneuver, officials on Sunday reiterated Iran’s stance that it did not intend to halt its uranium enrichment program. The statement comes two days before Iran’s self-imposed deadline of Aug. 22 for responding to a package of incentives offered by six Western nations in return for halting the program. The United Nations Security Council has set a deadline of Aug. 31 for Iran to suspend the program or face the possibility of economic sanctions. Statements by officials so far suggest that Iran will neither agree to the incentives deal nor yield to the Security Council.



A Foreign Ministry spokesman, Hamidreza Assefi, said during a weekly news conference on Sunday that Iran would not suspend the program. “The issue of suspension means returning to the past,” he said. “Suspension is not on our agenda.’’ The missiles fired on Sunday, called Saegheh — thunder in Persian — had ranges of 50 and 150 miles, the official ISNA news agency reported. In April, Iran unveiled new weaponry, including radar-evading missiles and high-speed torpedoes.



The war games started in the southern province of Sistan-Baluchestan on Saturday and are expected to continue along the eastern and western borders of the country in 14 provinces. The games are named after Zolxxxhar, the sword of Ali, the son-in-law of the Prophet Muhammad. Ali is revered by Shiites as Muhammad’s successor. State television showed helicopters shooting, bombs being dropped in the desert and paratroopers jumping out of helicopters. The report said various types of helicopters, fighter planes, live ammunition and bombs were used.



“This operation was planned in response to the evil intentions of the enemy,” Maj. Gen. Ataollah Salehi said on state television on Saturday. Brig. Gen. Muhammad Hassan Dadress told the semiofficial FARS news agency that Iran was not displaying “the major part of its military capability.”



“The army of the Islamic Republic has developed its equipment in the shortest period of time according to the most modern techniques and equipment of the enemy so that it can confront any threat,” he said. The military maneuver came during increasing international pressure over Iran’s nuclear program. Uranium enrichment is a process that can lead to making fuel for nuclear reactors or, if the uranium is enriched to high enough levels, nuclear bombs. Iran contends that its nuclear program is for peaceful energy purposes. The United States and Europe contend that Iran is seeking to develop nuclear weapons.

“We hope America has learned a lesson from the war in Lebanon and refrains from getting involved in another conflict and causing insecurity in our region,” he said in remarks broadcast live on radio. “The problem should be resolved by wise people through negotiations so that we can end this regional and international issue in a good way.’’ Link: http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/21/world/middleeast/21iran.html?ref=middleeast


Iran Testing Powerful High Speed Underwater Anti-Ship Missile Capable of Destroying Large Warships and Submarines

Iran flexes military muscle: Islamic republic stages large scale war games in the Gulf, warning West not to ‘play with fire’ over nuclear standoff.

By Hiedeh Farmani - TEHRAN

Iran on Monday extolled its military prowess as it held large scale war games in the Gulf, warning the West not to "play with fire" at a time of mounting tensions over its nuclear program. The Islamic republic said it would test later Monday a "powerful" torpedo developed by its elite ideological army, the Revolutionary Guards, after the successful firing of a high speed underwater missile at the weekend.

The maneuvers, which Iran says were planned long before, coincides with a critical phase in the dispute over its nuclear ambitions, which the United States alleges is cover for a weapons program. Tehran denies the charges. "After weeks of psychological warfare (over the nuclear issue), they (the West) expected that we back down and give up our rights," the head of Iran's Islamist militia, the Basij, General Mohammad Hejazi said on state television. "Not only we did not do that, but we showed our capabilities by these maneuvers," he boasted.

"The security of the Persian Gulf and Oman Sea is everybody's interest; our economic interests depend on the Persian Gulf as the world energy supply depends on this region," Hejazi said. But he added that "if the region is not to be safe, the ones responsible for it will pay a high price... The enemies must know they should not be playing with fire". On the maneuvers' first day, Friday, Iran said it had tested a new missile, which can avoid radar and hit several targets simultaneously using multiple warheads. The high-speed underwater missile successfully launched on Saturday was capable of destroying large warships and submarines.

The spokesman for the weeklong military exercise said more missiles would be test-fired within days and that Iranians would have "important news that will make them proud", without specifying what type of missiles would be launched. "One of the messages of the war games for the enemies is that if they slightly violate the Islamic republic's interests in the Persian Gulf, we will firmly confront them," Rear Admiral Mohammad Ebrahim Dehqani was quoted as saying. "These maneuvers have worried the American and British forces in the region and they are on alert," he added.

A vital corridor for the world's oil supplies, the Gulf is where the US Navy's 5th Fleet is based, in the Gulf state of Bahrain. Iran already has medium-range Shahab-3 missiles with the capability of 2,000 kilometers (1,280 miles), able of hitting arch-enemy Israel and US bases across the Middle East. Iran regularly carries out war games and the officials say the one currently held in the southern waters had been planned long ago.

Iran holds the northern side of the Straits of Hormuz, the narrow neck in the Gulf through which two fifths of the world's traded oil passes. US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said the United States remained committed to pursuing a diplomatic solution to the Iran nuclear crisis but refused to rule out military action if Iran refuses to bow to international pressure.

The UN Security Council late Wednesday unanimously approved a non-binding statement giving Iran 30 days to abandon sensitive uranium enrichment activities - which Iran promptly refused to comply with. Thousands of Iranian troops are conducting the war games, which involve the Revolutionary Guards Corps navy and air force, Iran's regular army and navy, the volunteer Basij militia, and the Iranian police. They kicked off last Friday and are due to run until Thursday.

Link: http://www.middle-east-online.com/english/?id=16149

[Armenian]

Russia in bed with Iran and Syria



Gholamreza Aghazadeh left head of Iran Atomic Energy Organization and head of Russia Federal Atomic Energy Agency Alexander Rumyantsev as they sign agreement documents

Regarding the recent Wall Street Journal story titled "Oil and gas empire," by Barry Kasparov:

Once again, Kasparov has provided readers with a valuable insight into present-day Russia and Vladimir Putin's transformation of Russia back into a one-party dictatorship. It is not really surprising that a Western world that is rapidly becoming a progressive secular-socialist entity doesn't seem to see the forest (democracy and freedom) for the trees. After all, isn't that what Putin and the KGB apparatchiks are succeeding in accomplishing before our eyes?

Kasparov says, "Many here would like to believe Mr. Putin is ushering in a return to our Soviet superpower glory -- an illusion supported by images of our president taunting President Bush about Iraqi democracy and mocking Vice President Cheney about his hunting accident." Kasparov's assessment of Putin's relationships with Hugo Chavez, North Korea, Iran, Hezbollah and Hamas makes the facts seem patently obvious. Yet, we in the West are apparantly oblivious to this unfriendly dance with our enemies.

But the most recent telling and damning evidence noted by Mr. Kasparov was Putin's purposely omitting Hezbollah and Hamas from Russia's list of national and international terrorists. This clearly puts Russia in bed with Iran and Syria and 100 percent in support of Hezbollah and Hamas, their civilian-killing proxies. Aside from a comment by Fred Barnes of the Weekly Standard on Fox News the other day, and a Fox News crawler the same day, I've seen no reference to this latest astounding development anywhere else, especially in the leftist media. Frankly, I don't see a great difference between Mr. Putin's objectives and those seemingly espoused by our own progressive secular-socialist -- oops -- Democratic Party. The real danger here is that Iran, Syria and their supporters may already be on a path of miscalulation.

