Is Israel Preparing to Attack Iran?

By Neve Gordon*

Skimming the newspapers as I rushed to get my children ready for school, I suddenly understood that Israel might actually be preparing for a military attack against Iran. "[United States Secretary of Defence Leon] Panetta Demanded Commitment to Coordinate Action in Iran" read one headline, and "A Bomb at Arm's Length" read another.

Feeding this hype were a series of military events that had been planned months in advance yet mysteriously coincided with the publication of the International Atomic Energy Agency report on Iran's efforts to produce a nuclear bomb. For four days straight all of the major television channels repeatedly showed images of Israel preparing for war.

It began with a report on Israel's testing of a long-range ballistic missile, which emphasised the missile's capacity to carry nuclear warheads. This was followed by interviews with pilots who were part of a comprehensive Israeli Air Force drill on long-range attacks carried out at an Italian NATO air base. Archival images of a missile being launched from an Israeli submarine were also shown. Ha'aretz readers were told that the submarine was important because it would enable Israel to carry out a second strike in case of a nuclear war.

These images of offensive arrangements were followed by images of Israel's defence preparations. On November 3rd, the three major news channels dedicated several minutes of air time to covering a drill simulating an attack on central Israel; these clips showed people being carried on stretchers and soldiers treating casualties who had been hit by chemical weapons. A day later, Ha'aretz reported that the military preparations against Iran had indeed been upgraded.

Iran with nuclear capabilities has been continuously presented as an existential threat to Israel. On October 31, in the opening speech of the Knesset's winter session Prime Minister Netanyahu noted that a "nuclearised Iran will constitute a serious threat to the Middle East and to the whole world and obviously also a direct and serious threat against us," adding that Israel's security conception cannot be based on defence alone but must also include "offensive capabilities which serve as the basis for deterrence."

Analysts repeatedly mentioned that Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is a Holocaust denier and Reuven Barko from Yisrael Hayom even compared Iran to Nazi Germany. One cannot underestimate the impact of this analogy on the collective psyche of Jewish Israelis.

Barko went on to connect Hamlet's phrase "to be or not to be" to Israel's current situation, while posing the existing dilemma confronting the State as "to hit or not to hit". President Shimon Peres claimed that Iran is the only country in the world "that threatens the existence of another country", but neglected to mention that for generations, the Palestinians have been deprived of their right to self-determination.

On the day when the International Atomic Energy Agency report was finally published practically all Israeli media outlets described it as a "smoking gun". The report, according to the media, provides concrete evidence that Iran's nuclear programme is also aimed at producing weapons. Zvi Yechezkeli from Channel Ten described it as "the end of the era of Iranian ambiguousness", but failed, of course, to remark that Israel's own ambiguity regarding its nuclear capacities continues unhindered; Roni Daniel from Channel Two declared that "we are relieved" by the report, suggesting that Israel's claims have now been corroborated and that the report can serve to justify both the imposition of harsher sanctions against Iran and even an attack.

Notwithstanding the endless war mongering, most Israeli commentators claimed that the frenzy was no more than a "nuclear spin". The majority of political analysts tended to agree that the media campaign, which presented Israel as seriously preparing to attack Iran, was orchestrated just in order to pressure the international community to impose harsher sanctions against Iran. Channel Ten's Or Heller put it succinctly when he said: "It appears that neither Iran nor the Israeli public is the target of what is going on here, but first and foremost it is the international community, the Americans, the British."

The commentators also noted that there is wall-to-wall opposition to an Israeli assault, including the US, Europe, Russia and China. Alex Fishman summed up the international sentiment when he wrote:

"If someone in Israel thinks that there is a green or a yellow light coming from Washington for a military attack against Iran - this person has no inkling whatsoever of what is going on; the light remains the same, a glaring red."

The portrayal of Israel as a neighbourhood bully who feigns a rage attack while calling out to his friends to hold him back is not particularly reassuring, however.

After 10 days of media frenzy, Defence Minister Ehud Barak tried to calm the public by saying that "not even 500 people would be killed" in the event of an attack - but he failed to say that there would be no attack.

Yossi Verter from Ha'aretz explained that the media hype serves Barak's interests. "A successful attack on the Iranian nuclear facilities under his ministerial leadership can rehabilitate his personal status, and help him recover the public's trust." Verter cites a leading member of the political system, who claims that "Barak is convinced that only a person of his security stature can lead perhaps the most fateful battle in Israel's history since the War of Independence."

Regardless of whether Netanyahu and Barak are already set on launching an assault, the media hype and the portrayal of Iran as constituting an existential threat to Israel surely help to produce the necessary conditions for a military campaign.

What is remarkable about this saber rattling is its abstraction. Not a single analyst noted that entering war is easy but ending it is far more difficult, particularly if on the other side stands a regional power with vast resources and a well-trained military (unlike Hamas or Hezbollah). And, of course, no one really talked about the likelihood of a gory future or what kind of life we were planning for our children. This kind of abstraction makes war palatable, providing a great service to the war machine.

* Neve Gordon is an Israeli activist and the author of Israel's Occupation and author of (University of California Press, 2008). He can be contacted through his website www.israelsoccupation.info

Here's a story to think about:

A bouncer at a night club doesn't like the looks of one of the customers. What makes matter worse is that the customer is loud-mouthed and vilifying night club bouncers, saying that they are the ones who should be kicked out of the club.

The bouncer takes a night stick that he has for just such an occasion, walks over to the table where the noisy customer is ranting and raving.

Then, without further warning, the bouncer bashes the noisy customer's head with the night stick. The customer falls to the floor, dead.

People who see what had happened ask the bouncer why he beat the customer to death.

"Shut up," shouts the bouncer, "He was armed, and I had to stop him before he destroyed us."

"Why didn't you stop him at the door if you thought he was a danger?" asks one of the club's patrons?

"I did," argues the bouncer. "When I accused him of having a weapon, he denied it."

The patron is flummoxed. "Why didn't you search him?"

The bouncer, becoming impatient with the sceptical crowd, proclaims, "I told him to prove he didn't have a weapon."

"Eh?" questions another patron, "You asked him to prove that he didn't have what he didn't have?"

The bouncer insists, "That's right, it's called 'pre-emptive' challenges, leading to pre-emptive strikes, leading to pre-emptive elimination of pre-emptive dangers."

Another patron chimes in, "Now that you've eliminated the pre-emptive danger, where's the weapon that led to your pre-emptive strike?"

Becoming even more upset with the challenging questions of the patrons, the bouncer declares, "It doesn't matter. He has a bad reputation for using weapons, and he could do it again in the future."

Tell us who's the bouncer with the clever justification for pre-emptive action by insisting that one must prove that he doesn't have what he doesn't have?

My friend, there are many bouncers. One of them, Condoleezza Rice appeared on Jon Stewart's show a week or so ago and tried to convince an audience of dunces that the bouncer rationale was justification for the war on Iraq.

Hers was an echo of many cunning leaders who have used the same bouncer self-justification for the most heinous crimes. The list includes insidious leaders like George W Bush, Tony Blair, Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld.

Feeding these treacherous leaders have been duplicitous Israeli firsters pretending to be American patriots, including figures like Richard Perle, Paul Wolfowitz and Douglas Feith.

Iraq wasn't enough for the pre-emptive strikers. The next target using the same disingenuous arguments is Iran.

America knows that Iran does not have nuclear weapons; but the bouncers want to destroy all of Iran's nuclear facilities so that no weapons will ever be made.

America has already made the bouncer's demand, saying to Saddam Hussein: prove that you don't have what you say you don't have--an impossible demand, used only to provide an excuse for bouncers.

According to Mark Amstutz, "Pre-emptive attack is morally justified when three conditions are fulfilled: The existence of an intention to injure, the undertaking of military preparations that increase the level of danger, and the need to act immediately because of a higher degree of risk."

The advocates of pre-emptive attack are attempting to meet those conditions with the flimsiest evidence and erroneous assumptions. Though Iran hasn't attacked anyone for more than a hundred years, their detractors argue that Iran wants Israel driven into the sea.

If that's not enough, stories have been fabricated about Iran's purchase of material that can only have military use, attempting to give the lie to Iran's stated objectives for nuclear energy.

Iran's "undertaking of military preparations" has been no greater than those of any other developing military, and much less than any nuclear power. To assert that test firing a few rockets amounts to unacceptable military preparation completely ignores the vast superiority of Israel's military might, including 200 to 400 nuclear bombs.

"The need to act immediately because of a higher degree of risk," is a spurious argument that applies to all countries, Record pre-emptive strikes (in Lebanon, Gaza, Iraq and Syria), as well as colonial occupation and destruction of Palestine, makes Israel the consummate high degree of risk.

Meanwhile, Benjamin Netanyahu tries to rally cabinet support for an attack on Iran. Israel's defence minister Ehud Barak and foreign minister Avigdor Lieberman are among those backing a pre-emptive strike to neutralise what the Israeli hawks dub Iran's nuclear ambitions.

Of course Lieberman would encourage a pre-emptive strike. His preparation for the foreign minister's role? He was formerly a night club bouncer!

* Paul J. Balles is a retired American university professor and freelance writer who has lived in the Middle East for many years. He's a weekly Op-Ed columnist for the Gulf Daily News. Dr. Balles is also Editorial Consultant for Red House Marketing and a regular contributor to Bahrain This Month.

What a spectacle they make of themselves, whooping and stomping to the frenzied beat of Tel Aviv's drum, their dumb-ass chant getting ever shriller.

You can read about it on a British government website.

"The UK and many other countries have serious concerns about the Iranian Government's policies," says the Foreign Office, "its failure to address serious international concerns about its nuclear programme; its support for terrorism and promotion of instability in its region; and its continued denial of human rights..."

I really thought they were talking about Israel and had got the names muddled up. But no... "On Iran's nuclear programme, we are actively seeking a solution through diplomatic engagement and sanctions to encourage compliance by Iran with the requirements of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and six UN Security Council resolutions."

Wow, does this means that Israel, which Iran is supposed to be threatening, is an innocent victim of Iranian aggression, is a menace to no-one, is suddenly co-operating with the IAEA and is now in full compliance with all those UN resolutions?

This is hot news!

The Foreign Office goes further: "Iran's backing of Hizbollah in Lebanon, Hamas and other Palestinian Rejectionist Groups..."

Just a minute. What exactly is a "rejectionist group"? I had to look it up in the Oxford dictionary. A rejectionist, it says, is a person who rejects a proposed policy, especially an Arab who refuses to accept a negotiated peace with Israel.

Ah. So what are we supposed to call an Israeli who rejects a perfectly reasonable Arab peace deal... like "get off our land and there'll be no trouble"? What do we call an Israeli who defies international law and denies the human rights of others? An Israeli who treats UN resolutions with contempt?

"Rejectionist" Israel

Rejectionism is an Israeli thing; it's what they do, they specialise in it. Israel, let's face it, is king of the rejectionist business.

All this sabre-rattling and talk of pre-emptive strikes against Iran is getting on everyone's nerves. Iran, after all, is a signatory to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and Israel is not. What does that tell us?

The Treaty dates back to 1970 so Israel has had more than enough time to show good faith and come on board with the other 189 State parties. The NPT has more signatories than any other treaty of its kind. The only refuseniks - OK, let's stay with the Foreign Office's new buzzword - the only rejectionists are India, Israel and Pakistan.

The British government says the international community must be prepared to "respond robustly" when a country withdraws from the NPT... "The NPT is not like any other treaty and the risks associated with its abuse are uniquely dangerous. We recommend immediate discussions at the UN Security Council if a country announces its intention to withdraw. The IAEA should be required to report immediately on the nuclear activities of that country."

It's common sense really. So what about countries, like Israel, that have stacks of nukes and refused to sign up to the NPT in the first place? What about the "uniquely dangerous risks" in Israel's case? Where's the robust response? Is the UNSC addressing Israel's rejectionism? Has the IAEA reported on Israel's nuclear activities?

As a matter of fact the IAEA is quite bothered about Israel. The BBC reported yesterday:

"On 18 September 2009, the IAEA called on Israel to join the NPT and open its nuclear facilities to inspection. The resolution said that the IAEA 'expresses concern about the Israeli nuclear capabilities, and calls upon Israel to accede to the NPT and place all its nuclear facilities under comprehensive IAEA safeguards'...

"Israel refuses to join the NPT or allow inspections. It is reckoned to have up to 400 warheads but refuses to confirm or deny this."

I've seen the 400 "deliverable" nukes figure before - it's nearly twice Britain's arsenal - also that European cities were targeted.

Israel is the third or fourth largest nuclear force in the world and the only one in the Middle East. A 2006/7 report by the Weapons of Mass Destruction Commission says:

"Most unofficial estimates claim that Israel possesses a nuclear arsenal numbering in the hundreds, possibly larger than the British stockpile. Israel is widely believed to possess both fission and fusion bombs. It has an unsafeguarded plutonium production reactor and reprocessing capability and possibly some uranium enrichment capability, along with various other uranium-processing facilities."

It is the only state in the region that is not a party to the Non-Proliferation Treaty. It has signed but not ratified the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty. As regards biological and chemical weapons, Israel has not signed the Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention. It has signed but not ratified the Chemical Weapons Convention.

So why is the focus on Iran and not rejectionist Israel? Israel's incessant foaming at the mouth over Iran has nothing to do with the alleged remark by Mr Ahmadinejad to "wipe Israel off the map" - a remark he never made anyway. Long before that, back in 2002 and 2004 Israel was urging the international community to target Iran as soon as it had finished in Iraq and to strip Iran of WMD.

Are we expected to believe that Israel's leaders, given their lawless and belligerent track record, are saner than Iran's Ahmadinejad? Washington and London may believe such tosh but I doubt if anyone in the Middle East would. Or anyone else in Europe for that matter. A European Commission survey finds that the public believe Israel to be the biggest threat to world peace, greater than North Korea, Afghanistan or Iran.

Eighty per cent of Conservative MPs preach that Israel's enemies are our enemies but who is listening?

War-war not jaw-jaw

Perhaps the looniest thing I have heard lately is the passage through Congress of the ''Iran Threat Reduction Act of 2011''. Hidden away where it wouldn't be noticed, under "General Provisions - Denial of Visas for Certain Persons of the Government of Iran" (Section 601), is this gem...

(c) RESTRICTION ON CONTACT. -- No person employed with the United States Government may contact in an official or unofficial capacity any person that -- (1) is an agent, instrumentality, or official of, is affiliated with, or is serving as a representative of the Government of Iran; and (2) presents a threat to the United States or is affiliated with terrorist organizations. (d) WAIVER. -- The President may waive the requirements of subsection (c) if the President determines and so reports to the appropriate congressional committees 15 days prior to the exercise of waiver authority that failure to exercise such waiver authority would pose an unusual and extraordinary threat to the vital national security interests of the United States.

It effectively bans diplomacy with Iran. Neither the President himself nor the Secretary of State nor any US diplomat or emissary is allowed to engage in negotiations or diplomacy with Iran unless the President can convince the "appropriate Congressional committees" (e.g. the House Foreign Affairs Committee whose strings are pulled by AIPAC) that not doing so would present "an unusual and extraordinary threat to the vital national security interests of the United States".

War-war is preferred to jaw-jaw. And it's no surprise to discover that this nonsense was cooked up by Reps. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-FL) and Howard Berman (D-CA), who both lead the Foreign Affairs Committee.

How clever is it to abandon all the channels of normal diplomacy? Those who support the measure must be desperate for more bloodshed - as long as they personally don't have to act as cannon-fodder. Who can forget the chicken-hawks who casually ordered troops into Iraq and Afghanistan but would never dream of donning uniform and picking up a rifle themselves?

The preamble to this junk piece of legislation states:

In the 2006 State of the Union Address, President Bush stated that ''The Iranian government is defying the world with its nuclear ambitions, and the nations of the world must not permit the Iranian regime to gain nuclear weapons. America will continue to rally the world to confront these threats..." In February 2009, President Obama committed the Administration to ''developing a strategy to use all elements of American power to prevent Iran from developing a nuclear weapon... Iran is a major threat to United States national security interests."

Is it really?

Circulating in the background for years have been rumours speculating on the whereabouts of nuclear warheads dumped by a US B-52 which crashed in 1991. Did freelancers salvage them? Was the nuke exploded by North Korea in 2006 one of these? Does Iran have some? Is this what the panic's about?

