Archive for the 'Iran' Category

Commentary from Ynet:

Professor David Menashri, head of the center for Iranian studies at Tel Aviv University, tried to explain in an interview to ynet what the Iranians really mean when they say they are “interested in entering a dialog.”

It appears that no one really believed that Iran’s response to the package of “unspecified incentives,” in exchange for suspending uranium enrichment would be positive.

The only potent question was how would the Iranian “nay” be said – would it be vague or clear. Iran’s goal to gain as much time as it can for its nuclear ambitions and to avoid international sanctions as much as possible, is clearly evident.

According to Prof. Menashri “it would have been quite unlikely for the Iranians to have provided a clear ‘yes’ but instead it was obvious they would give a vague answer. As is typical of the Iranians, they close the door but at the same time they open a window.

They say the package is ‘a good basis for continuing dialog’ and they try to discuss trivial matters rather than the core issues, and this was definitely not the intention when the proposal was offered. 

Of course.  But here is the really interesting thing.  I predicted that there would be calls to “dialogue” and “negotiate” with Iran.  Indeed there have been.  And does the world believe that the U.S. has the will finally to confront Iran, or does the world believe that the U.S. will buckle under the collective weight of international pressure?

Well, the price of oil dropped today upon news of a slight rise in the U.S. oil and gas supply.  Prices would not be dropping if the commodities brokers and traders believed that the U.S. was going to finally deal a blow to Iran.  They are betting on the U.S. “negotiating” with Iran, and this is a big time bet.  This is no poker game at the local yokel hardware store.  These are oil traders — who have a lot of money — and whose livelihood depends upon being right.

In other news about the Iranian intentions, Thetrumpet.com reports that:

In yet another sign of Iran’s far–reaching ambitions, an Iranian general recently revealed a plan to form a global axis of major powers against the United States.

In a meeting with the leaders of the Basij militia in Tehran on May 9, Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps commander Maj. Gen. Yahya Rahim Safavi said, “China, Russia, India and Iran are capable of establishing a pole of major powers in Asia, opposing the policies of America

Courtesy of LGF, here is Ahmadinejad on the future of U.S.-Iranian relations:

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad: When they talk about a “New Middle East,

Iranian officials have told the world that they will not end their enrichment program:

Foreign Ministry spokesman Hamid Reza Asefi said a compromise has to be achieved during future negotiations.

“We won’t suspend (uranium enrichment). Everything has to come out of negotiations. Suspension is not on our agenda,” Asefi told a press conference Sunday.

In further news today, Iran has blocked inspections at its Natanz enrichment facility.  As another indicator of Iran’s intent regarding enrichment, we learned today that:

Iran’s supreme leader said Tehran will pursue nuclear technology despite a U.N. Security Council deadline to suspend uranium enrichment by the end of the month or face the threat of economic and diplomatic sanctions.

“The Islamic Republic of Iran has made its own decision and in the nuclear case, God willing, with patience and power, will continue its path,” said Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, according to state television. 

No one (who has a brain and is sentient) really expected Iran to cease its enrichment program.  More interesting was this response from Germany:

German Chancellor Angela Merkel pressed for a “solid answer” from Iran on the package.

“I still hope that it will be positive, although some signals have been very confused,” said Merkel, whose country drew up the package with the five permanent Security Council members.

Chancellor Merkel (not Iran) is “confused” because of lack of a “solid” response.  Let me help.  Iran is pursuing an enrichment program and has said no to your requests to stop.

There.  I hope that was helpful.  I will be sending the invoice for my consulting time in the mail to the Chancellor.

Iranian officials have told the world that they will not end their enrichment program:

Foreign Ministry spokesman Hamid Reza Asefi said a compromise has to be achieved during future negotiations.

“We won’t suspend (uranium enrichment). Everything has to come out of negotiations. Suspension is not on our agenda,” Asefi told a press conference Sunday.