Link: http://www.heraldtribune.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060821/OPINION/608210339/1029

[Armenian]

A Chinese link to Middle East conflict



By Abdullah Al Madani, Special to Gulf News

There is no doubt that Iran is the source of Hezbollah's arsenal of missiles, which have recently been used against Israel. But the controversial issue is whether these missiles are genuine Iranian products. Military and intelligence reports have long confirmed that they are one of the fruits of the strategic alliance between Tehran and Beijing. Sino-Iranian ties, initiated in 1971 during the reign of Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, have strengthened after Iran's Islamic revolution in 1979. In recent years, however, cooperation between the two countries has grown exponentially, primarily because of China's insatiable energy needs and Iran's hunger for technology and consumer goods, as the economies of both states continue to expand.

One of the aspects of the relationship is cooperation in the energy and construction sectors. China is now Iran's third-largest export market for crude oil. Its state-owned oil company Sinopec has a 50 per cent stake in the development of Yadavaran, Iran's largest undeveloped oil field. In April 2005, the two countries decided to set up a joint-venture to build huge tankers capable of ensuring deliveries of Iran's liquefied gas to China. And one month later, China agreed to buy some 110 million metric tons of Iranian gas over 25 years in a contract which may be worth $20 billion. China is also involved in the construction of Iranian dams, airports, steel mills, and roads, including Tehran's metro and a new highway linking Tehran with the Caspian Sea coast. Bilateral trade, on the other hand, hit a new record of $9.5 billion last year, compared with $7.5 billion in 2004.

The most important aspect of the alliance, however, is Tehran's access to the technology being developed by the Chinese People's Army, particularly in the area of cruise and ballistic missiles. This has long been an issue of great concern for the Americans. Washington has repeatedly expressed its dissatisfaction on the grounds that promoting the military capability of Iran's Islamic regime could raise tensions in the Gulf and threaten US interests in the region and the safe passage of oil tankers.

Beijing first began exporting Chinese-made missiles to Tehran in 1985, during the Iran-Iraq war, when it supplied weapons to both sides. At the time, Chinese missile exports were purely driven by commercial considerations. The decline in the domestic military orders in the 1980s, owing to declining defence budgets had forced defence industrial sectors to make up the shortfalls by trying to market military products abroad, particularly in the Third World. But commercial considerations have soon changed to strategic ones under the pressure of a number of developments.

Beijing has realised since the 1990s that it could use the export of missiles and related technology to Iran as a bargaining card with the west regarding issues concerning its own security, such as Taiwan, US military sales to the Taipei regime, US military presence in the neighbouring central Asian republics, and the west's repeated criticism of human rights violation in China. Tehran realised too that Beijing's hunger for energy represented a golden opportunity to connect its oil supplies and concessions to China with the latter's military exports to Iran.

As a result, China continued throughout the 1990s to provide Iran not only with missiles but also with production technology, equipment, training and testing facilities for the indigenous Iranian manufacture of Chinese and North Korean designed missiles. Following US-China summits in 1997 and 1998, however, Beijing decided, under US pressure, to halt its sales of missiles to Iran and pledged not to provide Tehran with missile production technology. This was a significant development as Chinese officials had never before admitted their country's involvement in promoting Iran's missile programme. They had always denied reports on the issue, accusing the west of spreading rumours about China.

But this did not last long. New tensions in US-China relations in 2000 and 2001 in the backdrop of events such as the Nato bombing of the Chinese embassy in Belgrade, the growing tension in the Taiwan Strait and the EP-3 spy plane incident led Beijing to resume its missile cooperation with Tehran. Despite the improvement in US-China relations in the aftermath of the September 11, 2001 attacks in Washington and New York and the release by Beijing in 2002 of a set of measures aimed at controlling exports of missile related technology and assistance, Sino-Iranian missile cooperation has continued according to many reliable reports.

Based on these reports and other intelligence information, Washington imposed sanctions on three different occasions between 2002 and 2005 on tens of Chinese state-owned firms for the transfer to Iran of dual-use missile-related items. The Iranians have always asserted that their missiles are indigenous and fully designed and manufactured at missile facilities near Tehran and Esfahan by local scientists and experts.

But the aforementioned evidence and many other indicate otherwise. Iranian missiles such as Zilzal, Raad, Oghab, Nour and Mushak are said to be copies of Chinese missiles, particularly the Silkworm, with the fuselage being lengthened and the engine's place being changed. China, therefore, is indirectly responsible for encouraging Hezbollah to act as a state within the state and drag Lebanon into war.

Link: http://www.gulfnews.com/opinion/columns/region/10061326.html

[Armenian]

Control of the Strait of Hormuz will be vital in the upcoming war against Iran.



Tehran controls the socio-political situation on the ground in Iraq today. Any future attack upon Iran by American forces will be answered swiftly by a massive uprising of armed Shiites within southern Iraq and Baghdad. A 'Hizbollah' style gaurilla force in Iraq, with direct intentions of fighting Americans forces, can theoretically force the entire American force to retreat within a matter of several months. In addition to having control of the majority of Iraq's population, Tehran also controls the strategic military situation of the stand-off as well.

Iran has heavily armed the Straits of Hormuz with thousands of anti-ship missiles, large caliber artillery, rocket-launchers and aircrafts of all sorts. What most people fail to realize is that approximately 40% of the world's crude oil comes through the Straits of Hormuz, and Iran is fully capable of stoping all maritime traffic on command, thereby, drastically effecting the global economy. Moreover, Iranian forces can also successfully target all American/coalition military bases and Saudi Arabian oil fields within the region with its large missile arsenal.

In essence, American and coalition warships within the Persian Gulf are sitting ducks. The occupiers have, in essence, become occupied, and the US Naval high command is begining to fully realize its bleak prospects in the region. As the Hizbollah showed not too long ago, the Iranian military today can deploy various missile systems that can hit US Naval vessels within the region with near impunity. Imagine the political repercussions the sinking of a US Naval aircraft carrier will have within the homefront. Push comes to shove, Iran can also hit Israel's nuclear powerplant at the Dimona facility.

On the political front, Iran is being helped by Russia and China within the United Nations and Tehran has a vital life line to the north open through the Republic of Armenia. What's more, more-and-more Arabs are begining to view Iran as the last front against American and Israeli aggression within the region. And finally, the recent war in Lebanon turned out to be a victory for Iran on many levels. Foremost, it showed war planners in Washingotn DC and Tel Aviv that Iranian military technology today, derived from Russia and China, is fully capable of defeating the best weapons systems American and Israeli forces have. Needless to say, any attack on Iran will be a disaster for the region. Many ignorant folk today speak of the relative easy in which Iraq was defeated in 1991 and again in 2003, and suggest that Iran will be more-or-less the same.