Many people are quite sure that if the increasingly unhinged Israeli leadership, with finger on the nuke button, believed their unlawful ambitions in the Middle East were permanently thwarted, they would think nothing of taking the rest of the world to hell with them.

* Stuart Littlewood is author of the book Radio Free Palestine, which tells the plight of the Palestinians under occupation. Read other articles by Stuart.

by William deB. Mills* | Sabbah Report | www.sabbah.biz

Al-Asad Airbase - from Google Earth

The Arab Spring is heating up, Egypt is gingerly opening the Rafah Gate, Syria is in crisis, the Palestinians are gearing up for a fall U.N. victory. Meanwhile, Tel Aviv, in deep denial, is murdering civilian demonstrators in neighboring countries for approaching its borders, refusing to negotiate sincerely even with its West Bank clients, and searching for a way to continue its campaign of expansion and ethnic cleansing. Are the extremist leaders of Israel crazy enough to launch a regional war, using the specter of an eventual Iranian nuclear bomb as the excuse? Perhaps irrational, perhaps just coldly calculating their own personal, short-term interest.

The recently retired chief of Mossad has just warned that they may be. This is a serious warning; Dagan has wrecked any hopes of a peaceful retirement as an Israeli hero he may have had; he has no doubt destroyed all his contacts with the Netanyahu regime, as well. He will be persona non grata in official Tel Aviv, a tough price for a man who managed all the state's secrets. He is being pilloried in the halls of government and much of the nation's media. But he has been supported by the other top Israeli spy chief (also recently retired and thus free to speak honestly to his country's people). What do Israel's intelligence chiefs know or suspect about the private calculations of the extremist (shall we, for simplicity, call them the "Israeli neo-con"???) faction whose bloody flag has brought it into power?

Iran, a country known to professionals as following a cautious, rational foreign policy, nevertheless--like many Israeli and U.S. politicians--talks tough, and thus is perceived on the Israeli (and U.S.) street as wild and crazy. Ahmadinejad, whose mouth is as out-of-control as Netanyahu's, will bear much of the blame if the extremist faction running Israel attacks Iran. It matters little, evidently, to voters in the U.S. or Israel that Iran has attacked no one (except its own people), while Israel only a decade ago was forced to give up its colonization of Southern Lebanon, provoked the overthrow of Hamas in 2006 after it had accepted democratic rules and won Palestine's only legitimate election, provoked and then launched a war of aggression against Lebanon in 2006, and provoked and then launched a war of aggression against Gaza in 2009. Now, Israel is murdering Syrian demonstrators on the border of between the territory Syria still controls and the Syrian Golan Heights that Israel seized in 1967.

Those are the facts. One may argue forever about justifications, but those are the facts, and the facts do not support the hypothesis that Iranian leaders are wild and crazy, nor do they support the hypothesis that Israeli leaders are rational. Note please that "rational" does not mean "nice" or "moral." It does, however, mean thoughtful, calculating logically one's interests, and avoiding self-defeating behavior.

• Israel's 1982 invasion of Lebanon, support of the slaughter of Palestinian women and children refugees in Sabra and Shatilla, and refusal to depart provoked the organization of the liberation movement Hezbollah; that was not a rational policy from Israel's perspective.
• Israel's 2006 overthrow of Hamas' new democratic government of Palestine taught the violence-prone group that playing by democratic rules would only backfire because Israel could not be trusted. That was not a rational policy from Israel's perspective.
• Israel's 2006 invasion of Lebanon resulted in a draw with that same Hezbollah, ending the myth of Israeli invincibility. That was not a rational policy from the perspective of Israel.
• Israel's disproportionate use of murderous force against civilians on the 2010 Gaza aid flotilla wrecked its important strategic ties with Turkey. That was not a rational policy from the perspective of Israel.
• Israel's slaughter of Syrian-Palestinian demonstrators cutting barbed wire on the Golan Heights brings to mind the East German murder of Germans trying to cross the old Berlin Wall. That was not rational policy from the Israeli perspective.

And now the question is whether the faction guilty of the above acts might also be sufficiently irrational to launch mankind's first unprovoked nuclear war. The ex-chief of Mossad evidently thinks so.

In early May a report in the Iranian media that someone close to nationalist Iraqi leader Moqtada al-Sadr had claimed Israeli warplanes were massing at Al-Asad Airbase near Baghdad for an attack on Iran received little notice in the U.S. and was quickly dismissed by U.S. officials as "ridiculous." Whatever the truth of the story, clearly the fact that the idea was "ridiculous" in no way indicates that it could not be true, and Dagan's recent warning suggests that the report should be taken more seriously.

What all this adds up to is unclear; these war scares have occurred repeatedly over the past decade. Yet the remarks of Dagan bear careful consideration, and evidence that the "war scares" of the past in fact constituted very real threats continues to emerge.

• In 2007, Israel allegedly was drawing up plans to attack Iran directly from Israel, with one route reportedly going over Turkey, which at that time still had close relations with Israel.
• In 2008, Israel conducted a dress rehersal for an attack on Iran with 100 F-15s and F-16s, and Transport Minister Shaul Mofaz said at the time, "If Iran continues with its programme for developing nuclear weapons we will attack."
• In 2009, the militant right-wing Israeli website DEBKA claimed that Israel planned to attack Iranian planes when they gathered for an airshow that was canceled by the Iranians at the last minute because of bad weather.
• In 2010, Israel allegedly planned to attack Iran via Georgia.

In early 2011, Haaretz commentator Aluf Benn explained the current political situation in Tel Aviv:

The activist view against Iran unites Barak and Netanyahu and gives sense to their shared place in the country's leadership. Bolstered by the incoming chief of staff, Yoav Galant, who is considered a supporter of their position, the prime minister and defense minister will seek to foil the Iranian nuclear program in their remaining time in office.

Journalist Yossi Gurvitz provided further details about the Tel Aviv war party's motivations:

[Barak's] defection [WM: from Likud to Netanyahu's party] was planned with Netanyahu. The latter was elected on one promise: Attacking Iran. He will have a problem facing the voters without one. Recently, the retiring chief of Mossad, Me'ir Dagan, tried to warn the public of such a war: you go to war, he said, only when the enemy's sword is at your throat. He also broke with Military Intelligence custom since 2000 - announcing Iran's bomb would be ready at next year's autumn - and said it won't reach a bomb until 2015. Yesterday, he had to somewhat back from that premise, and say Iran may pull a surprise. Still, this put a major crimp in Netanyahu's war rhetoric.

Netanyahu didn't take this sitting down: last week he informed the world that its problems are "Iran, Iran, and Iran". Netanyahu knows his coalition is dying, and that just about everyone are looking forward to the next elections. He must get to the polls with some achievement, or at least a massive distraction. Otherwise, all that people will remember is that Netanyahu was basically a humiliated peon of Liberman and Yishai. If he makes it to the polls in this condition, he will have a hard time defeating Livni.

Netanyahu has just one option to regain his grip on the national agenda: going to war. During wartime, the press automatically stands at the side of the government. At least during the first two weeks, before the IDF's screw-ups can be noticed. The war's reflected glory also covers the Minister of Defense. Netanyahu and Barak need a war. Obama seems too weak to rein them in. We should, therefore, watch with unusual suspicion any military move made by Israel in the coming months - from Lebanon to the Gaza Strip, and particularly Iran. The old saying is that war is the extension of diplomacy by other means - but all too often it is the extension of party politics.

The record of irrationality in Israeli foreign policy makes it dangerous to discount the threat of Israeli aggression. The continued U.S. control over the Al-Asad Airbase in supposedly independent Iraq at a time when the U.S. is committed to removing its troops offers troubling evidence of the plausibility of the claims that aggression is under consideration.

But most telling of all is the absence of any clear, unambiguous statement from the White House that the Obama Administration would reject and oppose any Israeli attempt to attack Iran in the absence of a clear and immediate Iranian threat to Israel. Even if Washington is totally opposed to an Israeli attack on Iran, the ambiguity in Washington rhetoric leaves a dangerous space for leaders in Tel Aviv to imagine that they can pull Washington along in their wake should they decide to start a war they cannot win. If they take the chance, and if they can play Washington one more time as they have so many times before, and if U.S. can end a war against Iran fast enough to avoid disaster for Israel, then Netanyahu and Barak can restore their political fortunes, roll over the Palestinians, and rule the Mideast. It is a nice daydream for a faction whose time may be nearly up.

Given the influence of this faction over the U.S. Congress, however, what is Obama to do? There are five private citizens in Israel today who have spent their lives defending Israeli national security and who now seem worried about that security: Meir Dagan, Gabi Ashkenazi, Amos Yadlin, Gad Shimron, and Yuval Diskin. Make no mistake: these are Israeli right-wing super patriots, their views will not be in accord with U.S. national security interests, and Obama's contacts with Israelis should be far broader than this group. But, in contrast to certain politicians, they represent what may be called the "rational right." If the security of the Israeli people is of concern to Obama, then perhaps he should take the time to invite these gentlemen to lunch.

* William deB. Mills is an American political scientist specializing in the future of the global political system. He recently published "Mideast Peace or Fascism," "Palestine and Global Security," "Hammering Islamic Radicals," "Smarter Iran Policy Begins With a New Attitude", and "Gaza: Laboratory for the Power-Hungry." Retired from a career in national security, where his final position was Director of Long-Range Analysis at the National Intelligence Council, he now write a foreign affairs blog at shadowedforest.blogspot.com, publish a newsletter on good governance, and develop ways of applying analytical methods (complex adaptive systems, scenario analysis, system dynamics) for the study of the future of international relations.

Tony Lawson's newest video is another powerful indictment of, not just the media circus and Wikileaks but the hypocrisy many still cling to under the guise of righteousness and moral certainty.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7TheJPboU4c

By Gareth Porter *, Sabbah Report: www.sabbah.biz

Since 2007, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) - with the support of the United States, Israel and European allies UK, France and Germany - has been demanding that Iran explain a set of purported internal documents portraying a covert Iranian military program of research and development of nuclear weapons. The "laptop documents," supposedly obtained from a stolen Iranian computer by an unknown source and given to US intelligence in 2004, include a series of drawings of a missile re-entry vehicle that appears to be an effort to accommodate a nuclear weapon, as well as reports on high explosives testing for what appeared to be a detonator for a nuclear weapon.

In one report after another, the IAEA has suggested that Iran has failed to cooperate with its inquiry into that alleged research, and that the agency, therefore, cannot verify that it has not diverted nuclear material to military purposes.

That issue remains central to US policy toward Iran. The Obama administration says there can be no diplomatic negotiations with Iran unless Iran satisfies the IAEA fully in regard to the allegations derived from the documents that it had covert nuclear weapons program.

That position is based on the premise that the intelligence documents that Iran has been asked to explain are genuine. The evidence now available, however, indicates that they are fabrications.

The drawings of the Iranian missile warhead that were said by the IAEA to show an intent to accommodate a nuclear weapon actually depict a missile design that Iran is now known to have already abandoned in favor of an improved model by the time the technical drawings were allegedly made. And one of the major components of the purported Iranian military research program allegedly included a project labeled with a number that turns out to have been assigned by Iran's civilian nuclear authority years before the covert program is said to have been initiated.

The former head of the agency's safeguards department, Olli Heinonen, who shaped its approach to the issue of the intelligence documents from 2005 and 2010, has offered no real explanation for these anomalies in recent interviews with Truthout.

These telltale indicators of fraud bring into question the central pillar of the case against Iran and raise more fundamental questions about the handling of the Iranian nuclear issue by the IAEA, the United States and its key European allies.

Drawings of the Wrong Missile Warhead

In mid-July 2005, in an effort to get the IAEA fully behind the Bush administration's effort to refer the Iranian nuclear dossier to the United Nations Security Council, Robert Joseph, US undersecretary of state for arms control and international security, made a formal presentation on the purported Iranian nuclear weapons program documents to the agency's leading officials in Vienna. Joseph flashed excerpts from the documents on the screen, giving special attention to the series of technical drawings or "schematics" showing 18 different ways of fitting an unidentified payload into the re-entry vehicle or "warhead" of Iran's medium-range ballistic missile, the Shahab-3.

When IAEA analysts were allowed to study the documents, however, they discovered that those schematics were based on a re-entry vehicle that the analysts knew had already been abandoned by the Iranian military in favor of a new, improved design. The warhead shown in the schematics had the familiar "dunce cap" shape of the original North Korean No Dong missile, which Iran had acquired in the mid-1990s, as former IAEA Safeguards Department Chief Olli Heinonen confirmed to this writer in an interview on November 5. But when Iran had flight tested a new missile in mid-2004, it did not have that dunce cap warhead, but a new "triconic" or "baby bottle" shape, which was more aerodynamic than the one on the original Iranian missile.

The laptop documents had depicted the wrong re-entry vehicle being redesigned.

When I asked Heinonen, now a senior fellow at Harvard University's Belfer Center, why Iran's purported secret nuclear weapons research program would redesign the warhead of a missile that the Iranian military had already decided to replace with an improved model, he suggested that the group that had done the schematics had no relationship with the Iranian missile program. "It looks from that information that this group was working with this individual," said Heinonen, referring to Dr. Mohsen Fakrizadeh, the man named in the documents as heading the research program. "It was not working with the missile program."

Heinonen's claim that the covert nuclear weapon program had no link to the regular missile program is not supported by the intelligence documents themselves. The IAEA describes what is purported to be a one-page letter from Fakrizadeh to the Shahid Hemat Industrial Group dated March 3, 2003, "seeking assistance with the prompt transfer of data" for the work on redesigning the re-entry vehicle.

Shahid Hemat, which is part of the Iranian military's Defense Industries Organization, was involved in testing the engine for the Shahab-3 and, in particular, in working on aerodynamic properties and control systems for Iranian missiles, all of which were reported in the US news media. "Project 11" was the code name given to the purported re-entry vehicle project.

Heinonen also suggested that the program's engineers could have been ordered to redesign the older Shahab-3 model before the decision was made by the missile program to switch to a newer model and that it couldn't change its work plan once it was decided.

However, according to Mike Elleman, lead author of the most authoritative study of the Iranian missile program thus far, published by the London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) last May, Iran introduced the major innovations in the design of the medium-range missile, including a longer, lighter airframe and the new warhead shape, over a period of two to five years. Elleman, told me in an interview that the redesign of the re-entry vehicle must have begun in 2002 at the latest.

The schematics on the laptop documents' redesigned warhead were dated March-April 2003, according to the IAEA report of May 2008.

Heinonen's explanation assumes that the Iranian military ordered an engineer to organize a project to redesign the warhead on its intermediate-range ballistic missile to accommodate a nuclear payload, but kept the project in the dark about its plans to replace the Shahab-3 with a completely new and improved model.

That assumption appears wholly implausible, because the reason for the shift to the new missile, according to the IISS study, was that the Shahab-3, purchased from North Korea in the early to mid-1990s, had a range of only 800 to 1,000 km, depending on the weight of the payload. Thus, it was incapable of reaching Israel. The new missile, later named the Ghadr-1, could carry a payload of conventional high-explosives 1,500 to 1,600 kilometers, bringing Israel within the reach of an Iranian missile for the first time.

The missile warhead anomaly is a particularly telling sign of fraud, because someone intending to fabricate such technical drawings of a re-entry vehicle could not have known that Iran had abandoned the Shahab-3 in favor of the more advanced Ghadr-1 until after mid-August 2004. As the IISS study points out, the August 11, 2004, test launch was the first indication to the outside world that a new missile with a triconic warhead had been developed. Before that test, Elleman told me, "No information was available that they were modifying the warhead."

After that test, however, it would have been too late to redo the re-entry vehicle studies, which would have the biggest impact on news media coverage and political opinion.

Iranian statements about the Shahab-3 missile would have been misleading for anyone attempting to fabricate these schematics. The IISS study recalls that Iran had said in early 2001 that the Shahab-3 had entered "serial production" and declared in July 2003 that it was "operational." The IISS study observes, however, that the announcement came only after the US invasion of Iraq, when Iran felt an urgent need to claim an operational missile capability. The study says it is "very dubious" that the missile was ever produced in significant numbers.