In further news today, Iran has blocked inspections at its Natanz enrichment facility.  As another indicator of Iran’s intent regarding enrichment, we learned today that:

Iran’s supreme leader said Tehran will pursue nuclear technology despite a U.N. Security Council deadline to suspend uranium enrichment by the end of the month or face the threat of economic and diplomatic sanctions.

“The Islamic Republic of Iran has made its own decision and in the nuclear case, God willing, with patience and power, will continue its path,” said Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, according to state television. 

No one (who has a brain and is sentient) really expected Iran to cease its enrichment program.  More interesting was this response from Germany:

German Chancellor Angela Merkel pressed for a “solid answer” from Iran on the package.

“I still hope that it will be positive, although some signals have been very confused,” said Merkel, whose country drew up the package with the five permanent Security Council members.

Chancellor Merkel (not Iran) is “confused” because of lack of a “solid” response.  Let me help.  Iran is pursuing an enrichment program and has said no to your requests to stop.

There.  I hope that was helpful.  I will be sending the invoice for my consulting time in the mail to the Chancellor.

USA Today is Reporting:

WASHINGTON — The United States blocked an Iranian cargo plane’s flight to Syria last month after intelligence analysts concluded it was carrying sophisticated missiles and launchers to resupply Hezbollah in southern Lebanon, two U.S. intelligence officials say.

Eight days after Hezbollah’s war with Israel began, U.S. diplomats persuaded Turkey and Iraq to deny the plane permission to cross their territory to Damascus, a transfer point for arms to Hezbollah, the officials said.

The episode was detailed by one U.S. intelligence official who saw a report on the incident. It was confirmed by a U.S. official from a second intelligence agency and by a diplomat with a foreign government. They did not want their names used because they were not authorized to discuss the incident.

[ … ]

•July 15: Three days after the war began, a source tipped off U.S. intelligence about an imminent shipment of missiles from Iran to Hezbollah.

•July 19: A spy satellite photographed Iranian crews loading three missile launchers and eight crates, each normally used to carry a Chinese-designed C-802 Noor missile, aboard a transport plane at Mehrabad air base near Tehran. Israel says Hezbollah fired a C-802, a precision-guided anti-ship cruise missile, at an Israeli warship off Lebanon’s coast on July 14.

•July 20: The Ilyushin Il-76 transport plane left for Damascus, but Iraqi air-traffic controllers denied it permission to enter Iraq’s airspace. The Iranian flight crew then requested permission to fly over Turkey. Turkish controllers granted permission — but only if the plane would land for an inspection. The plane returned to Tehran, where the military cargo was unloaded.

•July 22: The plane flew humanitarian aid to Damascus after stopping for inspection in Turkey.

Though the missiles were not visible in the satellite photos, the launchers and specialized crates with distinctive shapes allowed U.S. analysts to identify the missile type, the intelligence officials said.

Asked about the account during an interview Tuesday, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said, “We work on these kinds of things all the time.” But she added, “I can’t comment on specific cases.” 

So here is my question: why the cloak and dagger routine?  Can someone please name me one strategic advantage in the secrecy?

No, there is no advantage.  This is the State Department trying to fight our wars for us, and until and unless we unshackle the armed forces of our country and finally go public with who we are fighting and what the real enemy is, this is still a secret war conducted for secret reasons by secret people at the State Department.

When this information was gleaned by our intelligence services, Bush should have marched out in front of the press corps in Washington, announced that Iran was trying to resupply Hezbollah, and said that the U.S. will blast the plane out of the sky if it didn’t turn around; and then videotape it and put in on the news if the plane actually tried to land and we had to shoot it out of the air.  In the background (double frame) of this videotape we should have had the brass at CENTCOM watching and cheering as the plane went down in flames.

We’ve absolutely got to get serious about this international war.  Finally, Michelle Malkin (actually, Bryan Preston over at Hotair.com) has a vent on “Flower Power Never Won a War.”