Iran's military today is quite advanced and capable. After the collapse of their military after the fall of the Iranian Shah, Iran has built their armed forces from scratch, and for the past ten-fifteen years they have invested hundreds of billions of their oil dollars on their military technology and re-organization. Unlike Iraq in 1983, Iran has their nuclear sites, along with their sensitive military command-and-control locations, spread out underground within hundreds if not thousands of undisclosed sites. Unlike Iraq, Iran deployes very sophisticated anti-aricraft missle systems. Unlike Iraq, Iran is much larger geographically, much larger demographically, and much more rugged. Unlike Iraq, Iran is not an isolated nation. Also, unlike Iraq, Iran is prepared for an eventual strike, they are actually expecting it.

Seymour Hersh may very well be correct, perhaps the Lebanon war was indeed a dry run for the upcoming war against Iran.

[Armenian]

Israel feels US will not attack Iran

There is growing consensus within the defense establishment that the United States will not attack Iran, and that Israel might be forced to act independently to stop the Islamic republic from obtaining nuclear weapons, a high-ranking defense official told The Jerusalem Post on Thursday. According to sources within the defense establishment, the Bush administration does not have political support for launching a strike against Iran's nuclear sites. "America is stuck in Iraq and cannot go after Iran militarily right now," the official said. The defense official blasted the US for "not doing enough" to stop Teheran's race to the bomb. US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, he said, was leading the State Department in the direction of "appeasement." "The only way, besides military action, to stop Iran is through tough economic sanctions," the official said. "But the only way to do that is for the US to overcome Russian opposition in the Security Council and to pass a resolution calling for sanctions against Iran."

Israel, meanwhile, was carefully watching international reaction to Iran's failure earlier this week to react positively to the incentives offered to discontinue uranium enrichment. In recent days, sources in Jerusalem have said Israel "could not abide" a nuclear Iran and might have to act to disrupt Teheran's nuclear program if the international community did not act. Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, on a visit to Nahariya, said Israel "must be prepared for every scenario." It was not clear whether the reference was to another round of fighting with Hizbullah or to some future confrontation with Iran. There is no consensus among policymakers on whether the US will act militarily against Teheran, with some ruling out the possibility, and others saying that US President George W. Bush doesn't want to leave the world stage in 2009 with the legacy of a nuclear Iran. According to sources in Jerusalem, among the key lessons the country needs to learn from the war against Hizbullah was how to better prepare the home front to deal with rocket attacks.

One senior source, asked whether he thought the IDF could take on Iran alone, said it was not necessarily a matter of choice. A nuclear Iran represented an existential threat, he warned, and Israel might have no choice but to prepare for long-range missile attacks from Iran. Another official warned of the consequences of a nuclear Iran even if Israel was not bombed. "We would have our hands tied," the official said. "They would constantly be threatening us with their nuclear weapons and we would not be able to initiate military operations against Hamas in Gaza or Hizbullah in Lebanon." Military analysts say the US, whose military is finding it more and more difficult to assemble the forces needed in Iraq, would prefer to avoid a military confrontation with Iran. At the same time, a new report suggests that the US lacks sufficient intelligence on Iran's intentions and nuclear abilities. This week, the US decided to call 2,500 Marines back to active service, to fill the troop shortfall in Iraq. "It is no secret that we are very busy," said US Gen. Michael Barbero, referring to the move.

The US has not formally ruled out military action against Iran if negotiations fail to put an end to Teheran's nuclear program, but senior administration officials have been stressing for months the need to focus on diplomacy and the US is putting all its effort into building an international coalition that would act diplomatically against Iran. A report compiled by the US House of Representatives' Intelligence Committee and made public Wednesday stresses that if Iran is allowed to arm itself with nuclear weapons, Israel might decide to take on Iran militarily. "A nuclear armed Iran would likely exacerbate regional tensions. Israel would find it hard to live with a nuclear armed Iran and could take military action against Iranian nuclear facilities," the report states. It also says that "a deliberate or miscalculated attack by one state on the other could result in retaliation, regional unrest and an increase in terrorist attacks." The report pointed to "significant gaps" in the information the US has on Iran and its nuclear ambitions and called on the American intelligence community to improve the quality of the information about Iran it provides to policy makers.

"The United States lacks critical information needed for analysts to make many of their judgments with confidence about Iran and there are many significant information gaps," the report reads. It pointed to weapons of mass destruction and Iran's support for terrorism as issues on which the US should have better intelligence. "American intelligence agencies do not know nearly enough about Iran's nuclear weapons program," the report concluded. It calls on US intelligence agencies to acquire more information from sources in Iran and to recruit more Farsi speakers to try and decipher Iran's intentions and capabilities. The scathing report draws conclusions similar to those US committees have reached regarding the Iraq war - a lack of reliable intelligence and over-reliance on electronic information gathering instead of human intelligence. Such criticism, especially in light of America's intelligence failures in Iraq, may further dissuade US policymakers from taking military action against Iran if the diplomatic track proves unfruitful.

Link: http://fairuse.100webcustomers.com/f...h/jpost01.html

[Armenian]

Iran test fires a new submarine-to-surface missile in Persian Gulf

TEHRAN, Iran (AP) - Iran test fired a new submarine-to-surface missile during war games in the Persian Gulf on Sunday, a show of military might amid a standoff with the West over its nuclear activities. A brief video clip showed the long-range missile, called Thaqeb, or Saturn, exiting the water and hitting a target on the water's surface within less than two kilometres. The test came as part of large-scale military exercises that began Aug. 19. "The army successfully test fired a top speed long-range sub-to-surface missile off the Persian Gulf," the navy commander, Gen. Sajjad Kouchaki, said on state-run television.

Iran routinely has held war games over the past two decades to improve its combat readiness and to test equipment including missiles, tanks and armoured personnel carriers. But Sunday's firing of the missile came as Iran remains defiant just five days before a deadline imposed by the UN Security Council for Tehran to suspend the enrichment of uranium, which can produce both reactor fuel and material usable in nuclear warheads. Iran said last week it is open to negotiations but it refused any immediate suspension, calling the deadline illegal.

Tehran has expressed worry about Israeli threats to destroy its nuclear facilities, which the West contends could be used to make a bomb but which Iran insists are for the peaceful purpose of generating electricity. The Islamic country also is concerned about the U.S. military presence in neighbouring Iraq and Afghanistan. In an advance for Iran's weapons industry, the Thaqeb is the country's first sub-fired missile that leaves the water to strike its target, adding to the country's repertoire of weapons that can hit ships in the Gulf.

Iran's current arsenal includes several types of torpedoes - including the "Hoot," Farsi for "whale," which was tested for the first time in April, capable of moving at some 360 km/h, up to four times faster than a normal torpedo. Kouchaki said the Thaqeb could be fired from any vessel and could escape enemy radar. It was built based on domestic know-how, although outside experts say much of the country's missile technology originated from other countries like Russia and China, he added. He did not give the weapon's range. It did not appear capable of carrying a nuclear warhead.

Iran already is equipped with the Shahab-3 missile, which means "shooting star" in Farsi, and is capable of carrying a nuclear warhead. An upgraded version of the ballistic missile has a range of more than 1,900 kilometres and can reach Israel and U.S. forces in the Middle East. Last year, former Defence Minister Ali Shamkhani said Tehran successfully tested a solid fuel motor for the Shahab-3, which was considered a technological breakthrough for the country's military. Solid fuel dramatically increases the accuracy of a missile while a liquid fuel missile is not very accurate in hitting targets.

Iran's military test fired a series of missiles during large-scale war games in the Persian Gulf in March and April, including a missile it claimed was not detectable by radar and can use multiple warheads to hit several targets simultaneously. After decades of relying on foreign weapons purchases, Iran's military has been working to boost its domestic production of armaments. Since 1992, Iran has produced its own tanks, armoured personnel carriers, missiles and a fighter plane, the government has said. It announced in early 2005 that it had begun production of torpedoes.

Link: http://www.canada.com/topics/news/wo...6d9ba2&k=94421

[Armenian]

Lebanon Throng Hails Hezbollah Chief, Who Calls Militia Stronger

BEIRUT, Lebanon, Sept. 22 — Hundreds of thousands of people stood Friday and chanted “God, God, protect Nasrallah.” It was the moment they had waited for: Hezbollah’s leader, Hassan Nasrallah, in person, declaring that his militia was stronger than ever and that no army in the world could force it to disarm. This was Sheik Nasrallah’s first public appearance since the war with Israel started in July, and it was steeped in defiance: at Israel, the United States, Arab heads of state and those political forces in Lebanon aiming to clip Hezbollah’s political and military power.

If there was any thought the war weakened Hezbollah, Sheik Nasrallah had a different message: “It is stronger.” Even after Israel’s 34-day bombardment of Lebanon, Hezbollah, he said, still has more than 20,000 missiles. “Not a single army in the world will be able to dismantle our resistance,” Sheik Nasrallah said, as he stood beneath a big banner that read “The Victory Rally.” “No army in the world will be able to make us drop the weapons from our hands.”

The crowd was mammoth, packing every corner of the 37-acre square in the southern suburbs of Beirut. There was a plastic chair for nearly everyone, and a baseball cap for protection from the sun. Hezbollah’s martial choir belted out chest thumping music. The crowds waved flags, wildly cheering for Sheik Nasrallah, who has become a folk hero to many here and throughout the Arab world. The audience came on foot, by car and by bus from the south and the north, and in every case, people said they came because Sheik Nasrallah asked them to.

“Whatever Sayid Hassan wants Sayid Hassan gets,” said Hossain Zebara, 29, using a title reserved for descendants of the prophet Muhammad. Mr. Zebara said it took him 24 hours to walk from his home in the southern part of Lebanon to be at the rally. “We came to show the American administration, the British administration, the French administration, that the resistance population is increasing, not decreasing.”

That was exactly Sheik Nasrallah’s point — a show of strength to those who would challenge him from abroad, and those who would challenge him at home. In a country of about four million, turning out hundreds of thousands of people in a disciplined, highly orchestrated event, is a sign of strength. But the rally also highlighted some of the deep divisions among Lebanon’s different factions, as the crowd at times chanted slogans calling the Druse leader, Walid Jumblatt, a “worm” and “xxx” and calling for the prime minister to leave office.

Sheik Nasrallah sought to overcome some of that by calling for unity in a speech that tried to define him as leader who is not just a local force, but a regional force as well. He gave voice to one of the primary feelings that has fueled anger throughout the Muslim world: a sense that Muslims are being victimized in places like Iraq and Gaza, and the world does not care. “How long will it go on that the world keeps quiet?” he asked.

And he aimed hard at Arab leaders, criticizing them for not being willing to fight Israel. “These Arab leaders prefer to protect their thrones as opposed to protecting Palestine,” he said, taking a shot at the traditional power brokers, like the Egyptian president, Hosni Mubarak. In Israel, Sheik Nasrallah’s speech was condemned as defying the international community by refusing to disarm.

Sheik Nasrallah had multiple messages to deliver: He said that Hezbollah would not disarm because the state was too weak to protect the people against Israel. He warned the international force deploying along the border with Israel not to spy on the “resistance.” He castigated Arab heads of state who recently asked the United Nations Security Council to help restart the peace process with Israel. He cautioned the Lebanese people about allowing political differences among sectarian leaders to become sectarian differences that might tear the country apart. And he repeatedly criticized the American-backed government of Prime Minister Fouad Siniora, saying it needed to be replaced by a national unity government, which would in turn give Hezbollah even more power.

No one knew if Sheik Nasrallah would appear. People here talk about his assassination by Israel as though it is not just a matter of if, but when. The rally, billed as a celebration of the “divine victory,” presented him a chance to re-energize his supporters, to enhance his standing as a pan-Arab leader, and to try to buttress Hezbollah’s domestic political position. When he entered, he stood on a platform and appeared almost regal in finely tailored religious robes and a black turban. He was taken to the stage where he was protected by a wall of blastproof glass. He said that up until 30 minutes before the rally there were still discussions going on over whether he would attend.

“I couldn’t talk to you from afar,” he said. “I insisted to be with you.”

Israel began the war after Hezbollah crossed the border and captured two Israeli soldiers. The Israeli onslaught caused heavy damage to the mostly Shiite areas in the south and the north, and cost more than 1,000 lives, mostly civilians. But Hezbollah’s fighters never stopped, shooting hundreds of rockets into Israel, destroying Israeli tanks, an Israeli naval vessel and killing many Israeli troops.

Judging from the size of the rally, and the remarks of the participants, Hezbollah’s base did not blame Hezbollah for the death and destruction. They blamed Israel and the United States. “This is good, good,” said Fatima Saad, 50, whose son, Kasem, was killed. There was no hint of sadness in her bearing. “I am very proud,” she said as she patted a picture of her son pinned to her chest. He was 20 when he was blown up.

Ahmed Hussein, 78, made the trip to Beirut from his southern village of Kafr Kila. He said his house and most of his neighbors’ homes were destroyed, but that Hezbollah gave them tents and water tanks to help them get by. “All of us whose houses were destroyed we came here for Nasrallah, to tell him what we lost is nothing,” Mr. Hussein said.

While Hezbollah and Sheik Nasrallah have been hailed as heroes throughout the Arab world, the group’s position in Lebanese politics is more complex. They have been attacked by opponents who fear that an empowered Hezbollah would exert even more influence over the country. Some of Sheik Nasrallah’s opponents said they thought the rally might help undermine his chance of reaching out beyond his Shiite base because he said he was comfortable being aligned with Syria and Iran. For his part, Sheik Nasrallah seemed to try to both embrace his benefactors in Syria and Iran and to distance himself from them. He said it made him angry when his detractors charged that the battle with Israel was a proxy war for Iran, or Syria. “We are with the Iranians, we are with the Syrians, but this was our war,” he said, as he thrust his right hand into the air, and the crowd cheered.

NYT: http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/23/world/middleeast/23lebanon.html?hp&ex=1159070400&en=ca606b7957aabcd6&ei=5094&partner=homepage

[Armenian]

China Backs Iran Against The Great Satan



Combine China's recent Iranian energy mega-deal with Vladimir Putin's new strategic coalition, which includes nuclear-capable Brazil, and it rapidly becomes clear that New York's "Fortress Americas" fallback initiative is already dead in the water. Twenty years ago 'The Great Satan' referred only to a collection of murderous Zionist xxxs who illegally invaded Palestine in the 1940s, to butcher the residents and steal their land for Ben Gurion's "Yisrael". But as Zionists later took firm control of the United States, and forced the use of American soldiers in the 1990 Gulf War against Iraq, a subtle change slowly took place. In the minds of about 70 percent of the global population, America had simply become Zionist Headquarters, and was thus itself anointed 'The Great Satan'. Nowadays the contempt and hatred of the civilized world is being directed against ordinary American citizens, who in the future will pay a heavy price for failing to remove a handful of Zionist madmen from Wall Street while they still had the chance to do so. The rest of the world will no longer tolerate the megalomanic 'New Zion', and is now taking active steps to destroy it.

Back in November 1962 when President Kennedy forced the removal of Russian missiles from Cuba, very few Americans stopped to ponder whether, at some point in the distant future, the tiny island of Cuba would decide to exact revenge on the United States for this very public humiliation. Forty years ago it all seemed most unlikely, but today the wheel has turned full circle, and a little Fidel Castro payback appears to be just over the horizon. Based on received intelligence, it seems likely that the Island of Cuba will soon be used as 'point man' in a grand plan to deny American warships and other vessels safe transit through the Gulf of Mexico. Quite apart from thoroughly humiliating New York and Washington, such a move will have a far more devastating effect if tankers are denied access to the southern American oil terminals. Without oil imported through its critical southern oil terminals, and also possibly facing denial of access to underwater oil reserves in the Gulf of Mexico, America will collapse in less than six months.

How this will be brought about is a long and sometimes complicated story, but bear with me and I will try to make the multi faceted components of this truly multinational operation as clear as I can, in a report normally limited to a mere 3,000 words. To do this we must first circle the globe, picking up seemingly random pieces of the operational jigsaw on the way, until the last piece slips neatly into place less than 200 miles south of Florida Keys. As you may expect, there is really nothing random about the process at all - merely the understandable caution and strategic camouflage of a multinational coalition closing in on the most dangerous and brutal nation on Planet Earth since early in the 20th Century. During the last thirty years alone, America's Zionist controllers have ordered the calculated murder of more than six million innocents around the world, and the world is not prepared to tolerate another six million innocents being murdered by Zion during the next thirty years.

Much has happened during the past few months, so now we have to slip back in time in order to discover the intriguing answers to why Middle East LNG (Liquefied Natural Gas) is now heading east rather than west; why Russia has forged an ironclad coalition with China, India and Brazil, and why the Zionists really want the UN's International Atomic Energy Agency chief Mohamed El Baradei removed from office. Finally we will have to show the connections between these events and future mayhem in the Gulf of Mexico.



On 10 November 2004, the India Daily reported that, "Russian President Putin is taking a lead role in the most powerful coalition of regional and superpowers in the world. The coalition consists of India, China, Russia and Brazil. This will challenge the superpower supremacy of America." … "He [Putin] wants to establish a long-term Russian footprint in Latin America in order to expand Moscow's geopolitical influence in the region. Brazil is very open to the coalition concept where these large countries support each other in term of trade, economics, international politics and defense." Just this single strategic move means that the new coalition embraces just over three quarters of the world's total population, eighty percent of its natural resources, and a majority of technical and scientific experts. Nor does it end there, because the coalition automatically includes the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), which is presently comprised of China, Russia, Tajikistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan. Dangerously for America, the coalition will soon have another important member, Iran, currently due to enter informally in a few months time through the SCO "back door" because of a mammoth energy deal. We will return to Iran shortly.

Obviously from the Zionist perspective, the most disturbing new member of the coalition is Brazil, because New York has long believed and insisted that the whole of Central and South America is under its personal "protection", which is just another way of claiming that Zionists can pillage the place whenever they want to, proved by countless CIA atrocities in almost every American country south of Puerto Rica. Now then, what would happen to this cozy pillaging arrangement if Russia-friendly coalition partner Brazil decided to develop nuclear weapons? On 16 November 2004, just six days after Vladimir Putin formally introduced Brazil as a member of the new coalition, IAEA inspectors from Geneva visited Rio de Janeiro. Just eight days later on 24 November 2004, Brazilian Energy Minister Eduardo Campos announced that the IAEA had issued Brazil with a permit to commence the experimental stage of uranium enrichment.

Paranoia immediately swept down Wall Street at the speed of light, and within hours the White House was pathetically whining that IAEA chief Mohamed El Baradei should be removed from office. Dark hints by the New York Times that El Baradei had "not been doing enough in Iran", were just a hasty smoke screen. For many years the Zionists had a fallback plan in case global conquest became impossible. Code-named "Fortress Americas", the plan relied on the USA being able to conquer both Canada and South America, thereby building themselves an impregnable redoubt in the Western Hemisphere, to provide cover while rebuilding their strength. I wrote two long reports on this top-secret plan, which are linked at the bottom of this page for those who wish to study the details. With Brazil now a full coalition partner with Russia and China, "Fortress Americas" was already doomed to failure, especially because Vladimir Putin had been economical with the truth when he named the coalition members. Venezuela had already signed up in secret, but this was kept under wraps for fear of alerting the CIA to what was to come next. As most readers know, Venezuela has massive oil reserves that America relies on heavily, and premature exposure might have led to rash military action against the country, in order to seize the Venezuelan oilfields in the sacred name of "American National Security".



In its normal crude way, the CIA had already given advance warning of this intent by planning to shoot down Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez's aircraft in late September, when he was en route to address the United Nations in New York. Fortunately for Chavez and his country, Venezuelan Intelligence received advance warning and blocked the President's flight. The CIA shoot-down was to be followed 14 hours later by "phase 2", an attack on the Presidential barracks while the country was still in shock about President Chavez's 'accidental death', thus capturing Venezuelan oil and handing it to America on a plate. Of course the CIA should have cancelled "Phase 2" the minute it knew that the Presidential aircraft had not taken off from Caracas for New York, but sadly the CIA planners forgot, and the Presidential barracks attack force was swiftly overwhelmed by a very alert Venezuelan military. Needless to say, "Phase 2" proved that "Phase 1" was very real and accurate intelligence, in turn proving that the Zionists had yet again ordered the murder of a head of state for monetary gain, a long standing tradition on Wall Street.

Within days Russia 'agreed' to provide Venezuela with fifty Mig 29 fighters, because it was obvious that Wall Street would try again later if a deterrent was not put in place, and Chavez could hardly rely on America to send spare parts for his fleet of aging F-16s. New York was furious of course, but could hardly do anything about it. And besides, what harm could 50 Mig interceptors a thousand miles away do to America? New York had made the fatal error of assuming that the Migs in question were being delivered exclusively to protect Venezuela against American bombers or troop transports. In fact, all fifty aircraft are Mig 29 SMTs, the very latest in Russian technology with enhanced attack payload capacity and a Plasma Stealth System. Hardly the aircraft one would choose for a Red Baron dogfight at 15,000 feet, now is it? All Venezuelan Mig 29 SMTs are painted dark blue, which may be part of the stealth system, but more commonly denotes that the aircraft will be used for low level attacks over water. When nosey European diplomatic officials asked Venezuelan Air Force generals why they needed such sophisticated aircraft, the generals responded "To protect the Panama Canal". When asked against whom, the air chiefs wouldn't specify.

What absolutely no one outside Russia and Venezuela knew until two weeks ago, is that 20 of the fifty Mig 29 SMTs are fully equipped to carry and fire the devastating SS-N-25 [and now SS-N-26] "Onyx", a devastating and completely unstoppable Mach 2.9 ramjet anti-ship cruise missile which skims the waves at twenty feet, before delivering a knock out blow to its maritime target more than 200 kilometers away. So great is the kinetic energy at the point of impact on the target, that Onyx can sink an American aircraft carrier or supertanker using only a conventional penetrating warhead. Those scientists who might doubt this should calculate the impact energy of 5,500 pounds of missile striking a carrier or tanker at a terminal velocity of 2,460 feet per second. It is understood that Russia is providing Venezuela with a stockpile of forty anti-ship Onyx missiles.



Link: http://www.vialls.com/myahudi/greatsatan.html

[Armenian]

'Removing Saddam strengthened Iran'

Political Islam expert Vali Nasr says the removal of Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq by the US during the invasion of the country in 2003 strengthened Iran's strategic viability and increased its regional popularity, especially among Iraq's Shia majority. Nasr, author of the recently published book The Shia Revival, says despite its defiant rhetoric Iran is really seeking open and wide-ranging normalisation talks with Washington. Professor of Middle East and South Asia Politics at the Naval Postgraduate School in California, Nasr was one several Middle East experts recently invited by George Bush, the US president, to brief him on internal Iraqi religious and political dynamics.

Aljazeera.net: Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Jordan have voiced fears of a Shia revival in the wake of the invasion of Iraq. Will a sectarian war engulf this "new" Middle East?

Vali Nasr: I think in individual countries they do fear the Shia revival because, unfortunately, Iraq, which is the very first stage of transfer of power from Sunnis to Shia, has gone very badly for a variety of reasons.

There was an enormous amount of blood shed in Iraqi politics for a very long time ... Iraq after 1991 became far more of a sectarian state than it was before, and the Americans mishandled many things - they weren't as prepared, which aggravated the situation. As did also the influx of foreign fighters with their own agenda who may have thought the best way to get the Americans out of Iraq was to provoke a civil war by generating sectarian violence, hitting the shrines … Secondly, the Shia want to avoid what happened in Iraq as do the Sunnis. So we are in a period of calm where the sectarian violence in Iraq is impacting all the debates about political transition, democracy, opening, and power sharing in the region.

Many have blamed Washington's policies for putting a defiant Iran in command of the Islamic street. Do you agree?

Yes and no. Saddam Hussein was definitely a bulwark against Iran because the Baathist government in Iraq was extremely anti-Iranian. It goes back to the days of the Shah ever since 1958. But now Iran will definitely have a greater say in any Iraqi government that comes to power and is friendlier to Iran - especially if that government is a Shia government.

Secondly, the US has become bogged down in Iraq in a major way militarily and that takes away from its capability to contain Iran. And Iran knows that. Part of Iran's power comes from the fact that it's very difficult to effectively contain it. The public mood in America is not in favour of military activity abroad ... when Israel was not able to beat Hezbollah in a country of only 3.5 million people, when 130,000 US troops are bogged down in Iraq, obviously Iran feels it has a lot more room to manoeuvre and say "no" to the international community and to the nuclear issue.

Also, while the Iranian power was on the rise in the 1990s, nobody was watching, the economy was growing and the price of oil went up, it became very wealthy. It's a country of 70 million people. There were many indicators that Iran was on the move during the [former Iranian President Mohammed] Khatami years. But the military edge of this, the more regional military edge of this, has only become evident now. Iran's reading of the Arab street has been fairly good. At the time when the Palestinian-Israeli conflict was in a stalemate, there was frustration and anger on the streets because of the fact that the peace process was not going anywhere.

There was increasing difficulty between Palestinians and Israelis and then Iraq was producing so much unhappiness in the region. The Iranians did not focus on winning support among the palaces of the Arab world. They went directly for the kind of things that make them very unpopular in the West and very popular on the Arab streets. So Iranian President [Mahmoud] Ahmadinejad started to attack Israel and question the Holocaust. That has damaged Iran greatly in terms of its diplomacy with the West. But these pictures were sold on the streets in Damascus and Beirut before the war between Israel and Hezbollah.

The recent conflict in Lebanon has boosted Hezbollah's popularity to an unprecedented level and has given the mullahs - Hezbollah's backers - greater leverage to use at the international bargaining table. What does Tehran really want?

There are big things that Tehran wants and there are little things that Tehran wants. Iran wants to be recognised as a great power in the region. It wants to be like India is in South Asia. They basically want their position to be accepted and acknowledged. And the nuclear issue is part of that. Iran wants to sit as an equal with the US and not be talked down to.

That should be an outcome of negotiations rather than a pre-condition for negotiations. Also, you are right, as time has passed particularly after the Lebanon war, Iran feels increasingly more confident not that the overall goal has changed but that they would like to make any kind of negotiation from a position of strength. I personally think they want to talk. That's why President Ahmadinejad gave an interview to CBS's Mike Wallace.

That's why in his interview he complained about the fact that President Bush did not answer his letter, it's the reason why again he called for a public debate with Bush a few days ago. And they do condescendingly say they want to talk but not the way in which the West wants to talk.

Why won't the US talk to them?

There are multiple reasons. This Bush administration began by putting Iran in the axis of evil. There are domestic considerations for engaging in talks, for both countries. You become ultimately a prisoner of your own rhetoric.

Secondly, the US believes that Iran is not serious. And the US has not really made up its mind yet about normalising relations with Iran. Or what that means. What the US wants is for Iran to stop doing specific things that the US is bothered by: namely their support for Hezbollah, support for terrorism, stop meddling in Iraq, and above all suspension of uranium enrichment and ending the nuclear programme in Iran. But you know these are specific issues that the US would like Iran to deal with but it doesn't change the overall relation between the US and Iran.

The Iranians argue that if they were to do these things, they would still be in a position of difficulty. Once Ahmadinejad said in his own usual crude way, "If we gave up the nuclear programme, they will ask for human rights. If we gave up human rights they will ask for animal rights."

The US is refusing to engage directly with Iran, but will oil interests force US–Iran reconciliation?

I don't know if it will impose reconciliation but it is definitely a pressure factor. First of all, it's very difficult even if everybody at the UN agreed to punish Iran economically by imposing sanctions on Iran because ultimately those sanctions will include the oil sector.

If you include oil sanctions on Iran, then the price of oil is going to go up dramatically in such a way that will impact Western economies and Japan far more quickly than it will impact Iran itself. So oil is a limiting factor on the United Nations and the US. Secondly, the easiest way in which Iran can always threaten any kind of counteraction is to attack oil tankers or to close off the Straits of Hormuz in the Persian Gulf. And you know Iran does not even have to succeed there, just the threat of it will already send the prices up. As a result, Iran has the ability to impact oil markets in ways that would constrict US policymaking. I don't think it's necessarily a path to reconciliation so much as it is a path to preventing further escalation of tension.