Skepticism and Resistance at the IAEA

A second inconsistency between the laptop documents and the established facts emerged only in 2008. At a briefing for IAEA member states in February 2008, Heinonen displayed an organization chart of the purported research program, showing a "Project 5" with two sub-projects: "Project 5/13" for uranium conversion and "Project 5/15" for uranium ore processing. Kimia Maadan, a private Iranian firm, is shown to be running "Project 5."

One of the key documents in the collection, a one-page flow sheet for a uranium-conversion process, dated May 2003, with Kimia Maadan's name on it, is marked "Project 5/13."

Bush administration hardliners and the IAEA safeguard department had been convinced in the 2004-2005 period that Kimia Maadan was a front for the Iranian military. In a 2005 report, the IAEA questioned how that company, with such "limited experience in ore processing," could have established an ore processing plant at Gchine in such a short time from 2000 to mid-2001 on its own.

But in January 2008, Iran provided documents to the IAEA showing that Kimia Maadan had actually been created by the civilian Atomic Energy Organization of Iran (AEOI) in 2000 solely to carry out a contract to design, build and put into operation an ore-processing facility. The documents also established that the firm's core staff consisted entirely of experts who had previously worked for AEOI's Ore Processing Center and that the conceptual design and other technical information had been provided to Kimia Maadan by AEOI.

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But the most explosive new evidence provided by Iran showed that the code number of "Project 5/15" on ore processing, supposedly assigned by the Iranian military's secret nuclear weapon research program, had actually been assigned by the AEOI more than two years before the purported nuclear weapons program had been started. In the context of the documents on Kimia Maadan's relationship with AEOI, the IAEA report of February 2008 acknowledged, "A decision to construct a UOC [uranium ore concentration] plant at Gchine, known as 'project 5/15,' was made August 25, 1999."

An unpublished paper by the IAEA safeguards department, leaked to the media and the Washington, DC-based Institute for Science and International Security (ISIS) in 2009, identified early 2002 as the formal beginning of what it called the Iranian military's "warhead development program."

Asked about this contradiction, Heinonen told me he couldn't answer the question, because he did not recall the specific dates involved.

After the IAEA had acquired that new evidence of fraud in January 2008, an IAEA official familiar with the internal debate inside the agency told me that some IAEA officials had demanded that the agency distance itself publicly from the intelligence documents. But IAEA reports made no concession to those demands. Instead, beginning with the May 2008 report, the agency began to use language implying that the documents were considered reliable.

Behind the scenes, a conflict was about to boil over between Heinonen and then IAEA Director General Mohammed ElBaradei, who was skeptical about the authenticity of the laptop documents and refused to give them any official IAEA endorsement. In late 2008, Heinonen began pushing ElBaradei to approve publication of his department's favorable assessment of the intelligence documents, which concluded that Iran had done research and development on nuclear weapons components and speculated that it was continuing to do so.

But ElBaradei refused to do so and in August 2009, diplomats from the UK, France and Germany, who were supporting Heinonen's view of the documents, leaked to Reuters and The Associated Press that, for nearly a year, ElBaradei had been suppressing "credible" evidence of Iran's covert work on nuclear weapons.

ElBaradei responded to those political pressures to publish the safeguards department speculative study in an interview with The Hindu on October 1, 2009, in which he declared, "The IAEA is not making any judgment at all whether Iran even had weaponisation studies before because there is a major question of authenticity of the documents."

Evidence of Israel's Role

The origin of the laptop documents may never be proven conclusively, but the accumulated evidence points to Israel as the source. As early as 1995, the head of the Israel Defense Forces' military intelligence research and assessment division, Yaakov Amidror, tried unsuccessfully to persuade his American counterparts that Iran was planning to "go nuclear." By 2003-2004, Mossad's reporting on the Iranian nuclear program was viewed by high-ranking CIA officials as an effort to pressure the Bush administration into considering military action against Iran's nuclear sites, according to Israeli sources cited by a pro-Israeli news service.

In the summer of 2003, Israel's international intelligence agency, Mossad, had established an aggressive program aimed at exerting influence on the Iran nuclear issue by leaking alleged intelligence to governments and the news media, as Israeli officials acknowledged to journalists Douglas Frantz and Catherine Collins. According to the book, "The Nuclear Jihadist," as part of the program, Mossad sometimes passed on purported Iranian documents supposedly obtained by Israeli spies inside Iran.

German sources have suggested that the intelligence documents were conveyed to the US government, directly or indirectly, by a group that had been collaborating closely with Mossad. Soon after Secretary of State Colin Powell made the existence of the laptop documents public in November 2004, Karsten Voight, the coordinator of German-American cooperation in the German Foreign Ministry, was quoted in The Wall Street Journal as saying that they had been transferred by an Iranian "dissident group." A second German source familiar with the case was even more explicit. "I can assure you," the source told me in 2007, "that the documents came from the Iranian resistance organization." That was a reference to the Mujahideen-E-Khalq (MEK), also known as the People's Mujahideen of Iran, the armed Iranian exile group designated as a terrorist organization by the US State Department.

The National Council of Resistance in Iran (NCRI), the political arm of the MEK, was generally credited by the news media with having revealed the existence of the Iranian nuclear facilities at Natanz and Arak in an August 2002 press conference in Washington, DC. Later, however, IAEA, Israeli and Iranian dissident sources all said that the NCRI had gotten the intelligence on the sites from Mossad.

An IAEA official told Seymour Hersh that the Israelis were behind the revelation of the sites and two journalists from Der Spiegel reported the same thing. So did an adviser to an Iranian monarchist group, speaking to a writer for The New Yorker. That episode was not isolated, but was part of a broader pattern of Israeli cooperation with the MEK in providing intelligence intended to influence the CIA and the IAEA. Israeli authors Melman and Javadanfar, who claimed to have good sources in Mossad, wrote in their 2007 book that Israeli intelligence had "laundered" intelligence to the IAEA by providing it to Iranian opposition groups, especially the NCRI.

Israeli officials also went to extraordinary lengths to publicize the story of covert Iranian experiments on a key component of a nuclear weapon, which was one of messages the intelligence documents conveyed. As a result of satellite intelligence brought to the attention of the IAEA in 2004 by Undersecretary of State John Bolton, the IAEA requested two separate investigations at the main Iran military research center at Parchin. The investigations, in January 2005 and November 2005, were aimed at examining the charge that Iran was using facilities at Parchin to test high explosives used in the detonation of a nuclear weapon. In each investigation, the IAEA investigators were allowed complete freedom to search and take environmental samples at any five buildings in the complex and their surroundings. But they failed to find any evidence of any Iranian nuclear weapons-related experiments.

At that point, Israeli intelligence came up with a new story. Hersh reported that, earlier in 2006, Mossad had given the CIA an intelligence report - purportedly from one of its agents inside Iran - claiming that the Iranian military had been "testing trigger mechanisms" for a nuclear weapon. The experiment supposedly involved simulating a nuclear explosion without using any nuclear material, so that it could not be detected by the IAEA. But there were no specifics on which to base an IAEA investigation - no test site specified and no diagrams - and CIA officials told Hersh they could not learn anything more about the identity of the alleged Israeli agent.

The CIA evidently did not regard the Israeli claim as credible, because the intelligence community issued a National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) in late 2007, which said that Iran had ended all work on nuclear weapons in 2003 and had not restarted it. Israel expressed dismay at the US intelligence estimate, but Israeli officials admitted that the official position that Iran was still working actively on a nuclear weapon was based on an assumption rather than any hard evidence.

Israel encountered yet another problem in its effort to promote the covert Iranian nuclear weapon narrative. The IAEA analysts doubted that Iran would be able to develop a nuclear weapon small enough to fit into the missile it had tested in 2004 without foreign assistance, as David Albright, former IAEA contract officer and director of the Institute for Science and International Security, wrote in a letter to The New York Times in November 2005.

Sometime between February and May, however, yet another purported Iranian document conveniently materialized that addressed the problem of the US NIE and the "small bomb" issue noted by Albright. The document was a long, Farsi-language report purporting to be about the testing of a system to detonate high explosives in hemispherical arrangement. Based on the new document, the IAEA safeguard department concluded that the "implosion system" on which it assumed Iran was working "could be contained within a payload container believed to be small enough to fit into the re-entry body chamber of the Shahab-3 missile."

The document was given to the IAEA by a "Member State," which was not identified in the leaked excerpts from an unpublished IAEA report describing it. But Albright, who knows Heinonen well, told me in a September 2008 interview, that the state in question was "probably Israel."

The day before the Reuters and Associated Press stories attacking ElBaradei over his refusal to publish the report appeared in August 2009, the Israeli daily Haaretz reported that Israel "has been striving to pressure the IAEA through friendly nations and have it release the censored annex." The operation was being handled by the director general of the Israel Atomic Energy Commission and the Foreign Ministry, according to the report. The Israeli objective, Haaretz reported, was to "prove that the Iranian effort to develop nuclear weapons is continuing, contrary to the claims that Tehran stopped its nuclear program in 2003."

Rethinking the Case Against Iran

Once the intelligence documents that have been used to indict Iran as plotting to build nuclear weapons are discounted as fabrications likely perpetrated by a self-interested party, there is no solid basis for the US policy of trying to coerce Iran into ending all uranium enrichment. And there is no reason for insisting that Iran must explain the allegations in those documents to the IAEA as a condition for any future US-Iran negotiations.

News coverage of the purported intelligence documents over the past few years has created yet another false narrative that distorts public discourse on the subject. Almost entirely ignored is the possibility that the real aim of Iran's nuclear program is to maintain a bargaining chip with the United States, and to have a breakout capability to serve as a deterrent to a US or Israeli attack on Iran.

The evidence that documents at the center of the case for a covert Iranian nuclear weapons program are fraudulent suggests the need for a strategic reset on Iran policy. It raises both the possibility and the need for serious exploration of a diplomatic solution for the full range of issues dividing the two countries, which is the only sensible strategy for ensuring that Iran stays a non-nuclear state.

* Gareth Porter is an investigative historian and journalist specialising in US national security policy. The paperback edition of his latest book, "Perils of Dominance: Imbalance of Power and the Road to War in Vietnam," was published in 2006.

(truthout)

By Michel Chossudovsky* | Sabbah Report | www.sabbah.biz

Humanity is at a dangerous crossroads. War preparations to attack Iran are in "an advanced state of readiness". Hi tech weapons systems including nuclear warheads are fully deployed.

This military adventure has been on the Pentagon's drawing board since the mid-1990s. First Iraq, then Iran according to a declassified 1995 US Central Command document.

Escalation is part of the military agenda. While Iran, is the next target together with Syria and Lebanon, this strategic military deployment also threatens North Korea, China and Russia.

Since 2005, the US and its allies, including America's NATO partners and Israel, have been involved in the extensive deployment and stockpiling of advanced weapons systems. The air defense systems of the US, NATO member countries and Israel are fully integrated.

This is a coordinated endeavor of the Pentagon, NATO, Israel's Defense Force (IDF), with the active military involvement of several non-NATO partner countries including the frontline Arab states (members of NATO's Mediterranean Dialogue and the Istanbul Cooperation Initiative), Saudi Arabia, Japan, South Korea, India, Indonesia, Singapore, Australia, among others. (NATO consists of 28 NATO member states Another 21 countries are members of the Euro-Atlantic Partnership Council (EAPC), The Mediterranean Dialogue and the Istanbul Cooperation Initiative include ten Arab countries plus Israel.)

The roles of Egypt, the Gulf states and Saudi Arabia (within the extended military alliance) is of particular relevance. Egypt controls the transit of war ships and oil tankers through the Suez Canal. Saudi Arabia and the Gulf States occupy the South Western coastlines of the Persian Gulf, the Straits of Hormuz and the Gulf of Oman. In early June, "Egypt reportedly allowed one Israeli and eleven U.S. ships to pass through the Suez Canal in ....an apparent signal to Iran. ... On June 12, regional press outlets reported that the Saudis had granted Israel the right to fly over its airspace..." (Muriel Mirak Weissbach, Israel's Insane War on Iran Must Be Prevented., Global Research, July 31, 2010)

In post 9/11 military doctrine, this massive deployment of military hardware has been defined as part of the so-called "Global War on Terrorism", targeting "non-State" terrorist organizations including al Qaeda and so-called "State sponsors of terrorism",. including Iran, Syria, Lebanon, Sudan.

The setting up of new US military bases, the stockpiling of advanced weapons systems including tactical nuclear weapons, etc. were implemented as part of the pre-emptive defensive military doctrine under the umbrella of the "Global War on Terrorism".

War and the Economic Crisis

The broader implications of a US-NATO Israel attack on Iran are far-reaching. The war and the economic crisis are intimately related. The war economy is financed by Wall Street, which stands as the creditor of the US administration. The US weapons producers are the recipients of the US Department of Defense multibillion dollar procurement contracts for advanced weapons systems. In turn, "the battle for oil" in the Middle East and Central Asia directly serves the interests of the Anglo-American oil giants.

The US and its allies are "beating the drums of war" at the height of a Worldwide economic depression, not to mention the most serious environmental catastrophe in World history. In a bitter twist, one of the major players (BP) on the Middle East Central Asia geopolitical chessboard, formerly known as the Anglo-Persian Oil Company, is the instigator of the ecological disaster in the Gulf of Mexico.

Media Disinformation

Public opinion, swayed by media hype is tacitly supportive, indifferent or ignorant as to the likely impacts of what is upheld as an ad hoc "punitive" operation directed against Iran's nuclear facilities rather than an all out war. War preparations include the deployment of US and Israeli produced nuclear weapons. In this context, the devastating consequences of a nuclear war are either trivialised or simply not mentioned.

The "real crisis" threatening humanity, according to the media and the governments, is not war but global warming. The media will fabricate a crisis where there is no crisis: "a global scare" -- the H1N1 global pandemic-- but nobody seems to fear a US sponsored nuclear war.

The war on Iran is presented to public opinion as an issue among others. It is not viewed as a threat to "Mother Earth" as in the case of global warming. It is not front-page news. The fact that an attack on Iran could lead to escalation and potentially unleash a "global war" is not a matter of concern.

The Cult of Killing and Destruction

The global killing machine is also sustained by an imbedded cult of killing and destruction which pervades Hollywood movies, not to mention the prime time war and crime TV series on network television. This cult of killing is endorsed by the CIA and the Pentagon which also support (finance) Hollywood productions as an instrument of war propaganda:

"Ex-CIA agent Bob Baer told us, "There's a symbiosis between the CIA and Hollywood" and revealed that former CIA director George Tenet is currently, "out in Hollywood, talking to studios." (Matthew Alford and Robbie Graham, Lights, Camera... Covert Action: The Deep Politics of Hollywood, Global Research, January 31, 2009).

The killing machine is deployed at a global level, within the framework of the unified combat command structure. It is routinely upheld by the institutions of government, the corporate media and the mandarins and intellectuals of the New World Order in Washington's think tanks and strategic studies research institutes, as an unquestioned instrument of peace and global prosperity.

A culture of killing and violence has become imbedded in human consciousness.

War is broadly accepted as part of a societal process: The Homeland needs to be "defended" and protected.

"Legitimized violence" and extrajudicial killings directed against "terrorists" are upheld in western democracies, as necessary instruments of national security.

A "humanitarian war" is upheld by the so-called international community. It is not condemned as a criminal act. Its main architects are rewarded for their contributions to world peace.

With regard to Iran, what is unfolding is the outright legitimization of war in the name of an illusive notion of global security.

A "Pre-emptive" Aerial attack directed against Iran would lead to Escalation

At present there are three separate Middle East Central Asia war theaters: Iraq, Af-Pak, and Palestine.

Were Iran to be the object of a "pre-emptive" aerial attack by allied forces, the entire region, from the Eastern Mediterranean to China's Western frontier with Afghanistan and Pakistan, would flare up, leading us potentially into a World War III scenario.

The war would also extend into Lebanon and Syria.

It is highly unlikely that the bombings, if they were to be implemented, would be circumscribed to Iran's nuclear facilities as claimed by US-NATO official statements. What is more probable is an all out air attack on both military and civilian infrastructure, transport systems, factories, public buildings.

Iran, with an an estimated ten percent of global oil and gas reserves, ranks third after Saudi Arabia (25 %) and Iraq (11 %) in the size of its reserves. In comparison, the US possesses less than 2.8 % of global oil reserves. The oil reserves of the U.S. are estimated at less than 20 billion barrels. The broader region of the Middle East and Central Asia have oil reserves which are more than thirty times those of the U.S, representing more than 60% of the World's total reserves. (See Eric Waddell, The Battle for Oil, Global Research, December 2004).

Of significance is the recent discovery in Iran of the second largest known reserves of natural gas at Soumar and Halgan estimated at 12.4 trillion cubic feet.

Targeting Iran consists not only in reclaiming Anglo-American control over Iran's oil and gas economy, including pipeline routes, it also challenges the presence and influence of China and Russia in the region.

The planned attack on Iran is part of a coordinated global military road map. It is part of the Pentagon's "long war", a profit driven war without borders, a project of World domination, a sequence of military operations.

US-NATO military planners have envisaged various scenarios of military escalation. They are also acutely aware of the geopolitical implications, namely that the war could extend beyond the Middle East Central Asia region. The economic impacts on the oil markets, etc. have also been analyzed.

While Iran, Syria and Lebanon are the immediate targets, China, Russia, North Korea, not to mention Venezuela and Cuba are also the object of US threats.

At stake is the structure of military alliances. US-NATO-Israel military deployments including military exercises and drills conducted on Russia and China's immediate borders bear a direct relationship to the proposed war on Iran. These veiled threats, including their timing, constitute an obvious hint to the former powers of the Cold War era not to intervene in any way which could encroach upon a US-led attack on Iran.

Global Warfare

The medium term strategic objective is to target Iran and neutralize Iran's allies, through gunboat diplomacy. The longer term military objective is to directly target China and Russia.

While Iran is the immediate target, military deployment is by no means limited to the Middle East and Central Asia. A global military agenda has been formulated.

The deployment of coalition troops and advanced weapons systems by the US, NATO and its partners is occurring simultaneously in all major regions of the World.

The recent actions of the US military off the coast of North Korea including the conduct of war games are part of a global design.

Directed primarily against Russia and China, US, NATO and allied military exercises, war drills, weapons deployments, etc. are being conducted simultaneously in major geopolitical hotspots.

-The Korean Peninsula, the Sea of Japan, the Taiwan Straits, the South China Sea threatening China.

-The deployment of Patriot missiles in Poland, the early warning center in the Czech republic threatening Russia.

-Naval deployments in Bulgaria, Romania on the Black Sea, threatening Russia.

- US and NATO troops deployments in Georgia.

- A formidable naval deployment in the Persian Gulf including Israeli submarines directed against Iran.

Concurrently the Eastern Mediterranean, the Black Sea, the Caribbean, Central America and the Andean region of South America are areas of ongoing militarization. In Latin America and the Caribbean, the threats are directed against Venezuela and Cuba.

US "Military Aid"

In turn, large scale weapons transfers have been undertaken under the banner of US "military aid" to selected countries, including a 5 billion dollar arms deal with India which is intended to build India's capabilities directed against China. (Huge U.S.-India Arms Deal To Contain China, Global Times, July 13, 2010).

"[The] arms sales will improve ties between Washington and New Delhi, and, intentionally or not, will have the effect of containing China's influence in the region." quoted in Rick Rozoff, Confronting both China and Russia: U.S. Risks Military Clash With China In Yellow Sea, Global Research, July 16, 2010)

The US has military cooperation agreements with a number of South East Asian countries including Singapore, Vietnam and Indonesia, involving "military aid" as well as the participation in U.S.-led war games in the Pacific Rim (July -August 2010). These agreements are supportive of weapons deployments directed against The People's Republic of China. (See Rick Rozoff, Confronting both China and Russia: U.S. Risks Military Clash With China In Yellow Sea, Global Research, July 16, 2010).

Similarly and more directly related to the planned attack on Iran, the US is arming the Gulf States (Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates) with land-based interceptor missiles, Patriot Advanced Capability-3 and Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) as well as sea-based Standard Missile-3 interceptors installed on Aegis class warships in the Persian Gulf. (See Rick Rozoff, NATO's Role In The Military Encirclement Of Iran, Global Research, February 10, 2010).

The Timetable of Military Stockpiling and Deployment

What is crucial in regards to US weapons transfers to partner countries and allies is the actual timing of delivery and deployment. The launch of a US sponsored military operation would normally occur once these weapons systems are in place, effectively deployed with the implementation of personnel training. (e.g India).

What we are dealing with is a carefully coordinated global military design controlled by the Pentagon, involving the combined armed forces of more than forty countries. This global multinational military deployment is by far the largest display of advanced weapons systems in World history.

In turn, the US and its allies have established new military bases in different parts of the world. "The Surface of the Earth is Structured as a Wide Battlefield". (See Jules Dufour, The Worldwide Network of US Military Bases , Global Research, July 1, 2007).

The Unified Command structure divided up into geographic Combatant Commands is predicated on a strategy of militarization at the global level. "The US Military has bases in 63 countries. Brand new military bases have been built since September 11, 2001 in seven countries. In total, there are 255,065 US military personnel deployed Worldwide." (See Jules Dufour, The Worldwide Network of US Military Bases , Global Research, July 1, 2007.

Source: DefenseLINK-Unified Command Plan. (Click to enlarge)

World War III Scenario

"The World Commanders' Areas of Responsibility" (See Map above) defines the Pentagon's global military design, which is one of World conquest. This military deployment is occurring in several regions simultaneously under the coordination of the regional US Commands, involving the stockpiling of US made weapons systems by US forces and partner countries, some of which are former enemies, including Vietnam and Japan.

The present context is characterised by a global military build-up controlled by one World superpower, which is using its numerous allies to trigger regional wars.

In contrast, the Second World War was a conjunction of separate regional war theaters. Given the communications technologies and weapons systems of the 1940s, there was no strategic "real time" coordination in military actions between broad geographic regions

Global warfare is based on the coordinated deployment of a single dominant military power, which oversees the actions of its allies and partners.

With the exception of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the Second World War was characterized by the use of conventional weapons. The planning of a global war relies on the militarization of outer space. Were a war directed against Iran to be launched, it would not only use nuclear weapons, the entire gamut of new advanced weapons systems, including Electrometric Weapons and Environmental Modification Techniques (ENMOD) would be used.

The United Nations Security Council

The UN Security Council adopted in early June a fourth round of sweeping sanctions against The Islamic Republic of Iran, which included an expanded arms embargo as well "tougher financial controls". In a bitter irony, this resolution was passed within days of the United Nations Secrity Council's outright refusal to adopt a motion condemning Israel for its attack on the Gaza Freedom Flotilla in international waters.

Both China and Russia, pressured by the US, have endorsed the UNSC sanctions' regime, to their own detriment. Their decision within the UNSC contributes to weakening their own military alliance, the Shanghai Cooperation organization (SCO), in which Iran has observer status. The Security Council resolution freezes China and Russia's respective bilateral military cooperation and trade agreements with Iran. It has serious repercussions on Iran's air defense system which in part depends on Russian technology and expertise.

The Security Council resolution grants a de facto "green light" to wage a pre-emptive war against Iran.

The American Inquisition: Building a Political Consensus for War

In chorus, the Western media has branded Iran as a threat to global security in view of its alleged (non-existent) nuclear weapons program. Echoing official statements, the media is now demanding the implementation of punitive bombings directed against Iran so as to safeguard Israel's security.

The Western media is beating the drums of war. The purpose is to tacitly instil, through repeated media reports, ad nauseam, within people's inner consciousness, the notion that the Iranian threat is real and that the Islamic Republic should be "taken out".

A consensus building process to wage war is similar to the Spanish inquisition. It requires and demands submission to the notion that war is a humanitarian endeavor.

Known and documented, the real threat to global security emanates from the US-NATO-Israel alliance, yet realities in an inquisitorial environment are turned upside down: the warmongers are committed to peace, the victims of war are presented as the protagonists of war. Whereas in 2006, almost two thirds of Americans were opposed to military action against Iran, a recent Reuter-Zogby February 2010 poll suggests that 56 % of Americans favor a US-NATO military action against Iran.

Building a political consensus which is based on an outright lie cannot, however, rely solely on the official position of those who are the source of the lie.

The antiwar movement in the US, which has in part been infiltrated and co-opted, has taken on a weak stance with regard to Iran. The antiwar movement is divided. The emphasis has been on wars which have already occurred (Afghanistan, Iraq) rather than forcefully opposing wars which are being prepared and which are currently on the Pentagon's drawing board. Since the inauguration of the Obama administration, the antiwar movement has lost some of its impetus.

Moreover, those who actively oppose the wars on Afghanistan and Iraq, do not necessarily oppose the conduct of "punitive bombings" directed Iran, nor do they categorize these bombings as an act of war, which could potentially be a prelude to World War III.

The scale of antiwar protest in relation to Iran has been minimal in comparison to the mass demonstrations which preceded the 2003 bombing and invasion of Iraq.

The real threat to global security emanates from the US-NATO-Israel alliance.

The Iran operation is not being opposed in the diplomatic arena by China and Russia; it has the support of the governments of the frontline Arab states which are integrated into the NATO sponsored Mediterranean dialogue. It also has the tacit support of Western public opinion.

We call upon people across the land, in America, Western Europe, Israel, Turkey and around the world to rise up against this military project, against their governments which are supportive of military action against Iran, against the media which serves to camouflage the devastating implications of a war against Iran.

The military agenda support a profit driven destructive global economic system which impoverishes large sectors of the world population.

This war is sheer madness.

World War III is terminal. Albert Einstein understood the perils of nuclear war and the extinction of life on earth, which has already started with the radioactive contamination resulting from depleted uranium. "I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones."

The media, the intellectuals, the scientists and the politicians, in chorus, obfuscate the untold truth, namely that war using nuclear warheads destroys humanity, and that this complex process of gradual destruction has already commenced.

When the lie becomes the truth there is no turning backwards.

When war is upheld as a humanitarian endeavor, Justice and the entire international legal system are turned upside down: pacifism and the antiwar movement are criminalized. Opposing the war becomes a criminal act.

The Lie must be exposed for what it is and what it does.

It sanctions the indiscriminate killing of men, women and children.

It destroys families and people. It destroys the commitment of people towards their fellow human beings.

It prevents people from expressing their solidarity for those who suffer. It upholds war and the police state as the sole avenue.

It destroys both nationalism and internationalism.

Breaking the lie means breaking a criminal project of global destruction, in which the quest for profit is the overriding force.

This profit driven military agenda destroys human values and transforms people into unconscious zombies.

Let us reverse the tide.

Challenge the war criminals in high office and the powerful corproate lobby groups wich support them

Break the American inquisition.

Undermine the US-NATO-Israel military crusade.

Close down the weapons factories and the military bases.

Bring home the troops.

Members of the armed forces should disobey orders and refuse to participate in a criminal war.

Part II of this essay published here.

Towards a World War III Scenario? The Role of Israel in Triggering an Attack on Iran (Part II The Military Road Map)

* Michel Chossudovsky is an award-winning author, Professor of Economics (Emeritus) at the University of Ottawa and Director of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG), Montreal. He is the author of The Globalization of Poverty and The New World Order (2003) and America's "War on Terrorism" (2005). He is also a contributor to the Encyclopaedia Britannica. His writings have been published in more than twenty languages.

By Jeff Gates* | Sabbah Report | www.sabbah.biz

The phony intelligence used to induce our March 2005 invasion of Iraq has been dusted off. This time it's being deployed to take us into Iran.

Same scam. Same storyline. Same fraud-even featuring some of the same players.

Except that this time around their deception lacks the broader context required to gain traction for their phony content. That key difference makes today's perpetrators far more transparent-for those willing to look.

Those foisting on us this latest fraud also face another challenge: Americans now realize it was Israel and its advocates who fixed that false intelligence around a Zionist agenda.

That realization adds combustibility to the facts now fueling Israel's fast-fading legitimacy.

Each week brings new insights that undermine generally accepted truths about 911 and our response to that mass murder on U.S. soil. As the costs continue to rise in both blood and treasure, the credibility of those who sold us this "Clash" continues its steady decline.

One key player in this long-running fraud remains unfazed: mainstream media.

In March 2002, Israeli-American Jeffrey Goldberg published in The New Yorker a story alleging an alliance between the jihadists of Al Qaeda and the secular Baathists of Iraq. Though an impossible premise, his account made it appear plausible.

His collaborator was James Woolsey, a former Director of the CIA and an avid Zionist. Woolsey assured us that Iraqi intelligence officials met in Prague with Al Qaeda.

Woolsey's intelligence was "sexed up" to sound credible. Now we know it was false. All of it.

Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.

In the consistency and common source of this duplicity lies the perilous future of Israel and its fast-shrinking legitimacy as a nation state.

The fast-growing worldwide revulsion at all things Israeli suggests that this latest fraud may yet fail-though not for lack of trying.

The Liars Return

Goldberg is back with another round of "reporting" in the best Goebbels tradition. Woolsey helped hyped his 2002 New Yorker essay, calling it a "blockbuster." That it was.

Woolsey, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich and Richard Perle lobbied the Bush White House in May 2004 to retain Iraqi liar Ahmed Chalabi as the U.S.-favored leader for Iraq. Perle took two decades to develop Chalabi as an Israeli asset-at U.S. taxpayer expense.

New York Times "reporter" Judith Miller featured as facts Chalabi's fabrications about Iraqi WMD. Meanwhile, Perle took over as chair of the Pentagon's Defense Policy Board in 2001-on which Woolsey and Gingrich served. None dare call this treason-yet.

Goldberg is now making the Evil Doer case for Iran. Writing in the July 22, 2008 issue of The Atlantic, he argues the Israeli case for bombing Iran and urges that the U.S. again join the fray.

Woolsey, Gingrich and Perle are pushing the same agenda from the periphery. Senators John McCain and Joe Lieberman, among Chalabi's earliest Congressional supporters, are again vocal in their support of expanding the war.

If the U.S. had an honest media, Goldberg would be revealed as a fraud and his cohorts reviled as traitors. Instead he was interviewed on MSNBC by Andrea Mitchell, wife of Alan Greenspan, and lionized by CNN anchor Wolf Blitzer who served 17 years with The Jerusalem Post.

The probability of Goldberg conceding that he served in the Israeli army is as likely as Blitzer conceding that he wrote a sympathetic book on Israeli master spy Jonathan Pollard.

Our Faithful Ally

The March 2008 National Intelligence Estimate confirmed with high confidence that Tehran halted its nuclear weapons program in the fall of 2003. No credible evidence has been offered that Tehran intends to enrich uranium beyond what is required for fuel and medical applications.

In a step scheduled for August 21, Russia will assist Iran in shifting 64 tons of low-enriched uranium from a storage site to the reactor chamber as the first of three steps in the long-delayed start-up of Iran's nuclear reactor at Bushehr.

If all goes according to plan, Iran's reactor will begin generating electricity in three to four months. As a condition of completing and fueling the plant, Russia insists that Iran return spent fuel so that the plutonium cannot be extracted for use in developing atomic weapons.

To date, the Iranians have produced only 5,300 pounds of low-enriched uranium. Moscow sees this next step as essential to bringing Tehran's nuclear activities under the auspices of the International Atomic Energy Agency.

What's the Israeli strategy for IAEA compliance? Bomb Iran. What's the U.S. strategy? Follow the lead of our faithful and reliable ally.

Tel Aviv portrays the Iranian reactor as an "existential threat" and a sure sign of a pending Holocaust. How Likud Party leaders divine that outcome remains obscure. But never mind that minor detail, mainstream American media can fill in the "never again" blanks.

It was during just such a development stage of an Iraqi nuclear facility that Israel attacked and destroyed a nuclear plant at Osirak as it neared completion in June 1981.

Thus the concern that Tel Aviv may attack the Bushehr facility before the reactor rods are lowered into the reactor core. Any attack after the chain reaction begins is certain to release radiation into the atmosphere.

The Perils of Pending Transparency

Other key factors are also driving Israel in this direction, including the need for a diversion.

Tel Aviv is now implicated in the 2005 assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri. The massive bomb blast left a crater 10 feet deep and 50 feet across. To date, Syria has been blamed for Hariri's murder, along with Hezbollah.

The ensuing instability was cited by Israel as a rationale for its 2006 invasion of Lebanon with the U.S.-per usual-widely portrayed as guilty by association.

A UN tribunal is now turning the spotlight on Israel's role. The tribunal will add fuel to the ongoing inquiry into the suspicious death of UK nuclear weapons inspector David Kelly who complained of the "sexed up" intelligence on WMD that induced the war in Iraq.

Meanwhile, ridicule is being heaped on the report of the 911 Commission for its glaring omissions, including its failure to identify U.S.-Israeli relations as a key motivation.

Fast-emerging developments on other fronts also spell trouble for Israel.

Even now, no one dares mention the mysterious collapse of World Trade Center Building 7 which was not hit by hijacked airliners. No one dares repeat the comment of leaseholder Leonard Silverstein on a PBS interview when he conceded the building was "pulled."

Means, Motive & Opportunity

When waging Information Age warfare, false beliefs are routinely deployed as a form of weaponry to displace facts. That displacement process is much easier when the psy-ops includes an emotionally wrenching component.

Thus the necessity that those selling us an agenda wield influence in mainstream media.

With Israeli dominance also reaching deep into official decision-making, those in our military who question today's Zionist narrative are routinely cashiered out of the service.

So who remains to counter the disinformation that passes for intelligence? In our tattered system of self-governance, who can deploy the facts required to displace the fictions foisted on us by Woolsey & Co.?

Answer: you and those with whom you share these facts and analyses.

The solution to this corruption requires people willing to tell the truth about what is being done to our country-and by whom. Make it personal-because it is. What you see chronicled in these accounts is how organized crime succeeds in plain sight.

In a system of governance dependent on facts for our informed consent, mainstream media was an early target of those perpetrating these ongoing psy-ops. Their success traces to domination of this key industry by supporters of this purported ally.

The facts are clear and the case is now compelling: Israel is not an ally but a reliable enemy.

Goldberg, Woolsey, Perle, Gingrich, McCain, Lieberman, Miller, Blitzer, Mitchell & Co. comprise an army of agents and assets enabled by an industry taken hostage by those destabilizing the U.S. from within.

Should the Zionist state again approach us for assistance-of any sort, the response must be clear and unequivocal: never again.

* Jeff Gates is a widely acclaimed author, attorney, investment banker, educator and consultant to government, corporate and union leaders worldwide, Jeff Gates' latest book is Guilt by Association -How Deception and Self-Deceit Took America to War (2008) his first release in the Criminal State series. His previous books include Democracy At Risk and The Ownership Solution. See his website Criminal State

By Dr. Elias Akleh* | Sabbah Report | www.sabbah.biz

Aggressive rhetoric and a push for Israel to attack Iran have been, lately, intensified in the American media. While senators are trying to get President Obama to officially support an Israeli attack on Iran, reporters of the mainstream media are trying to convince the average American that Iran's (non-existent) nuclear weapons program, half the globe away, is a threat to America, and the only viable way to stop Iran is through an Israeli "preventive" attack. They claim that the consequences of such an attack, warned by some military strategists as devastating, are "overblown".

Many Zionist-bought Senators assert that the Congress strongly rejects nuclear Iran and supports the use of all means to keep Iran from acquiring a bomb including through military actions. Reiterating this assertion during their visit to Israel last July, Senators McCain, Lieberman and Graham hinted that Israel could spearhead such an attack that would definitely draw American forces in the conflict to finish the job.

Ignoring the dire consequences of such a war specifically on the US, Israel, and the Middle East, and the whole world in general, 47 House Republicans had introduced and signed onto a resolution (HR 1553) declaring "support for Israel's right to use all means necessary to confront and eliminate nuclear threats posed by Iran... including the use of military force." It is understood that nuclear "tactical bombs" are to be used for such a military force to be effective. This resolution is now on its way through the Congress and Senators are under pressure to endorse it.

The mainstream media is doing its part to sell this war to the American citizens. Major articles about the subject were published by leading pro-Zionist, pro-war neoconservatives such as previous CIA agent Reuel Marc Gerecht, who published his exceptionally very long article "Should Israel Bomb Iran? -Better Safe than Sorry". Steven Simon and Ray Takeyh from Washington Post had also published their long article "A Nuclear Iran: Would America Strike to Prevent It?" Bill Kristol, the editor of The Weekly Standard and commentator on Fox News Channel published his article "A Period of Consequences; Our Dangerous Iran policy".

The common theme with these writers is their addressing of the alleged Iranian nuclear "threat" to the American people although half the globe afar. They claim that economic sanctions and the American diplomacy are ineffective and insist that a military action by the US, or perhaps Israel, would be a better solution than mere talks. The danger of these articles is that they greatly downplay Iranians' ability to defend themselves and to counter-attack effectively.

The writers encourage nuking of Iran as the only solution to "curtail its ambitions" . Gerecht asserts "an Israeli bombardment remains the only conceivable means of derailing or seriously delaying Iran's nuclear program and -equally important -traumatizing Tehran... (an Israeli) preventive strike remains the most effective answer to (Iran) having nuclear weapons."

Drawing the American forces in the conflict the writers misleadingly assert that US military, although engaged in two ongoing wars, is still fully capable of "carrying out such a mission." They dangerously and extremely minimize the effect of such an attack as "limited" , as if the Iranians would stand by and let the US or Israel obliterates their country and their citizens.

Similar to pre-2003 Iraqi situation, the US and Israel are using the threat of "non-existent" Iranian nuclear weapons to rally international support for a regime change in Iran. They are accusing Iran with the same grave violations that they themselves (US & Israel ) possess. Iran is being punished by severe economic sanctions based on Israeli and American unfounded accusation that Iran, a member of the NPT, is building an atomic bomb despite the November 2007 assertion of the National Intelligence Estimate (NIE), summarizing the unanimous opinion of all 16 secret services, that Iran had stopped its nuclear weapons program. The assertion stated: "We judge with high confidence that in fall of 2003 Tehran halted its nuclear weapons program... We assess with moderate confidence Tehran has not restarted its nuclear program as of mid 2007."

IAEA's reports confirm that there is no evidence that Iran is currently pursuing an atomic weapon program. Iran is criticized and is sanctioned for what the US and Israel think Iran would do, rather than for what Iran is doing. Iran is exercising its legitimate right, as per the NPT, of acquiring peaceful atomic technology.

The US itself possesses thousands of nuclear bombs, and although a member of the NPT, is still working on what is called nuclear tactical bombs. Israel on the other hand is not a member of the NPT, yet it is very well known that Israel has between 200-300 nuclear bombs as exposed by Mordechai Venunu, an Israeli atomic technician, who used to work in the Israeli atomic facility in Dimona. Former President Jimmy Carter mentioned in May 2008 that Israel has 150 nuclear bombs.

Although having democratic elections Iran is demonized as a religious dictatorship. Similarly, Israel, although having democratic elections, is a religiously dominated society aiming at fulfilling their religious prophesy of Greater Jewish Israel. The American foreign policy is greatly tainted by influential religious groups such as the Jewish AIPAC and Zionist Evangelican Christians. This influence can be easily seen in Bush's description of his wars as "crusades", and in the use, by main media, of terms such as "Islamofascist", "Islamic terrorists", "Islamic extremist" and other religiously pejorative words to describe the wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, and Iran.

While giving themselves the right to invade, occupy, destroy and devastate Iraq and Afghanistan under the accusations that such countries are threatening the US half the globe across, the American administration and Israel deny Iranians same right to defend its borders when its neighboring country is occupied by another country that keeps threatening to nuke their country, and accuse them of supporting terrorists in Iraq.

Iranian president Ahmadinejad is labeled as a new Hitler with a mad pathologically terror-stricken anti-Semitic Jew-hating Islamofascist regime intending on expanding its authority over the Middle East. Israel is playing the role of always the victim in a self-defense mode rather than the instigator of hostilities, and considers any criticism of its terror as anti-Semitic. Israeli leaders are worst than Hitler for what they had done to the Palestinians. Their government is a Zio-Nazi regime based on religious superiority complex, and intent on wiping off all Arabs and Moslems in between the Nile and Euphrates, as they had done in Palestine, in order to build their Greater Jewish Israel to spread its authority not only on the Middle East but also on the whole world. Israel is anti-Arab (anti-Semitic), anti-Moslems, and, as will eventually become apparent, anti-Christian.

The American administration is the worst of them all. Since its establishment until the present day the US has been in a state of perpetual wars and genocide against other nations. Its military bases are spread all over the globe to control and to manipulate other countries under the guise of spreading freedom and democracy.

Iranian Ahmadinejad is falsely accused of denying the Jewish Holocaust and of threatening to wipe off Israel, when in reality all what he had suggested was a serious and open historical study of the Holocaust similar to any other historical event, and had stated that the Zionist regime in Israel would bring an end to itself due to its terrorist actions against others. Iran had never threatened to strike any other country, including Israel, unless it was attacked first. Israel, on the other hand, denies the Palestinian Nakba and Palestinian pogroms perpetrated by the Israeli army and by Israeli terrorist settlers. Besides wiping Palestine off the map Israel, backed by the American administration, is threatening to nuke Iran and wipe off Iranian cities and citizens in mass. The US is also denying it's genocidal and war crimes against other nations, the least of them is the annihilation of millions of indigenous American Indians and the nuclear bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki wiping off hundreds of thousands of people within few seconds. The Administration is still using the threat of nuclear strike against non-nuclear countries to force them to follow the American dictate.

The real goal of all these accusations is a regime change in Iran, similar to the Shah regime, that would allow the flocking of foreign corporations to exploit Iran's natural resources especially oil and gas. Since Israel has been complaining that one or two Iranian nuclear bombs pause an existential threat to its citizens, one would expect Israeli leaders and the American administration to be satisfied with the Iranian low enriched uranium swap tripartite deal, brokered by Iran, Turkey and Brazil.

Many political analysts fear that Israel might attack Iran before the end of this month (August). Israel has been preparing long for such an attack. Last July 2009 Israeli air forces had been training on bombing raids at Nellis Air Force base in Nevada, while the Israeli missile defense shield program was tested off the shores of the Pacific Ocean. Also in June 2009 two Israeli missile class warships and a German made Dolphin Israeli submarine with cruise missiles equipped with the most sophisticated nuclear warheads in the Israeli arsenal, had passed through the Suez Canal to be stationed in the Persian Gulf off the Iranian coast. Since the Israeli air forces need to fly through Iraqi air space the attack needs to happen before the US turns security control to the Iraqi forces end of August, and before Iran defuses the tension by swapping its nuclear fuel early September.

An Israeli strike would have a devastating effect on the whole world. Iran is a powerful country and has just added to its arsenal many domestically-built weapons such as Mersad anti-aircraft missile, Ghadir class mini-submarines, and the lethal Noor anti-ship missiles. There is a rumor that Iran had just acquired four S-300 anti-aircraft missile systems .

The Iranians are expected to counter attack with long range missiles against Israel. All the American aircraft-carriers in the Gulf are sitting ducks for the Iranian missiles. Iranians would also target all the American military bases in the Gulf. They would start supplying surface-to-air missiles to Taleban that would jeopardize American war in Afghanistan. Having a defense treaty with Iran, Syria and Turkey may be drawn into the conflict. Hezbollah and Hamas would hit Israel from North and South. The Iranians would definitely close the Strait of Hermuz blocking all the oil shipments. Blocking, for even few weeks, Iran's 7% of internationally traded oil plus another 40% of global oil exports from the Arab Gulf States would cripple the whole international economy.

An Israeli strike would ignite Armageddon in the Middle East, and it would spread to the rest of the world. The question that poses itself is: Is the American Congress really crazy to support such an Israeli strike?

* Dr. Elias Akleh is an Arab writer from a Palestinian descent born in the town of Beit Jala. His family was first evicted from Haifa after the "Nakba" of 1948, then from Beit Jala after the "Nakseh" of 1967. He lives now in the US, and publishes his articles on the web in both English and Arabic.

A group of high level former U.S. intelligence officers has just published an extremely important analysis warning that Israel may plan to attack Iran as early as this month (full length article below).

They detail the evidence for this possibility and warn that such an action would quite likely drag the U.S. into yet another tragic, needless, and disastrous war.

Fortunately, they also describe actions that President Obama could take to prevent this.

1. We urge you to circulate this information widely.

2. Also, please contact the White House and your Congressional representatives to tell them that you do not want another costly and profoundly tragic war. Explain that you desire that the U.S. issue a clear demand that Israel NOT attack Iran and instead allow the various excellent diplomatic initiatives to defuse the situation to move forward.

Ray McGovern - Warning to the President
MEMORANDUM FOR: The President
FROM: Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS)
SUBJECT: War With Iran

We write to alert you to the likelihood that Israel will attack Iran as early as this month. This would likely lead to a wider war. Israel's leaders would calculate that once the battle is joined, it will be politically untenable for you to give anything less than unstinting support to Israel, no matter how the war started, and that U.S. troops and weaponry would flow freely. Wider war could eventually result in destruction of the state of Israel. This can be stopped, but only if you move quickly to preempt an Israeli attack by publicly condemning such a move before it happens.

We believe that comments by senior American officials, you included, reflect misplaced trust in Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu. Actually, the phrasing itself can be revealing, as when CIA Director Panetta implied cavalierly that Washington leaves it up to the Israelis to decide whether and when to attack Iran, and how much "room" to give to the diplomatic effort. On June 27, Panetta casually told ABC's Jake Tapper, "I think they are willing to give us the room to be able to try to change Iran diplomatically ... as opposed to changing them militarily."

Similarly, the tone you struck referring to Netanyahu and yourself in your July 7 interview with Israeli TV was distinctly out of tune with decades of unfortunate history with Israeli leaders. "Neither of us try to surprise each other," you said, "and that approach is one that I think Prime Minister Netanyahu is committed to." You may wish to ask Vice President Biden to remind you of the kind of surprises he has encountered in Israel.

Blindsiding has long been an arrow in Israel's quiver. During the emerging Middle East crisis in the spring of 1967, some of us witnessed closely a flood of Israeli surprises and deception, as Netanyahu's predecessors feigned fear of an imminent Arab attack as justification for starting a war to seize and occupy Arab territories. We had long since concluded that Israel had been exaggerating the Arab "threat" - well before 1982 when former Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin publicly confessed:

"In June 1967, we had a choice. The Egyptian army concentrations in the Sinai approaches do not prove that [Egyptian President] Nasser was really about to attack us. We must be honest with ourselves. We decided to attack him."

Israel had, in fact, prepared well militarily and also mounted provocations against its neighbors, in order to provoke a response that could be used to justify expansion of its borders.

Given this record, one would be well advised to greet with appropriate skepticism any private assurances Netanyahu may have given you that Israel would not surprise you with an attack on Iran.

Netanyahu's Calculations

Netanyahu believes he holds the high cards, largely because of the strong support he enjoys in our Congress and our strongly pro-Israel media. He reads your reluctance even to mention in controversial bilateral issues publicly during his recent visit as affirmation that he is in the catbird seat in the relationship. During election years in the U.S. (including mid-terms), Israeli leaders are particularly confident of the power they and the Likud Lobby enjoy on the American political scene.

This prime minister learned well from Menachem Begin and Ariel Sharon. Netanyahu's attitude comes through in a video taped nine years ago and shown on Israeli TV, in which he bragged about how he deceived President Clinton into believing he (Netanyahu) was helping implement the Oslo accords when he was actually destroying them. The tape displays a contemptuous attitude toward - and wonderment at - an America so easily influenced by Israel. Netanyahu says:

"America is something that can be easily moved. Moved in the right direction. ... They won't get in our way. ... Eighty percent of the Americans support us. It's absurd."

Israeli columnist Gideon Levy wrote that the video shows Netanyahu to be "a con artist ... who thinks that Washington is in his pocket and that he can pull the wool over its eyes," adding that such behavior "does not change over the years." As mentioned above, Netanyahu has had instructive role models.
None other than Gen. Brent Scowcroft told the Financial Times that former Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon had George W. Bush "mesmerized," that "Sharon just has him "wrapped around his little finger." (Scowcroft was promptly relieved of his duties as chair of the prestigious President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board and told never again to darken the White House doorstep.)

If further proof of American political support for Netanyahu were needed, it was manifest when Senators McCain, Lieberman, and Graham visited Israel during the second week of July. Lieberman asserted that there is wide support in Congress for using all means to keep Iran from becoming a nuclear power, including "through military actions if we must." Graham was equally explicit: "The Congress has Israel's back," he said. More recently, 47 House Republicans have signed onto H.R. 1553 declaring "support for Israel's right to use all means necessary to confront and eliminate nuclear threats posed by Iran ... including the use of military force."

The power of the Likud Lobby, especially in an election year, facilitates Netanyahu's attempts to convince those few of his colleagues who need convincing that there may never be a more auspicious time to bring about "regime change" in Tehran. And, as we hope your advisers have told you, regime change, not Iranian nuclear weapons, is Israel's primary concern.

If Israel's professed fear that one or two nuclear weapons in Iran's arsenal would be a game changer, one would have expected Israeli leaders to jump with up and down with glee at the possibility of seeing half of Iran's low enriched uranium shipped abroad. Instead, they dismissed as a "trick" the tripartite deal, brokered by Turkey and Brazil with your personal encouragement, that would ship half of Iran's low enriched uranium outside Tehran's control.

The National Intelligence Estimate

The Israelis have been looking on intently as the U.S. intelligence community attempts to update, in a "Memorandum to Holders" of the NIE of November 2007 on Iran's nuclear program. It is worth recalling a couple of that Estimate's key judgments:

"We judge with high confidence that in fall of 2003 Tehran halted its nuclear weapons program. ... We assess with moderate confidence Tehran has not restarted its nuclear program as of mid-2007, but we do not know whether it currently intends to develop nuclear weapons...."

Earlier this year, public congressional testimony by former Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair (February 1 and 2) and Defense Intelligence Agency Director Gen. Ronald Burgess with Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Gen. James Cartwright (April 14) did not alter those key judgments. Blair and others continued to underscore the intelligence community's agnosticism on one key point: as Blair put it earlier this year, "We do not know if Iran will eventually decide to build a nuclear weapon."

The media have reported off-the-cuff comments by Panetta and by you, with a darker appraisal - with you telling Israeli TV, "all indicators are that they [the Iranians] are in fact pursuing a nuclear weapon," and Panetta telling ABC, "I think they continue to work on designs in that area [of weaponization]." Panetta hastened to add, though, that in Tehran, "There is a continuing debate right now as to whether or not they ought to proceed with the bomb."

Israel probably believes it must give more weight to the official testimony of Blair, Burgess, and Cartwright, which dovetail with the earlier NIE, and the Israelis are afraid that the long-delayed Memorandum to Holders of the 2007 NIE will essentially affirm that Estimate's key judgments. Our sources tell us that an honest Memorandum to Holders is likely to do precisely that, and that they suspect that the several-months-long delay means intelligence judgments are being "fixed" around the policy - as was the case before the attack on Iraq.

One War Prevented

The key judgments of the November 2007 NIE shoved an iron rod into the wheel spokes of the Dick Cheney-led juggernaut rolling toward war on Iran. The NIE infuriated Israel leaders eager to attack before President Bush and Cheney left office. This time, Netanyahu fears that issuance of an honest Memorandum might have a similar effect.

Bottom line: more incentive for Israel to preempt such an Estimate by striking Iran sooner rather than later.

Last week's announcement that U.S. officials will meet next month with Iranian counterparts to resume talks on ways to arrange higher enrichment of Iranian low-enriched uranium (LEU) for Tehran's medical research reactor was welcome news to all but the Israeli leaders. In addition, Iran reportedly has said it would be prepared to halt enrichment to 20 percent (the level needed for the medical research reactor) and has made it clear that it looks forward to the resumption of talks.

Again, an agreement that would send a large portion of Iran's LEU abroad would, at a minimum, hinder progress toward nuclear weapons, should Iran decide to develop them. But it would also greatly weaken Israel's scariest rationale for an attack on Iran. Bottom line: with the talks on what Israel's leaders earlier labeled a "trick" now scheduled to resume in September, incentive builds in Tel Aviv for the Israelis to attack before any such agreement can be reached. We'll say it again: the objective is regime change. Creating synthetic fear of Iranian nuclear weapons is simply the best way to "justify" bringing about regime change. Worked well for Iraq, no?

Another War in Need of Prevention

A strong public statement by you, personally warning Israel not to attack Iran, would most probably head off such an Israeli move. Follow-up might include dispatching Adm. Mullen to Tel Aviv with military-to-military instructions to Israel: Don't even think of it.

In the wake of the 2007 NIE, President Bush overruled Vice President Cheney and sent Adm. Mullen to Israel to impart that hard message. A much-relieved Mullen arrived home that spring sure of step and grateful that he had dodged the likelihood of being on the end of a Cheney-inspired order for him to send U.S. forces into war with Iran.

This time around, Mullen returned with sweaty palms from a visit to Israel in February 2010. Ever since, he has been worrying aloud that Israel might mousetrap the U.S. into war with Iran, while adding the obligatory assurance that the Pentagon does have an attack plan for Iran, if needed. In contrast to his experience in 2008, though, Mullen seemed troubled that Israel's leaders did not take his warnings seriously.

While in Israel, Mullen insisted publicly that an attack on Iran would be "a big, big, big problem for all of us, and I worry a great deal about the unintended consequences."

After his return, at a Pentagon press conference on Feb. 22 Mullen drove home the same point. After reciting the usual boilerplate about Iran being "on the path to achieve nuclear weaponization" and its "desire to dominate its neighbors," he included the following in his prepared remarks:

"For now, the diplomatic and the economic levers of international power are and ought to be the levers first pulled. Indeed, I would hope they are always and consistently pulled. No strike, however effective, will be, in and of itself, decisive."

Unlike younger generals - David Petraeus, for example - Adm. Mullen served in the Vietnam War. That experience is probably what prompts asides like this: "I would remind everyone of an essential truth: War is bloody and uneven. It's messy and ugly and incredibly wasteful...." Although the immediate context for that remark was Afghanistan, Mullen has underscored time and again that war with Iran would be a far larger disaster. Those with a modicum of familiarity with the military, strategic, and economic equities at stake know he is right.

Other Steps

In 2008, after Mullen read the Israelis the riot act, they put their preemptive plans for Iran aside. With that mission accomplished, Mullen gave serious thought to ways to prevent any unintended (or, for that matter, deliberately provoked) incidents in the crowded Persian Gulf that could lead to wider hostilities.

Mullen sent up an interesting trial balloon at a July 2, 2008, press conference, when he indicated that military-to-military dialogue could "add to a better understanding" between the U.S. and Iran. But nothing more was heard of this overture, probably because Cheney ordered him to drop it.

It was a good idea - still is. The danger of a U.S.-Iranian confrontation in the crowded Persian Gulf has not been addressed, and should be. Establishment of a direct communications link between top military officials in Washington and Tehran would reduce the danger of an accident, miscalculation, or covert, false-flag attack.

In our view, that should be done immediately - particularly since recently introduced sanctions assert a right to inspect Iranian ships. The naval commander of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards reportedly has threatened "a response in the Persian Gulf and the Strait of Hormuz" if anyone tries to inspect Iranian ships in international waters.

Another safety valve would result from successful negotiation of the kind of bilateral "incidents-at-sea" protocol that was concluded with the Russians in 1972 during a period of relatively high tension.

With only interim nobodies at the helm of the intelligence community, you may wish to consider knocking some heads together yourself and insisting that it finish an honest Memorandum to Holders of the 2007 NIE by mid-August - recording any dissents, as necessary. Sadly, our former colleagues tell us that politicization of intelligence analysis did not end with the departure of Bush and Cheney... and that the problem is acute even at the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research, which in the past has done some of the best professional, objective, tell-it-like-it-is analysis.

Pundits, Think-Tanks: Missing the Point

As you may have noticed, most of page one of Sunday's Washington Post Outlook section was given to an article titled, "A Nuclear Iran: Would America Strike to Prevent It? - Imagining Obama's Response to an Iranian Missile Crisis." Page five was dominated by the rest of the article, under the title "Who will blink first when Iran is on the brink?" A page-wide photo of a missile rolling past Iranian dignitaries on a reviewing stand (reminiscent of the familiar parades on Red Square) is aimed at the centerfold of the Outlook section, as if poised to blow it to smithereens.

Typically, the authors address the Iranian "threat" as though it endangers the U.S., even though Secretary Clinton has stated publicly that this is not the case. They write that one option for the U.S. is "the lonely, unpopular path of taking military action lacking allied consensus." O Tempora, O Mores! In less than a decade, wars of aggression have become nothing more than lonely, unpopular paths.

What is perhaps most remarkable, though, is that the word Israel is nowhere to be found in this very long article. Similar think pieces, including some from relatively progressive think-tanks, also address these issues as though they were simply bilateral U.S.-Iranian problems, with little or no attention to Israel.

Guns of August?

The stakes could hardly be higher. Letting slip the dogs of war would have immense repercussions. Again, we hope that Adm. Mullen and others have given you comprehensive briefings on them. Netanyahu would be taking a fateful gamble by attacking Iran, with high risk to everyone involved. The worst, but conceivable case, has Netanyahu playing - unintentionally - Dr. Kevorkian to the state of Israel.

Even if the U.S. were to be sucked into a war provoked by Israel, there is absolutely no guarantee that the war would come out well. Were the U.S. to suffer significant casualties, and were Americans to become aware that such losses came about because of exaggerated Israeli claims of a nuclear threat from Iran, Israel could lose much of its high standing in the United States. There could even be a surge in anti-Semitism, as Americans conclude that officials with dual loyalties in Congress and the executive branch threw our troops into a war provoked, on false pretenses, by Likudniks for their own narrow purposes. We do not have a sense that major players in Tel Aviv or in Washington are sufficiently sensitive to these critical factors.

You are in position to prevent this unfortunate but likely chain reaction. We allow for the possibility that Israeli military action might not lead to a major regional war, but we consider the chances of that much less than even.

Footnote: VIPS Experience

We VIPS have found ourselves in this position before. We prepared our first Memorandum for the President on the afternoon of Feb. 5, 2003, after Colin Powell's speech at the UN. We had been watching how our profession was being corrupted into serving up faux intelligence that was later criticized (correctly) as "uncorroborated, contradicted, and nonexistent" - adjectives used by former Senate Intelligence Committee chair Jay Rockefeller after a five-year investigation by his committee.
As Powell spoke, we decided collectively that the responsible thing to do was to try to warn the president before he acted on misguided advice to attack Iraq. Unlike Powell, we did not claim that our analysis was "irrefutable and undeniable." We did conclude with this warning [.pdf]:

"After watching Secretary Powell today, we are convinced that you would be well served if you widened the discussion ... beyond the circle of those advisers clearly bent on a war for which we see no compelling reason and from which we believe the unintended consequences are likely to be catastrophic."

We take no satisfaction at having gotten it right on Iraq. Others with claim to more immediate expertise on Iraq were issuing similar warnings. But we were kept well away from the wagons circled by Bush and Cheney. Sadly, your own vice president, who was then chair of the Senate Foreign Affairs Committee, was among the most assiduous in blocking opportunities for dissenting voices to be heard. This is part of what brought on the worst foreign policy disaster in our nation's history.

We now believe that we may also be right on (and right on the cusp of) another impending catastrophe of even wider scope - Iran - on which another president, you, are not getting good advice from your closed circle of advisers.

They are probably telling you that, since you have privately counseled Prime Minister Netanyahu against attacking Iran, he will not do it. This could simply be the familiar syndrome of telling the president what they believe he wants to hear. Quiz them; tell them others believe them to be dead wrong on Netanyahu. The only positive here is that you - only you - can prevent an Israeli attack on Iran.

Steering Group, Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS)

Phil Giraldi, directorate of operations, CIA (20 years)

Larry Johnson, directorate of intelligence, CIA; Department of State, Department of Defense consultant (24 years)

W. Patrick Lang, colonel, USA, Special Forces (ret.); Senior Executive Service: defense intelligence officer for Middle East/South Asia; director of HUMINT Collection, Defense Intelligence Agency (30 years)

Ray McGovern, U.S. Army intelligence officer; directorate of intelligence, CIA (30 years)

Coleen Rowley, special agent and Minneapolis division counsel, FBI (24 years)

Ann Wright, colonel, U.S. Army Reserve (ret.), (29 years); Foreign Service officer, Department of State (16 years)

* Raymond McGovern, the author of the article, served as an intelligence officer in the CIA for almost thirty years and prepared the President's Daily Brief during both the Reagan administration and the first Bush administration. He has also published a number of articles and is one of the founding members of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS), a group of former and current officials in the intelligence community that got together in 2003 to protest the use of faulty intelligence leading up to the Iraq War.

** Philip Giraldi, one of the signatories, is a former CIA intelligence officer and army veteran who spent twenty years in Europe and the Middle East engaged in counterterrorism. He holds a PhD in European history from the University of London, speaks four languages, and has been providing commentary and analysis on US foreign and security policy for the past six years. He broke the story of the Dick Cheney plan to consider the use of nuclear weapons against Iran and also was the first American to write about the widespread corruption in Iraq reconstruction efforts. In 2008, he wrote a featured expose regarding Israeli spying against the United States. He was recently named executive director of the Council for the National Interest (CNI).

By Fidel Castro | Sabbah Report | www.sabbah.biz

by Carlos Latuff

Today I feel calmer than 26 days ago. As things continue happening in the short term, I can reiterate and enrich information to national and international public opinion.

Obama promised to attend the quarter-final game on July 2 if his country won in the second round. He must know, more than anybody, that those quarter finals could not take place if extremely grave events should happen beforehand, or at least he should know that.

Last Friday, June 25, an international news agency of known attention to detail in the information that it provides, published statements from "…the naval commander of the elite corps of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards, General Ali Fadavi…" warning that "… if the United States and its allies inspect Iranian ships in international waters 'they will receive a response in the Persian Gulf and the Strait of Hormuz.'"

The information was taken from the national Mehr news agency of Iran.

That agency, according to the cable, communicated: "Fadawi added that 'the Navy of the Revolutionary Guard currently has hundreds of vessels fitted with missile launchers.'"

The information, written almost at the same time as the one published in Granma, or perhaps before, seemed at certain points a carbon copy of the paragraphs of the Reflection written on Thursday, June 24 and published in that newspaper on Friday 25th.

The coincidence can be explained by the elemental use of logical reasoning that I always apply. I was not aware of one word of what was published by the national Iranian agency.

I do not harbor the slightest doubt that as soon as the warships of the United States and Israel take up their positions – together with the rest of the U.S. military vessels located in the vicinity of the Iranian coasts – and attempt to inspect that country's first merchant ship, a rain of missiles will be unleashed in both directions. That will be the precise moment when that terrible war will begin. It is not possible to foresee how many ships will be sunk nor of what ensign.

Finding out the truth in time is the most important thing for our people.

It doesn't matter that by natural instinct, almost everybody; it could be said 99.9% or more of my compatriots, are conserving hope and agreeing with me with the sincere desire of being wrong. I have talked with people in my closest circles and, at the same time, have received news from so many noble, altruistic and conscientious citizens who, on reading my Reflections, do not contest my considerations in the least, but assimilate, believe and instantly swallow the reasoning that I expound but who, nevertheless, immediately give their attention to fulfilling their work to which they devote their energies.

That is precisely what we desire of our compatriots. The worst things is to suddenly become aware of news of extremely grave events, without having heard any news whatsoever of such a possibility beforehand; then confusion and panic spreads, something that would be unworthy of a heroic people like the Cubans, who were at the point of being the target of a massive nuclear attack in October 1962, and did not hesitate for an instant to fulfill their duty.

During their undertaking of heroic internationalist missions, valiant combatants and chiefs of our Revolutionary Armed Forces were at the point of becoming the victims of nuclear attacks on the Cuban troops who were approaching the southern border with Angola, from where the racist South African forces had been evicted after the battle of Cuito Cuanavale, entrenching themselves on the border with Namibia.

With the knowledge of the U.S. president, the Pentagon supplied the South African racists via Israel with approximately 14 nuclear weapons, more powerful than those launched on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, as we have explained in other reflections.

I am not a prophet or a fortune teller. Nobody said a single word to me about what was going to happen; all of it is the fruit of what today I am describing as logical reasoning.

We are not novices nor are we interfering in this complicated subject.

In the nuclear post-crisis, it can be augured what will occur in the rest of Ibero-American speaking America.

In such circumstances, one cannot talk of capitalism or socialism. Only that a stage of the administration of goods and services available in this part of the continent will open up. Inevitably, each country will continue to be governed by those who are currently leading the government, a number of them very close to socialism and others full of euphoria at the prospect of a world market now opening for fuel, uranium, copper, lithium, aluminum, iron and other metals that are currently being sent to the developed and rich countries in that world market, which will suddenly disappear.

Abundant foodstuffs currently being exported to that world market will also abruptly disappear.

In such circumstances, the most basic products required in order to live: foodstuffs, water, fuels and the resources of the hemisphere to the south of the United States, are there in abundance for maintaining a little bit of civilization, the uncontrolled advances of which have led humanity to such a disaster.

However, some things are still very unclear at the present moment; can the two most powerful nuclear powers, the United States and Russia, abstain from using their nuclear weapons against one another?

What remains in no doubt whatsoever is that, from Europe, the nuclear weapons of Britain and France, allies of the United States and Israel – and which enthusiastically imposed the resolution that will inevitably unleash war, and a war that, given the reasons explained, will immediately become a nuclear war – are a threat to Russian territory, although that country, just like China, has tried to avoid such an outcome as far as the strengths and possibilities of each one allow.

The economy of the superpower will collapse like a house of cards. The society of the United States is one which is the least prepared to endure a disaster like the one created by the empire in the very territory from where it set out.

We do not know what might be the environmental effects of the nuclear weapons that will inevitably explode in various parts of our planet, something which, in the less grave variant, is going to happen in profusion.

To venture any hypothesis would be pure science fiction on my part.

Fidel Castro Ruz
June 27, 2010
2:15 p.m.

Source: Granma

It still holds two stolen nukes for possible port attack

By Gordon Duff* | Sabbah Report | www.sabbah.biz

Whenever the gang that has seized power in Israel wants to move forward their agenda-their plan to use American lives to dominate not only the Middle East but Central Asia-they reach into their bag of tricks. Sometimes it's a simple story: "rockets from Gaza" or another phony Bin Laden audio tape. However, too often, as we have learned time and time again, something very bad happens at just the right time. Some imaginary terrorist group with no planning ability, no logistics, and no influence or history of being able to move men or material shows up in New York, Detroit, London, Dubai, Madrid or Mumbai. The signature is always the same: help through airports, high quality documents and timed perfectly to advance the Israeli agenda. This time, with two stolen nuclear weapons in play, bombs built by South Africa and Israel available for detonation in a shipping container at any American or European port, we wonder, "Would Israel really go this far?"

The stolen nukes are part of the original ten weapons, Uranium-235 based, built by Israel in South Africa. The first one was tested on September 22, 1979 in the Indian Ocean and discovered by an array of sensors and satellites. The Israeli lobby in the US suppressed an American reaction and kept the story out of the press. However, as the story of these nuclear weapons is now established fact and subject of a recent speech by President Obama, denial is a waste of time. But what President Obama wasn't told when he thanked South Africa for destroying these weapons is that three of them "went missing."

While six weapons were shipped to the US and destroyed, three were in British hands but were hijacked, we were told initially, by Saddam Hussein and later Syria. This was the real reason for the invasion of Iraq. This was a useful story that killed off a rival of Israel's-a useful lie that also killed 5,000 Americans.

Israel also told us Syria had them but we didn't buy it. Then, Israel convinced the US that these bombs might show up in Gaza and be smuggled through tunnels into Israel. America agreed to support turning Gaza into a prison camp with us building the wall around it, using the Army Corps of Engineers.

This is another lie. The bombs have been in Israel all along, for the past 18 years-except for one that mysteriously exploded in North Korea.

Israel has been trying to hang that one on Pakistan. They are also setting the stage for nuclear terrorism by spreading continual stories about terrorists having access to Pakistan's nuclear arsenal. It isn't to get America to go in and seize it. Pakistan has a one million-man army, highly trained and well equipped. Not only are terrorists not going to get Pakistan's nuclear arsenal, the United States isn't up to the task either. Pakistan has never lost nuclear material but America has-several times. But that is another story.

Some time ago, Israel began preparing the US for a nuclear weapon to be detonated in a shipping container. Through Israeli assets in the US, starting with Senators Schumer, Waxman, Lieberman and McCain, to the mainstream media, to Chertoff, to the storytellers of Hollywood, the story has been planted in the minds of every American. "America can't protect her ports." "A ‘loose nuke' can be used at any time." "Billions need to be spent on Israeli technology to protect America." "A weapon is ready to be unleashed at any time..."

The continual stories, the daily fabrications that Israeli security forces feed America's intelligence network are never seen by most Americans. First, we are told Saddam has them. Then, Israel says Syria has them. Then, Israel tells us Syria sent them to Lebanon. Then, we are told they are in Iran. Then, we are told Hezbollah has them and is trying to smuggle them into Israel from Lebanon. Then, Israel tells us that they are on the Gaza Freedom Flotilla on a Turkish ship, loaded by "Islamic extremists."

There is one way to really secure the world from nuclear blackmail. The world must demand that Israel give up her nuclear weapons. The world must demand regime change in Israel. Not since the end of WWII has any government represented as severe a danger to world peace as the current extremist regime that has hijacked power in Israel, turning it into a military dictatorship.

When things were going well for Israel, with America "eating out of her hand," the only terror attacks we had were the joke in Times Square and the Detroit "crotch bomber"-all dripping with the Mossad signature. Now, with the free people of the world descending on Israel like avenging angels, it is time to worry.

Israel, arms merchant to the world, with billions of dollars of weapons sales, has a long history of working with weapons of mass destruction. Along with the nuclear plants in South Africa and the bomb facility at Dimona, poisons, diseases and toxic gasses of every kind were developed for years. The Israeli-South African "axis of evil" churned out filth of every kind, sold to the highest bidder. The South African Truth Commission has made the records public for any to see-but nobody is looking. Having that kind of power in the hands of sociopaths can have dire consequences-acts of murder and piracy, unanswered questions about why the Mossad was in place filming 9/11, or where the missing nuclear weapons are.

* Gordon Duff is a Marine Vietnam veteran, grunt and 100% disabled vet. He has been a featured commentator on TV and radio including Al Jazeera and his articles have been carried by news services around the world. He has been a UN Diplomat, defense contractor and is a widely published expert on military and defense issues. He is active in the financial industry and is a specialist on global trade. Gordon Duff acts as political and economic advisor to a number of governments in Africa and the Middle East. Gordon Duff is currently working on economic development projects in Pakistan and Afghanistan to counter the effects of poverty and global extremism.

By Richard Falk* | Sabbah Report | www.sabbah.biz

It may turn out that May 17, 2010 will be remembered as an important milestone on the road to a real new world order. Remember that the phrase 'new world order' came to prominence in 1990 after Iraq's invasion and annexation of Kuwait. It was used by George W. H. Bush, the elder of the two Bush presidents, to signify the possibility after the end of the Cold War to find a consensus within the UN Security Council enabling a unified response to aggressive war. The new world order turned out to be a mobilizing idea invoked for a particular situation. The United States did not want to create expectations that it would always be available to lead a coalition against would be breakers of world peace. The whole undertaking of a 'new world order' disappeared from diplomacy right after the First Gulf War of 1991. What one wonders now is whether the Brazilian/Turkish effort to resolve the Iran nuclear crisis with the West is not expressive of a new world, this time a 'real new world order.'

May 17th was the day that the Brazilian/Turkish initiative bore fruit in Tehran, with Iran agreeing to a ten-point arrangement designed to defuse the mounting confrontation with the United States and Israel with regard to its enrichment facilities. The essence of the deal was that Iran would ship 1200 kilograms of low enriched uranium (LEU) to Turkey for deposit, and receive in return 120 kilograms of uranium enriched to 20% for use in an Iranian nuclear reactor devoted to medical research. The agreement reaffirmed support for the Non-Proliferation Treaty, as well as acknowledged Iran's right under the treaty to develop nuclear energy for peaceful purposes, which meant the entire fuel cycle, including the enrichment phase.

The bargain negotiated in Tehran closely resembled an arrangement reached some months earlier in which Iran had agreed to turn over a similar amount of low enriched uranium to France and Russia in exchange for their promise of providing fuel rods that could be used in the same medical research reactor. That earlier deal floundered as Iran raised political objections, and then withdrew. The United States had welcomed this earlier arrangement as a desirable confidence-building step toward resolving the underlying conflict, but it wasted no time repudiating the May 17th agreement, which seemed so similar.

Why the discrepancy in the American response? It is true that in recent months Iran has increased its LEU production, making 1200 kg of its existing stockpile amount to 50% of its total rather than the 80% that would have been transferred in the earlier arrangement. Also, there were some unspecified features in the May 17th plan, including how the enriched uranium would be provided to Iran, and whether there would be a system of verification as to its use. In this regard, it would have seemed appropriate if genuinely troubled by this for Washington to request Iran to transfer a larger quantity of LEU and to spell out the details, but this is not what happened.

Instead of welcoming this notable effort to reduce regional tensions, the Brazilian/Turkish initiative was immediately branded as an amateurish irrelevance by the American Secretary of State, Hilary Clinton. She insisted that the concerns about Iranian nuclear enrichment be left exclusively in the hands of the 'major powers,' and immediately rallied China and Russia (in addition to France and the United Kingdom) to support a fourth round of punitive sanctions that were to be presented to the UN Security Council in the near future. It now appears that the five permanent members of the Security Council will support this intensification of sanctions that is expected to call for an arms embargo on heavy weapons, travel restrictions on Iranian officials, a boycott of banks and companies listed as linked to Iran's nuclear and missile programs, and authority to search ships to and from Iran suspected of carrying prohibited items. Such a resolution if implemented would certainly increase tensions in the Middle East without any discouragement of the Iranian nuclear program. Indeed a new round of sanctions would almost certainly increase Iran's incentives to exercise its full rights under the Non-Proliferation Treaty, and complete its development of the complete fuel cycle as has been previously done by several other parties to the treaty, including Japan, Germany, and The Netherlands.

Given the generally constructive character of the agreement reached in Tehran, the uncompromisingly hostile reaction in Washington can only be understood in one of two ways, neither of which is reassuring. If the U.S. Government, with or without Israeli prodding, had already resolved to impose sanctions, then any development that seems to cast doubt on such a coercive approach would be regarded as unwelcome. The evidence strongly suggests that the United States was determined to go forward with additional sanctions. This made the Brazil/Turkey initiative seem like a deliberate obstruction that was essentially resented as it has been reported that American leaders tried in talk Brasilia and Ankara out of making any independent steps to resolve the crisis.

Perhaps, the more weighty explanation of the hostile response has to do with the changing cast of players in the geopolitical power game. If this reasoning is correct, then the United States angry response was intended to deliver a reprimand to Brazil and Turkey, warning them to leave questions pertaining to nuclear weapons in the hands of what Hilary Clinton called 'the major powers.' In effect, the non-Western world should have no say in shaping global security policy, and any attempt to do so would be rebuffed in the strongest possible terms.

Yet the world of 2010 is very different from what it was in the late 20th century. Globalization, the decline of American power, and the rise of non-Western states have changed the landscape. This process has recently accelerated as a result of the world economic crisis, and the difficulties in the Euro zone. As the famous Bob Dylan 1960's song goes, "The times, they are a-changing." Recall that it was not long ago that the G-8 was scrapped in favor of the more inclusive G-20. Recently, as well, much attention has been given to the rise of the BRIC (Brazil, Russia, India, and China) countries. What seems most at stake in this attempt to supersede and nullify the Iran deal is banishing the Brazilian and Turkish intruders from the geopolitical playing field. For the West to claim that the Security Council remains representative of the arrangement of power in 2010 is ludicrous. The identity of the five permanent members has not been altered since 1945, which is a misguided effort to overlook the fundamental shifts in world power that have taken place in recent decades. Both Brazil and Turkey were elected to be non-permanent two year members of the Security Council, which both governments interpret as conferring a special responsibility to work for peace and justice in the world. AS the May 17th agreement shows, these governments possess the political will to make a difference in world politics.

Further, this is not just a childish ploy to grab a few headlines and tweak the old guard. The confrontation with Iran is exceedingly dangerous, agitated by Israel's periodic threats of launching a military attack and reports of pushing the United States in an escalating direction. Such a strategy of tension could easily produce a devastating regional war, disrupting the world economy, and causing widespread human suffering. Both Brazil and Turkey have strong national interests in working for regional peace and security, and one way to do this is to calm the diplomatic waters with regard to Iran's contested nuclear program. The fact that Iran seems prepared to go ahead with the agreement, at least if the UN refrains from further sanctions, strongly favors giving the deal a chance to succeed, or at worst, working to make it more reassuring to those countries that suspect Iran of secretly planning to become a nuclear weapons state.
The concern about Iran seems genuine in many quarters, given the inflammatory language sometimes used by President Mahmoud Ahmedinejad and considering the repressive internal practices in Iran. At the same time, even in this regard the United States leadership has rather dirty hands. While insisting that Iran cannot be allowed to do what several other non-nuclear states have already done in conformity with Non-Proliferation Treaty, the United States has acknowledged that it has been engaged in a variety of military activities under Pentagon auspices within Iranian territory. (For confirmation see Mark Mazzeti, "U.S. Is Said to Expand Secret Actions in Mideast," NY Times, May 24, 2010). Also, it is impossible to overlook the dispiriting silence that has long insulated Israel's nuclear weapons arsenal from scrutiny and censure, as well as the closely related refusal of the Western powers to back proposals put forward by Egypt and others for a nuclear free Middle East.

Back in 2003 Donald Rumsfeld, then Secretary of Defense, made headlines by contrasting 'Old Europe' (especially France and Germany) that he denigrated as decadent because it opposed the invasion of Iraq, and 'New Europe' that was the flourishing wave of the future in Eastern Europe that favored American policy. Now it is Old Europe that is again partnering with the United States, and so restored to the good graces of Washington. In this sense, Brazil and Turkey are being treated as trespassers who refuse to absent themselves from any further engagement in Middle East diplomacy.

Perhaps, we are witnessing the passing of an era in world politics, which has not yet been acknowledged. It is two decades since Charles Krauthammer, writing in Foreign Affairs, declared that "The immediate post-Cold War world is not multipolar. It is unipolar. The center of world power is the unchallenged superpower, the United States, attended by its Western allies." The abrupt rejection of the Brazil/Turkey initiative can probably best understood as a nostalgic clinging to the 'unipolar moment' long after its reality has passed into history.

Turkey has already demonstrated the enormous gains for itself and the region arising from the pursuit of an independent and activist foreign policy based on resolving conflicts and reducing tensions to the extent possible, with benefits for peace, stability, and prosperity. Not all of its initiatives have met with success. It tried to encourage the world to treat Hamas as a political actor after it fairly won elections in Gaza back in January 2006, but was rebuffed by Washington and Tel Aviv. Similarly, it brought to bear its mediating skill in trying to broker a peace deal between Israel and Syria, only to have the process break down after a series of promising negotiating rounds. Maybe also the Brazil/Turkey initiative will be effectively beaten down, but that would not mean it was not worth trying, or that such governments should not keep trying to supplant war and militarism with diplomacy and cooperative international relations. Outside of Western diplomatic circles it is already widely appreciated that the May 17th agreement reveals the exciting reality of a new geopolitical landscape in which the countries of the global South are now beginning to act as subjects, and no longer content to be mere objects in scenarios devised in the North. At some point this reality might well be christened as the 'real new world order'!

* Prof. Richard Falk - is an American professor emeritus of international law at Princeton University, writer (the author or co-author of 20 books), speaker, activist on world affairs, and an appointee to two United Nations positions on the Palestinian territories.

By Gordon Duff* | Sabbah Report | www.sabbah.biz

The Art of Keeping America at Risk for Fun and Profit

This week, newspapers around the world received reports and signed documents from South Africa. The reports said that, in 1975, Israel agreed to sell South Africa nuclear weapons. South Africa then released an arms agreement signed by current Israeli President Shimon Peres. This is the document "heard round the world."

Meetings are being held in New York to set up a conference for 2012 to guarantee that the Middle East is nuclear free. Israel has been informed that it will not be able to hide behind denials and that the nuclear arsenal put on the sale block by Israel in 1975, and nobody knows how many times since, has to go. When Israel was finally caught, it changed at least one part of a game, but the game will go on.

What does it mean? Neither South Africa nor Israel is admitting that the nukes were delivered. General beliefs are that they were, a real shock to Nelson Mandela when he took office, from prisoner of apartheid to commander of a nuclear power. What is proven by this is that Israel was, even 35 years ago, a nuclear state, in direct violation of numerous international treaties. It also proves that Israel offered nukes to South Africa, a rogue nation under sanctions that covered not only any weapons but trade as well. This made Israel a criminal state and Mr. Peres a war criminal.

More than that, it makes any aid America gives Israel illegal. If Israel is nuclear, which is now official, and in violation of international treaties, just as with Iraq and Iran, then America has to demand inspections and disarmament. There is no choice. This is the law. Law for Iran, law for Iraq is also law for Israel. Israel has expected this day for years. The US can't give or sell arms to any country with an illegal nuclear arsenal. Worse than this, we are sworn to defend the world from any nation that would spread nuclear weapons, a charge made by the South African government, one that has been made before, but can no longer be ignored.

How did Russia get the bomb? Americans gave Russia the technologies, not just Americans but Zionists: Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, Morris Cohen, Martin Sobell, David Greenglass, Klaus Fuchs and Harry Gold. This was a couple of years before the establishment of the State of Israel or we would have called them all Israeli-Americans. They believed that America couldn't be trusted and that infamous mass murderer Josef Stalin could. From this point on, spying against America, everything from secret weapons to defense plans, everything America depended on to stay safe was stolen and sold to Russia, China or North Korea by spy organizations run out of Israel.

The Rosenbergs died, executed for their crimes. They were communists and believed in what they were doing. Today this isn't the case. America's military secrets are being peddled around the world for money, to keep the world on edge and have built Israel into a military superpower based on stolen American technology and, we are told, a nuclear arsenal built from stolen American designs and fueled with 2.5 tons of "misplaced" plutonium, one of the great secrets of our era.

America's nuclear program, Livermore Labs, Oak Ridge, Hanford, Rocky Flats, Fernald, Pantax, Portsmouth, Mound, Pinellas, Savannah River, Sandia Labs, Los Alamos and more, needed to enrich uranium, design and fabricate nuclear weapons is vast, covering enough area to encompass some states. Tens of thousands of employees, hundreds of billions of dollars and physical facilities so large they could be seen from the moon are involved. Yet, by 1975, not only was Israel armed to the teeth with nukes, a tiny country, but had so many they could sell them on the open market like gumdrops.

The only possible answer was that America was supplying Israel with weapons grade fissionable material, plutonium or uranium 235. A number of investigators and whistleblowers have tracked these shipments to NUMEC in Pennsylvania and to France. I have spoken with some who were involved in the investigation. No report has been made. Everyone involved has been discredited or silenced. Is it a rumor or did Israel kill the Kennedys for trying to create a "nuclear free" Middle East? As this is the only very strong motivation for the assassinations that has never been made into a movie or filmed in a TV series or documentary, I am putting my money on this. John F. Kennedy may have signed his own death warrant when he sent the final demand to Israeli President David Ben Gurion on July 5, 1963 demanding inspection of the Dimona nuclear facility. Ben Gurion resigned rather than receive the letter and before a new demand could reach Tel Aviv, Kennedy was dead.

The world is a funny place. With 95% of the world's weapons design and development being done in the US, why is it that American technologies show up in enemy hands continually? Could the long history of Israeli spying against the US be involved?

Every advanced technology given by the US to Israel is reverse engineered and peddled to Venezuela, North Korea, China or the highest bidder. Any technology not offered is stolen. The game? Just as with peddling nukes to South Africa back in 1975, it is all about business.

The only reason Israel is on our radar is that their "games" played on the American stage with their puppet networks like Fox News and their political hacks, McCain, Lieberman, Waxman, Schumer and so many more, countless more, are ready to send a generation of American kids to war against Iran on the word of a proven liar, Israel, proven liar over peddling nukes, proven liar over Palestinian settlements, proven liar over Iraq's nuke program-lies told and retold by the master storytellers who daily reinvent themselves as victims.

* Gordon Duff is a Marine Vietnam veteran, grunt and 100% disabled vet. He has been a featured commentator on TV and radio including Al Jazeera and his articles have been carried by news services around the world. He has been a UN Diplomat, defense contractor and is a widely published expert on military and defense issues. He is active in the financial industry and is a specialist on global trade. Gordon Duff acts as political and economic advisor to a number of governments in Africa and the Middle East. Gordon Duff is currently working on economic development projects in Pakistan and Afghanistan to counter the effects of poverty and global extremism.

By Dr. Elias Akleh* | Sabbah Report | www.sabbah.biz

A build up of heightened tension in the Middle East is escalating in the last few weeks. American and Israeli postures towards Lebanon, Syria, and Iran have become more threatening. Listening to speeches of political leaders one hears talks only about war not peace. Iranians and Israelis are continuously training hard for a possible showdown. Both sides are conducting extensive war games every month. This led Syrians to claim that Israel is preparing for a soon-to-come another war. The Jordanians also are warning that current stalemate of the peace process is an indication of a war breaking this summer. The Russian President and his army chief hinted, few months ago, that the US and Israel were planning for an attack on Iran.

Indeed Iran is, as it has been for last few years, the target of most of the threats and accusation of supporting terrorism. Escalating incitement against Iran the American Defense Department sent Last month (April) to Congress a report on Iran's military claiming Iran could develop intercontinental ballistic missile capable of reaching the US by 2015.

Ignoring the fact that N. Korea, India, Pakistan, and Israel are proven to have nuclear weapons while Iran does not, the US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton chose in her speech, to the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty review conference at the UN, to focus on Iran's alleged nuclear ambitions putting the whole world at risk as she put it. According to Clinton Iran's acquisition of nuclear weapons, rather than Israel's more than 200 nuclear bombs, is destabilizing the Middle East. She called on world's nations to rally around US efforts to hold Iran, not other nuclear countries, to account.

Accusation that Usama Bin Laden is living comfortably in Iran had received a boost after the broadcast of a documentary called "Feathered Cocaine". This echoed the June 2003 claims of the Italian newspaper Corre de la Sierra that Bin Laden was in Iran according to some intelligence report, and according to Richard Miniter's book "Shadow War". This accusation was countered by Ahmadinejad in ABC News interview with George Stephanopoulos stating that, since Bin Laden was a previous partner of Mr. Bush, he is living comfortably in Washington DC not in Tehran. It was also widely reported that one of Bin Laden's wives was living in Tehran with six of his children and eleven grandchildren.

A recent Associated Press exclusive, May 13^th, written by Adam Goldman and Matt Apuzzo, reported that according to CIA monitoring program RIGOR Saad, the son of Usama Bin laden and many Al-Qaeda leaders and operative had taken refuge into Iran after 911. This exclusive disqualifies itself stating that "But generally, the U.S. has only limited information about them.", and "Details are murky".

The American military capitalized on such rumors when the commander of US forces in the Middle East, general Petraeus, told Congress that Tehran is working with Al-Qaeda facilitating links between its senior leaders and affiliate groups.

Syria, in turn, was not spared from American and Israeli warnings and threats. Syria was accused of violating 2006 UN Resolution 1701 prohibiting the transfer of weapons to Lebanese Hezbollah. Just before the US Congress approves sending Robert Stephen Ford as American ambassador to Syria as a sign of improving relationships, the Israeli President, Shimon Peres, accused Syria of smuggling Scud missiles to Hezbollah. Peres' accusation prompted the Congress to suspend sending Ford to Damascus.

Major General Alberto Asarta Cuevas of the UN Interim Force in Lebanon was quoted by Lebanese daily An-Nahar as saying: "We have no evidence of any Scud missiles in UNIFIL's area of operations." The US, also, could not confirm any Scud missiles shipped to Lebanon. Scud missiles are large and are difficult to hide.

Although not mentioning Scud missiles in specific Israeli officials such as the head of the Israeli military intelligence research department, Brigadier General Yossi Baidatz, claimed that: "Weapons are transferred to Hezbollah on a regular basis and this transfer is organized by the Syrian and Iranian regimes." Syria was accused of transferring sophisticated weapons, such as M600 rockets, to Hezbollah. Israel's Foreign Minister, Avigdor Lieberman, accused Syria of importing weapons of mass destruction from North Korea to ship them to Hezbollah and Hamas.

Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak directly warned both Syria and Lebanon: "We make it clear once again that we see the government of Lebanon, and behind it the government of Syria, responsible for what happens now in Lebanon, And the government of Lebanon will be the one to be held accountable if it deteriorates."

The Americans parroted the Israeli claims. Hillary Clinton warned Syria of grave consequences of delivering weapons to Hezbollah and Hamas warning that such an act "could mean war or peace for the region ... Hezbollah's acquisition of new weapons, especially long-range missiles, would threaten Israel's security and destabilize the region."

Robert Gates, the American Defense Secretary, had also accused both Iran and Syria of arming Hezbollah with sophisticated weaponry. Finally, citing what the White House alleged Syria's "extraordinary threat" to US security and foreign policy, Barack Obama decided to renew economic sanctions against Syria for another year. Obama said that Syria's "continuing support of terrorist organizations and pursuit of weapons of mass destruction and missile programs, continue to pose an unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security, foreign policy, and economy of the US".

Israel's fear was heightened by the visit of Russian President, Dmitry Medvedev, to Syria, the first visit to Damascus by Russian ruler since 1917, to sign an arm trade agreement by which Russia would supply Syria with Mig-29 fighters, truck-mounted Pantzir short range surface to air missiles, and anti-aircraft artillery system. Building a Syrian nuclear power plant with Russian help was also discussed by the two leaders.

Turkey's improved relationships with Iran, Syria, and Lebanon, and its sympathy towards Palestinians worry the US and Israel the most. Since Davos incident in January 2009 between Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, and Israel's president Shimon Peres, Turkey seems to adopt the Palestinian cause. Turkey had sent humanitarian aid to besieged Gaza within "Viva Palestina" and "Break the Siege" campaigns, and is also sending three humanitarian ships to Gaza within the "Freedom Flotilla" campaign.

Turkey and Syria had dramatically improved their political, economic, socio-cultural, and military relationships. The two countries conducted, last April 2009, a three-day military exercise along their borders and signed a technical military cooperation agreement to strengthen collaboration between their defense industries.

Turkey had improved relationship with Iran, where trade between the two countries is expected to increase to $30 billion. Turkey had opposed economical sanctions against Iran, had repeatedly played down the alleged threat of Iran's nuclear program, and defended Iran's right to peaceful nuclear energy. This month, May 2010, Turkey and Brazil convinced Iran to accept nuclear fuel swap on Turkish soil.

Turkey seems determined to protect its good relationships with Syria and Iran to a point of deploying anti-aircraft batteries along the Syrian border in the Iskenderun district to repel any US or Israeli aerial attack against Iran or Syria, according to Turkish daily Hurriyet. In a phone call with Al-Manar TV, Mustafa Ozcan, a Turkish political analyst, confirmed this fact.

A Middle Eastern geopolitical alliance between Turkey, Iran, and Syria and Lebanon seems to take shape. This alliance seems to provide a counterbalance for Israel's military superiority in the region, and a deterrent to any further Israeli terrorist attack against Gaza, Lebanon, or Syria. Israelis are afraid that they may not be able to win a war as convincingly and with impunity as they used to do, especially after their failures in 2006 Lebanese war and 2008 Gaza onslaught.

Israel's whining about Iran's and Syria's weapons is meant to portray the Israelis as the poor victims, and to justify any Israeli aggression against its neighbors. It is meant also to draw in the US for its rescue, as usual. Israel wants a joint American/Israel attack against Iran/Syria/Hezbollah axis before their alliance become any stronger. American involvement is the wild card, as it always has been, that will maintain Israel's superiority in the region.

While supplying Israel with weapons allegedly for self defense the US denies this right to Palestinians, Lebanese, and Syrians. Coming to Israel's rescue, again, the US described Iran as the greatest threat to America, to its allies, to the Middle East, and to world peace by claiming that Iran is the region's greatest proliferator of weapons and supporter to terrorist groups.

Obama cited the possibility of nuclear Iran supplying nuclear material to some terrorist groups to be used against the US and its allies. The documented facts proved that the US is the only nuclear country that had secretly supplied nuclear material to terrorist Israel to build its nuclear bombs.

In his article "America's Loose Nukes in Israel", Grant Smith, director of the Institute for Research: Middle Eastern Policy, explains how large quantities of America's highly enriched uranium and plutonium was smuggles to Israel via the Nuclear Materials and Equipment Corporation (NUMEC), part of Apollo Steel Company plant in Pennsylvania. A 1965 audit by Atomic Energy Commission discovered the shortage of 220 pounds of enriched uranium, and in September 1968 587 more pounds of enriched uranium went missing immediately after the visit of 4 Israelis, including Mossad agent Rafi Eitan. Also refer to the 1978 declassified report "Nuclear Diversion in the U.S.? 13 Years of Contradiction and Confusion" regarding the investigation between 1957 and 1967 of the loss of highly enriched uranium in NUMEC.

Whistleblower former FBI translator Sibel Edmonds testified that Richard Perle, Doughlas Feith, and Marc Grossman, high ranking officials in G.W. Bush administration, were passing sensitive data and nuclear technology to Israel's military industrial complex.

Based on 30 declassified government documents from the National Security Archive in April 2006 Avner Cohen and William Burr published the article "Israel Crosses the Threshold" in the May-June 2006 issue of the "Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists" indicating that the Nixon's administration decided to accept and to live with Israel's ambiguity of its nuclear weapons program, knowing very well that Israel had already built nuclear bombs.

At the Global Summit on Nuclear Security, last April, the US tried to rally nations against Iran's nuclear program, and supported the call for Middle East nuclear-free zone. Yet the US supported Israel's claim that it would consider signing the NPT and supporting such a nuclear-free zone only if there is a comprehensive Middle East peace.

The US, with 5,113 self-declared nuclear bombs and free of any IAEA monitoring process, is trying to use the NPT to monopolize nuclear technology and deny it to other countries. After signing the START Treaty on April 8^th President Obama called for $80 billion in nuclear funding to modernize the US nuclear weapons complex to meet the need to "rebuild and sustain America's aging nuclear stockpile". This means making the bombs smarter, smaller in size, and more powerful. This $80 billion came on top of more than the additional $100 billion for nuclear deliver systems like submarines. The US has no intention of reducing its nukes, but to improve them.

War clouds are looming over the Middle Easter. Israeli military officials keep threatening to attack Iran claiming they can use military force to prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons. Israel is primed to attack Iran boosted Deputy Prime Minister Moshe Yaalon. Iran is taking these threats seriously and is preparing for war through war games; two of them this month. Iran's strongest warning to Israel came Wednesday May 19 from Iranian Chief of Staff, Esfandiar Rahim Mashaei, stating that if Israel attacked Iran it would be destroyed within a week. Sunday May 23 Israel is conducting its most intensive and comprehensive war games called "Turning Point-4" lasting five days and including 68 cities and towns. Could this be preparation for another war this summer?

During its short 62 years history Israel had fought 8 wars against its Arab neighbors. It had developed nuclear weapons and did not sign the NPT. It had used chemical and nuclear (DU) weapons against civilians. It violated many UN resolutions. It committed war crimes and many massacres against civilians. It had refused all Arab peaceful gestures and keeps threatening to attack its neighbors. It occupation and destruction of religious sites, especially Islamic, might provoke religious war in the region. Israel is the biggest threat to peace in the Middle East.

* Dr. Elias Akleh is an Arab writer from a Palestinian descent born in the town of Beit Jala. His family was first evicted from Haifa after the "Nakba" of 1948, then from Beit Jala after the "Nakseh" of 1967. He lives now in the US, and publishes his articles on the web in both English and Arabic.