Bill Roggio has a very good piece over at the Counterterrorism Blog, entitled “After Action Report: Winners and Losers in the Hezbollah-Israel War.”  Regarding Iran, he says:

The 24 year old Iranian project of funding, training and arming Hezbollah in Lebanon has netted a large return. While the Israeli withdrawal form southern Lebanon in 2000 was certainly a victory for Hezbollah and their Iranian backers, the current Hezbollah victory is far more significant. Hezbollah gave the appearance of directly defeating the Israelis and forcing them to the negotiating table within one month of the onset of fighting.

The Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps and the elite Qods Force have created a powerful military and political force capable of spreading the radical Khomenist agenda. The Hezbollah model is a tried and proven method of the subversive Iranian foreign policy, and will be applied elsewhere. The IRGC and Qods will study the Hezbollah-Israel war and apply the lessons learned to improve this model, as well as to incorporate the military and political lessons into their own doctrine. The IDF fights as most Western armies do, and the Israeli political vulnerabilities are also shared throughout the West.

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s gambit has paid dividends, and he has successfully distracted efforts to cease the refinement of uranium and the further development of its nuclear program. “Today, we are fully mastering the nuclear fuel cycle for our peaceful atomic activities. It is a native technology… No one can take it away from us,” said Ahmadinejad, who has been emboldened by Hezbollah’s victory against Israel. The Western world has signaled it is fearful of confronting Ahmadinejad or his terrorist proxy Hezbollah head on. Ahmadinejad ‘s stature is the Islamic world will only grow over time as he demonstrates the ability to stand up to the West. 

Continuing the discussion, Iran has won in even more ways that Bill ennumerated here.  The IDF failed to drive Hezbollah out of southern Lebanon, and more specifically, Hezbollah still has thousands of rockets to fire at Israel.  Given the ability to hide and discretely fire Katyusha rockets, no one but the dilusional would believe that any amount of so-called “peace-keeping” troops will be able to keep Iran from re-supplying Hezbollah to replenish their stockpile of terror weapons.

So the surrogate military force that Iran has in southern Lebanon has not been disarmed, will not be disarmed, and has now achieved rock-star popularity in the Muslim world due to the failure of the IDF to decisively defeat them.

In a recent post I cited an editorial from one of Iran’s hard line newspapers, where they seemed to parrot the hard line from the Muslim leadership:

“The American defeat and withdrawal from Iraq will forever bury the Neoconservative current in the U.S.,…while the formation of an Islamist state in Iraq, which will be a natural ally of the Islamic Republic of Iran and will form a contiguous link between Iran and Palestine through Syria and Lebanon, will bring about a sea change in the geo-strategic balance in the region in favour of Iran and to America’s detriment. This new alliance with its huge size will directly influence all developments in the Arab and Muslim Middle East

There is much good news and information coming from Iraq, as you can tell from a brief (or even a prolonged) visit to the web site of the Multi-National Force – Iraq.  I get the MNF newsletter and visit the web site regularly.

However, there is also disturbing news that still comes from Iraq.  The Washington Post had an article some time back on the resurgence of Kurdish nationalism.  There is a strong Kurhish population in Turkey, and in fact Turkish troops have been inside Iraq before (Turkey fears that Kurdish elements in Turkey and Iraq might unite to form a de facto nation).

The Seattle Times has hints of sectarianism building in Iraq, and there are undercurrents of a push for regional rule in Iraq.