With Iran remaining defiant and ignoring a deadline set by the UN Security Council to suspend enrichment of uranium, do you think it's more likely Israel will attack Iran before the US does?

I don't think it would be too likely for two reasons. One, Iran is not anywhere close to having a nuclear bomb. In fact, the very fact that the IAEA just said Iran has been going rather slow on the uranium enrichment indicated that they are having technical problems. Before Iran gets to a bomb it has to master many technologies, not just enrichment. They have to master bomb making and many other things before they can actually be a threat.

Many estimates, including US intelligence agencies, have put a time-frame anywhere from five to eight years away if all is well. So there is no imminent threat that would require a sort of military pre-emptive strike. We might actually be at a time-frame right now - despite the hard talk from both sides - that the cost of a military attack on Iran may be higher than the benefit. In other words, an attack won't achieve much; it will only push the nuclear programme back. But the political, military and security cost of attacking Iran will be higher than the gains you are going to get.

What is the key to breaking up Iran's hegemony in the region?

There is no easy solution to this. In other words, there could always be a military solution, but I don't think there is a good military solution, and if there is a war, it's not going to even change the regime. Like we saw in Lebanon, an attack will only stabilise the regime further, it will cause anger on the streets, and if Iran is attacked it won't have any incentives to play by the rules either. This will be tremendously destabilising to the Persian Gulf and to the whole region. Secondly, the countries in the region don't have the capability to contain Iran because they don't have the military capability to do so. Once upon a time Iraq and Iran balanced one another out. Saudi Arabia doesn't have that capability so they are going to look at the US to provide that military capability.

The question is, to what extent is the US committed to staying in the Persian Gulf. But ultimately I think for the Arab countries, particularly the Persian Gulf countries and the US, the best way is to find a way to engage Iran, give Iran an interest in stability and order in the region. When you keep a power like Iran out in the cold, you give it an incentive to try to show that it exists and matters. And that is something the Arab countries in the Persian Gulf are better positioned to do with support from the West than the West on its own.

Aljazeera: By Adla Massoud in New York. You can find this article at:
http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/0F303D0C-E154-4D09-88D4-F79CC9BFBF63.htm

[Armenian]

Iran Readies Plan to Close Strait of Hormuz

Iran's Revolutionary Guards are making preparations for a massive assault on U.S. naval forces and international shipping in the Persian Gulf, according to a former Iranian intelligence officer who defected to the West in 2001. The plans, which include the use of bottom-tethered mines potentially capable of destroying U.S. aircraft carriers, were designed to counter a U.S. land invasion and to close the Strait of Hormuz, the defector said in a phone interview from his home in Europe. They would also be triggered if the United States or Israel launched a pre-emptive strike on Iran to knock out nuclear and missile facilities.

"The plan is to stop trade," the source said.

Between 15 and 16.5 million barrels of oil transit the Strait of Hormuz each day, roughly 20 percent of the world's daily oil production, according to the U.S. government's Energy Information Administration. The source provided NewsMax parts of a more than 30-page contingency plan, which bears the stamp of the Strategic Studies Center of the Iranian Navy, NDAJA. The document appears to have been drafted in September or October of 2005.

The NDAJA document was just one part of a larger strike plan to be coordinated by a single operational headquarters that would integrate Revolutionary Guards missile units, strike aircraft, surface and underwater naval vessels, Chinese-supplied C-801 and C-802 anti-shipping missiles, mines, coastal artillery, as well as chemical, biological and nuclear weapons. The overall plans are being coordinated by the intelligence office of the Ministry of Defense, known as HFADA. Revolutionary Guards missile units have identified "more than 100 targets, including Saudi oil production and oil export centers," the defector said. "They have more than 45 to 50 Shahab-3 and Shahab-4 missiles ready for shooting" against those targets and against Israel, he added.

The defector, Hamid Reza Zakeri, warned the CIA in July 2001 that Iran was preparing a massive attack on America using Arab terrorists flying airplanes, which he said was planned for Sept. 11, 2001. The CIA dismissed his claims and called him a fabricator. The source also identified a previously unknown nuclear weapons site last year to this writer, which was independently confirmed by three separate intelligence agencies. NewsMax showed the defector's documents to two native Persian-speakers who each have more than 20 years of experience analyzing intelligence documents from the Islamic Republic regime. They believed the documents were authentic.

A U.S. military intelligence official, while unable to authenticate the documents without seeing them, recognized the Strategic Studies Center and noted that the individual whose name appears as the author of the plan, Abbas Motaj, was head of the Iranian navy until late 2005. A former Revolutionary Guards officer, contacted by NewsMax in Europe, immediately recognized the Naval Strategic Studies institute from its Persian-language acronym, NDAJA. He provided independent information on recent deployments of Shahab-3 missiles that coincided with information contained in the NDAJA plan.

The Iranian contingency plan is summarized in an "Order of Battle" map, which schematically lays out Iran's military and strategic assets and how they will be used against U.S. military forces from the Strait of Hormuz up to Busheir. The map identifies three major areas of operations, called "mass kill zones," where Iranian strategists believe they can decimate a U.S.-led invasion force before it actually enters the Persian Gulf. The kill zones run from the low-lying coast just to the east of Bandar Abbas, Iran's main port that sits in the bottleneck of the Strait of Hormuz, to the ports of Jask and Shah Bahar on the Indian Ocean, beyond the Strait.

Behind the kill zones are strategic missile launchers labeled as "area of chemical operations," "area of biological warfare operations," and "area where nuclear operations start." Iran's overall battle management will be handled through C4I and surveillance satellites. It is unclear in the documents shared with NewsMax whether this refers to commercial satellites or satellite intelligence obtained from allies, such as Russia or China. Iran has satellite cooperation programs with both nations. The map is labeled "the current status of military forces in the Persian Gulf and the Strait of Hormuz, 1384." 1384 is the Iranian year that ends on March 20, 2006.

Iran plans to begin offensive operations by launching successive waves of explosives-packed boats against U.S. warships in the Gulf, piloted by "Ashura" or suicide bombers. The first wave can draw on more than 1,000 small fast-attack boats operated by the Revolutionary Guards navy, equipped with rocket launchers, heavy machine-guns and possibly Sagger anti-tank missiles. In recent years, the Iranians have used these small boats to practice "swarming" raids on commercial vessels and U.S. warships patrolling the Persian Gulf.

The White House listed two such attacks in the list of 10 foiled al-Qaida terrorist attacks it released on Feb. 10. The attacks were identified as a "plot by al-Qaida operatives to attack ships in the [Persian] Gulf" in early 2003, and a separate plot to "attack ships in the Strait of Hormuz." A second wave of suicide attacks would be carried out by "suicide submarines" and semi-submersible boats, before Iran deploys its Russian-built Kilo-class submarines and Chinese-built Huodong missile boats to attack U.S. warships, the source said.

The 114-foot Chinese boats are equipped with advanced radar-guided C-802s, a sea-skimming cruise-missile with a 60-mile range against which many U.S. naval analysts believe there is no effective defense. When Iran first tested the sea-launched C-802s a decade ago, Vice Admiral Scott Redd, then commander of U.S. naval forces in the Gulf, called them "a new dimension ... of the Iranian threat to shipping." Admiral Redd was appointed to head the National Counterterrorism Center last year.

Iran's naval strategists believe the U.S. will attempt to land ground forces to the east of Bandar Abbas. Their plans call for extensive use of ground-launched tactical missiles, coastal artillery, as swell as strategic missiles aimed at Saudi Arabia and Israel tipped with chemical, biological and possibly nuclear warheads. The Iranians also plan to lay huge minefields across the Persian Gulf inside the Strait of Hormuz, effectively trapping ships that manage to cross the Strait before they can enter the Gulf, where they can be destroyed by coastal artillery and land-based "Silkworm" missile batteries.

Today, Iran has sophisticated EM-53 bottom-tethered mines, which it purchased from China in the 1990s. The EM-53 presents a serious threat to major U.S. surface vessels, since its rocket-propelled charge is capable of hitting the hull of its target at speeds in excess of 70 miles per hour. Some analysts believe it can knock out a U.S. aircraft carrier. The Joint Chiefs of Staff has been warning about Iran's growing naval buildup in the Persian Gulf for over a decade, and in a draft presidential finding submitted to President Clinton in late February 1995, concluded that Iran already had the capability to close the Strait of Hormuz.

"I think it would be problematic for any navy to face a combination of mines, small boats, anti-ship cruise missiles, torpedoes, coastal artillery, and Silkworms," said retired Navy Commander Joseph Tenaglia, CEO of Tactical Defense Concepts, a maritime security company. "This is a credible threat." In Tenaglia's view, "the major problem will be the mines. Naval minefields are hard to locate and to sweep," and the United States has few minesweepers. "It's going to be like running the gauntlet getting through there," he said.

When Iran last mined the Gulf, in 1987-1988, several U.S. ships and reflagged Kuwaiti oil tankers were hit, even though the mines they used were similar to those used in the Battle of Gallipoli in 1915, Tenaglia said. The biggest challenge facing Iran today would be to actually lay the mines without getting caught. "If they are successful in getting mines into the water, it's going to take us months to get them out," Tenaglia said.

Original story: http://www.kentimmerman.com/news/200...ran-attack.htm

[Armenian]

Iran fires missiles 'that could reach Israel'

Iran has flexed its military muscles by test firing dozens of missiles including the Shahab-3, a long range device capable of hitting Israel or American bases in the region. Iran's Revolutionary Guards fire missiles of during a war game. The missiles are capable of hitting targets in Israel and America

Just 48 hours after an American-led flotilla exercised in the Gulf, Iranian state television reported the missiles were fired in the country’s central desert region at the opening of ten days of military manoeuvres codenamed “Great Prophet”, led by the elite Revolutionary Guards. In what was taken as a clear warning to America, a senior Iranian commander said the tests were intended as a display of Iranian military strength.

“We want to show our deterrent and defensive power to trans-regional enemies, and we hope they will understand the message of the manoeuvres,” said General Yahya Rahim Safavi. Teheran’s determination to develop its nuclear programme in defiance of diplomatic pressure has caused western military planners to consider military action.

The recent naval manoeuvres led by the US Navy close to Iranian territorial waters were meant to practice drills for intercepting ships carrying components for ballistic missiles and weapons of mass destruction. Television broadcast from Teheran showed footage of a dozen types of missiles being fired from mobile launching pads.

Shahab-3 missiles are believed to be capable of carrying a nuclear warhead and are believed to have a range of more than 1,200 miles, meaning that Israel and US military bases in the Middle East are well within range. advertisement Among the other weapons tested during the manoeuvres was the Shahab-2, which has a cluster warhead that can send 1,400 bomblets at the same time, state television said. Solid-fuel Zalzal missiles also were launched, as were guided missiles such as the Scud-B, Zolxxxhar-73 and Z-3, it said.



Source: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2006/11/02/uiran6010.xml

[Armenian]

Russia, Iran: Brothers in Arms

With the Iran-Iraq War winding down in 1987, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini reportedly told a roomful of ambassadors: “Today Iran is so isolated that we can count the number of our friends on one hand.” Two decades later, with the UN Security Council weighing punitive options against it, Iran remains isolated but can count on at least one supporter among its neighbors: Russia.

The burgeoning partnership between Iran and Russia threatens to unravel UN efforts to squeeze Tehran to forego its nuclear ambitions. A veto-wielding member of the Security Council, Russia has thus far resisted efforts to punish the Iranians for forging ahead with their enrichment activities and ignoring a raft of UN resolutions. Of course, Moscow is motivated by fears of losing lucrative business opportunities, not to mention an important ally in the region. Bilateral trade eclipsed $2 billion in 2005, and as this new Backgrounder explains, Russia now supplies the bulk of Iran’s conventional arms. That includes a proposed air-defense system that would give Iran a credible deterrent against any American or Israeli move to strike its nuclear installations. Russia also built a light-water nuclear power plant at Bushehr, an $8 billion project set to go online as early as next year (GlobalSecurity.org).

Brenda Shaffer of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy calls Russia and Iran “partners in need,” motivated mainly by three ends: curbing U.S. influence, maintaining a multipolar world, and undermining U.S. efforts to sideline both states (take, for example, the new Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline which skirts both Iran and Russia). Yet Michael Eisenstadt, writing in Arms Control Today, says cooperation between the two countries “is driven as much by fear and mistrust as it is by opportunism and shared interests.” Regardless, closer Russia-Iran ties pose challenges to peace in the Middle East, analysts say, especially if Iran goes nuclear over the next decade.

Russia maintains Tehran’s nuclear program is peaceful and poses no threat to Iran’s neighbors (Reuters), much less to the United States. Yet Mohamed ElBaradei, director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, says his agency is still “unable to confirm the peaceful nature of Iran´s nuclear program.” Moscow continues to voice its opposition to sanctions not only out of economic interest but also on the grounds that, as an instrument of diplomacy, their track record is suspect.

The most recent draft proposal before the Security Council calls for a ban on Iranian students of nuclear physics from studying abroad and denies visas to Iranian nuclear scientists (IANS). Yet Daniel Pipes, director of the Middle East Forum, calls these efforts “feeble” (NYSun). Mohsen Sazegara, a U.S.-based Iranian dissident, suggests tough talk and smart sanctions are in order. “The most important thing for the international community is to talk to the regime of Iran firmly and strongly,” he told CFR.org. Meanwhile, CFR Senior Fellow Max Boot says only sanctions against Iranian exports of crude would cripple the regime in Tehran but that “would require a concerted international effort. Don’t hold your breath” (LAT). Instead, he proposes a “soft” approach that includes, among other things, reestablishing an American embassy in Tehran in exchange for a suspension of Iran’s nuclear program.

Source: http://www.cfr.org/publication/11873/russia_iran.html