But is is very difficult to imagine an Iraq without a stable and strong central government that is anything but a puppet of Iran.  Let’s remember what Iran’s position is on Iraq, straight from an editorial from one of Iran’s hard line newspapers:

“The American defeat and withdrawal from Iraq will forever bury the Neoconservative current in the U.S.,…while the formation of an Islamist state in Iraq, which will be a natural ally of the Islamic Republic of Iran and will form a contiguous link between Iran and Palestine through Syria and Lebanon, will bring about a sea change in the geo-strategic balance in the region in favour of Iran and to America’s detriment. This new alliance with its huge size will directly influence all developments in the Arab and Muslim Middle East

Defense Tech has an interesting post that links the latest Seymour Hersh article in the New Yorker, entitled “Watching Lebanon: Washington’s Interests in Israel’s War.”  Seymour Hersh has always made extensive use of “un-named sources” for his articles, so what he says must be objectively analyzed and taken with the proverbial “grain of salt.”  But if we can get past this issue of sourcing his articles for a minute and think about the contents of his article, there might be useful insights to be gained.  I consider this scenario to be plausible.  Let’s look at what Hersh said (in part):

The Bush Administration, however, was closely involved in the planning of Israel’s retaliatory attacks. President Bush and Vice-President Dick Cheney were convinced, current and former intelligence and diplomatic officials told me, that a successful Israeli Air Force bombing campaign against Hezbollah’s heavily fortified underground-missile and command-and-control complexes in Lebanon could ease Israel’s security concerns and also serve as a prelude to a potential American preëmptive attack to destroy Iran’s nuclear installations, some of which are also buried deep underground.

Israeli military and intelligence experts I spoke to emphasized that the country’s immediate security issues were reason enough to confront Hezbollah, regardless of what the Bush Administration wanted. Shabtai Shavit, a national-security adviser to the Knesset who headed the Mossad, Israel’s foreign-intelligence service, from 1989 to 1996, told me, “We do what we think is best for us, and if it happens to meet America’s requirements, that’s just part of a relationship between two friends. Hezbollah is armed to the teeth and trained in the most advanced technology of guerrilla warfare. It was just a matter of time. We had to address it.

Every once in a while, an opportunity comes along that seems like it is made just especially for the present conditions.  It isn’t very often that an intractable problem presents itself, and yet the solution to that intractable problem just as readily presents itself, if only you have the courage take it.

Israel has had just this kind of opportunity with Hezbollah starting the recent conflict, Syria and Iran staying out of the war, and Lebanon powerless to do anything about any of it (including not just Israel but Hezbollah as well).  This had left Israel completey unshackled to destroy Hezbollah.

It should have been expected that the U.S. diplomatic machinations would have attempted appeasment of the world powers.  Condi went it to reform the State Department, and herself was co-opted by the “lifers” at the department who see themselves as neutral brokers between U.S. policy and the rest of the world, rather than an arm of the U.S. government and ultimately, therefore, servants of the people.

So armed with this knowledge, i.e., a once-in-a-nation’s-lifetime opportunity combined with a U.S. State Department that will aim to appease regardless of the circumstances, Israel could have utilized this chance to destroy its enemy — at least, the proxy of its enemy.  The Counterterrorism Blog notes that:

Every once in a while, an opportunity comes along that seems like it is made just especially for the present conditions.  It isn’t very often that an intractable problem presents itself, and yet the solution to that intractable problem just as readily presents itself, if only you have the courage take it.

Israel has had just this kind of opportunity with Hezbollah starting the recent conflict, Syria and Iran staying out of the war, and Lebanon powerless to do anything about any of it (including not just Israel but Hezbollah as well).  This had left Israel completey unshackled to destroy Hezbollah.

It should have been expected that the U.S. diplomatic machinations would have attempted appeasment of the world powers.  Condi went it to reform the State Department, and herself was co-opted by the “lifers” at the department who see themselves as neutral brokers between U.S. policy and the rest of the world, rather than an arm of the U.S. government and ultimately, therefore, servants of the people.

So armed with this knowledge, i.e., a once-in-a-nation’s-lifetime opportunity combined with a U.S. State Department that will aim to appease regardless of the circumstances, Israel could have utilized this chance to destroy its enemy — at least, the proxy of its enemy.  The Counterterrorism Blog notes that: