According to Friday Morning’s Edition Of The Dutch newspaper De Telegraaf, the Dutch intelligence service has halted a very successful operation to ’sabotage’ Iran’s weapons program due to an imminent American attack that would have put its activities and personnel at risk.
“The Dutch Intelligence Service AIVD [Algemene Inlichtingen- en Veiligheidsdienst or General Intelligence and Security Service ] has in recent years been running a top secret operation inside Iran with the aim of infiltrating and sabotaging the weapons industry of the Islamic republic.
The operation, described as being extremely successful, was recently discontinued in connection of plans for an imminent U.S. air strike on Iran. Well-informed sources have told De Telegraaf, some of the targets of the strike are directly linked to the Dutch espionage operation.”
Russia turned to its fellow members in the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (formed to build relations between China and former Soviet republics) for backing in its actions against Georgia and specifically in its recognition of the separatist regions of South Ossetia and Abkhazia.The member states of the SCO are Russia, China, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan. States with “observer” status are India, Iran, Pakistan and Mongolia. (Bloomberg) Eurasia.Net predicted that Russia would find “succor” in the East. Didn’t quite go that way. Condemned by its fellow G8 members (BBC 8-27-08) and looking for support from its fellow SCO members, Medvedev seems to have met mainly with shrugs.
Is the Bush plan to meet with Iran’s nuclear negotiator a significant change in policy? And if so, why - and why now?
Say what one will about the French - they are no strangers to political intrigue and bureaucratic gamesmanship.
According to this Le Figaro editorial by Pierre Rousselin, this was a major change in policy - not the minor adjustment claimed by the White House. And the reason it’s coming now is to boost John McCain’s fortunes.
“The fact remains that the American administration has made an about-face: it has agreed to participate in discussions, even if those are presented as preliminary to Iran even accepting its conditions.”
“It comes particularly in the context of the U.S. election campaign. Negotiating with Iran is a demand put forward by Democratic candidate Barack Obama. In making this decision, the Republican Administration means to cut the grass out from under his feet and promote John McCain.”
“The Islamic Republic wants to be recognized by the United-States as an indispensable interlocutor. It can seize its chance now or wait for the next American president. But if it waits, escalating tensions could resume quickly.”
Once again, the American taxpayer appears to be footing the bill for rampant corruption and mismanagement within the Iraqi government.
This article from Iraq’s Kitabat newspaper relates charges that Iraq’s finance minister, with the connivance of Iran, had billions in counterfeit Iraqi currency trucked into Iraq and exchanged for American dollars.
“In a grave conspiracy against the Iraqi economy, Minister of Finance Bayan Jabr Solagh exploited his position and influence over the Iraqi Central Bank by exchanging billions of dinars in counterfeit Iraqi currency with American dollars. … The details, which were leaked from within the corridors of the Ministry of Finance, are that the Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council [Iraq’s most powerful political party ] had for a time transported by truck, large sums of counterfeit Iraqi currency printed in Iran into Iraq, to the Iraqi Ministry of Trade, and that this counterfeit currency was then replaced with American dollars.”
As I noted yesterday, the Iranians have announced that their policy on uranium enrichment remains unchanged despite attempts by several nations to persuade them to cease and desist.
Barring a complete capitulation by the Iranians, which no one really believes is on the cards, is it possible that Bush and Cheney will leave office without opening a third military front in Iran? Is there really any doubt that Bush fully expects the diplomatic efforts to persuade Iran to comply with the demands of the US and Israel to fail? And that when the failure inevitably occurs, he is highly or at least quite likely to take or enable military action?
Bear in mind that I’m just a simple citizeness trying to piece together the signs in the media so I at least know what direction we’re rolling in. I don’t have any specialist knowledge in international law or military defense. I’m not about to get into a fight with anyone about which country is most in the wrong here.
But I do prefer to have some idea where those who have been drunk-driving the car for the last several years are taking me now. It’s not as if they have a great record of going in the right direction. At least I want to brace myself for the next teeth-rattling jolt toward the brink.
I mean…Take a look at the road signs we’re hurtling past.
In the first official comments since Iran submitted its response to the EU, spokesman Gholamhossein Elham said that Iran “will not go back on its rights on the nuclear issue”.
“Iran’s stand regarding its peaceful nuclear program has not changed. Iran insists on negotiations while respecting its rights and avoiding any loss of international rights,” BBC News)
I guess that means ‘no.’
The article suggests that there is, or at least may be, division of opinion among Iranian officials, but that President Ahmadinejad.has reaffirmed his commitment to the program. The rejection seems to have come from an official close to him.
Along with the offer, Iran rejected a substantial package of sweeteners:
“If for political and tactical reasons, the American administration won’t announce the terms of the Convention; if some of the terms of the deal adversely affect Iraqi “sovereignty and dignity”; and if as Nouri al-Maliki has said, talks are at a standstill, then why doesn’t the Iraqi government or it’s representatives at the talks reveal to the Iraqi people the items that they say so detrimentally affect Iraqi sovereignty and dignity, to help win popular support for the government’s position so that all can understand how the government defines its “sovereignty and dignity”? … Do we truly live in the era of transparency and democracy, as our esteemed government leaders, members of Parliament and party leaders claim? Or is this only talk - the sowing of seeds of illusion within the minds of this pitiful people, whose field of dreams is desolate and barren, and for whom the hoped-for heaven is instead a living hell?”
“Someone should explain the meaning of the absolute secrecy that has surrounded the draft Convention - and the meaning of the non-disclosure of the names of those on the negotiating team … Are negotiators afraid to shoulder the blame, or are they concerned they can’t stand up to the Arabic or Iranian backlash? The legs of the negotiators tremble when it comes to accepting responsibility for their actions.”
“… not only to repel the conflicting ambitions of Arabs, Turks and Iranians, but also to prevent a civil war, the flame of which has yet to be extinguished. For there are thousands who continue to blow on the embers - embers that are mainly due to the presence of political Islam at the head of the state and the spread of sectarian thinking in politics, culture and different types of Arab media.”
“That attitude of some parties, politicians and religious authorities are just an echo of the sectarian forces outside of Iraq, that don’t care about Iraq nor the people of Iraq, except to the extent that it’s in harmony with their wasteful, selfish interests. Hence we can understand why so many are opposed to the Iraqi-American agreement, because their opposition isn’t based on the national interest. Rather, they oppose it on the basis of sectarian motivations, decided by people outside of Iraq.”
In the great competition now taking place between Iran and the United States for influence in Iraq, who’s ahead? Centering his column around the long-term security agreement now under negotiation with the United States, Fateh Abdusalam writes for Iraq’s Azzaman newspaper:
“It seems that Iran’s project to compete with America for the approval of Iraq’s shattered heart is slowly gaining impetus. Politicians and nationalists are busy discussing the security agreement with the United States, which has met with categorical Iranian refusal even before an Iraqi one. … Read the rest of this entry »
What does the regime of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad think of Senator Barack Obama, the Democratic nominee who has suggested a willingness to sit down at the table with the widely reviled Iranian leader? This editorial from the Islamic Republic’s state-run Iran News Daily is as notable for what it doesn’t say as for what it does. According to the daily, which seems to carefully avoid the issue of talks, “Obama was the right candidate with the right message at the right time. In fact, his message and ‘dream candidacy’ has resonated with many around the world, including in the Islamic world and people in our own nation.” Read the rest of this entry »
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad predicted on Monday that Muslims would uproot “satanic powers” and repeated his controversial belief that Israel will soon disappear, the Mehr news agency reported.
“I must announce that the Zionist regime (Israel), with a 60-year record of genocide, plunder, invasion and betrayal is about to die and will soon be erased from the geographical scene,” he said.
“Today, the time for the fall of the satanic power of the United States has come and the countdown to the annihilation of the emperor of power and wealth has started.”
Since taking the presidency in August 2005, Ahmadinejad has repeatedly provoked international outrage by predicting Israel is doomed to disappear.
“I tell you that with the unity and awareness of all the Islamic countries all the satanic powers will soon be destroyed,” he said to a group of foreign visitors ahead of the 19th anniversary of the death of revolutionary leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini.
When Senator Barack Obama mentioned that he would talk to America’s enemies without preconditions, it wasn’t the “without preconditions” that bothered me. It was that he didn’t differentiate the crazy folks. President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad routinely talks about annihilating Israel and apocalyptic visions of destruction (along with that pesky nuclear thing). You can’t give the “without preconditions” angle to His Craziness Ahmadinejad. He just will take that and make you look stupid and naive while infuriating an ally in Israel. Now Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez is a little different. He’s not spouting off annihilation rhetoric. He threw a few “word bombs” at President Bush but he doesn’t represent a big threat. Maybe you can have President Chavez in the Oval Office and break him off a thing or two and get somewhere. But Iran? Methinks that’s like talking to a shark in the water with your wrists slit.
You have to pick and choose your crazy folk carefully. I abhor cowboy diplomacy and want us to use diplomacy more. But not everyone is going to be receptive to diplomacy. And many times, you already know who they are from the jump.
The events now unfolding in the Middle East, which have been set in motion by Hezbullah’s takeover last week of much of Beirut, do not bode well for American or Israeli interests, warns one of France’s leading historians and journalists, Alexandre Adler.
Writing for France’s Le Figaro newspaper, Adler writes that Iranian President Ahmadinidjad, hemmed in by opponents at home and abroad, has turned to one of the last cards he holds in his hand: the Lebanese Hezbullah:
“Let us first turn to Iran, which is in a fever and where the most decisive threats originate. Iran’s President and his trusted accomplices - and a pro-Iranian faction of al-Qaeda - hope to recreate unity among all people of Muslim faith for a renewed jihad against America and Israel. Voices have been heard, notably among the Muslim Brotherhood of Egypt, who hope for such an outcome and support Iran’s nuclear program, which many Islamists - not only in Cairo - regard as a liberating force that should be immediately employed against Israel, whatever the risks.”
“Israel cannot tolerate a military victory for Hezbullah over its [pro-West] Lebanese opponents - any more than it can allow Ahmadinejad to pursue nuclear blackmail, especially in this very strange context: There is the probability that a Democratic candidate - indeed an Obama election victory - could bring to the White House a supporter of negotiations at all costs. … Clearly, this is a distressing 60th anniversary for Israel.”
This is a seminal article about what the United States now confronts, and it should be read by anyone interested in understanding this very important and hard-to-penetrate topic. Read the rest of this entry »
From everything we can gather so far, there are few fans of a John McCain presidency in the Russian press - and the same can be said of President Bush. Asking what’s wrong with Bush’s Iraq strategy is the same as asking what the danger of a John McCain Administration would be. Galina Zeveleva of Russia’s Novosti News Service writes, “Bush continues to rely on force, thereby multiplying the army of terrorists more quickly than he can suppress them, while strengthening the conviction in Iran that possession of nuclear weapons is the only guarantee of its security.” Read the rest of this entry »
This week the President of Iran was strutting around his nation’s main uranium enrichment facility, claiming installation of 6,000 new centrifuges in addition to the existing 3,000 there–an ill-advised nose-thumbing gesture in the direction of the US and Israel.
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is a chronic sufferer from the need for attention on the world stage, who has been in remission since his visit to the UN last fall. With this latest turn for the TV cameras, he is showing symptoms of an acute and, for his regime, possibly life-threatening new outbreak.
Dick Cheney immediately made the diagnosis on right-wing talk radio. The Iranian President, he told Sean Hannity, is “a very dangerous man” who “has repeatedly stated that he wants to destroy Israel” and believes that “the highest honor that can befall a man is that he should die a martyr in facilitating the return of the 12th Imam. It’s a radical, radical point of view.”
Iran’s president doesn’t appear to have had anything new to say during his visit to Iraq:
BAGHDAD - Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on Monday dismissed U.S. accusations that his country is training extremists and demanded that the Americans withdraw from Iraq.
My first reaction was that his opinion on the matter isn’t the one that counts. If it were the Iraqi government saying that the US should leave, though, that would be another situation entirely.
However, I can see a point coming soon where Iraqi and American interests will diverge, and so I have a hypothetical question:
If the Iraqi government asked us to leave right now, do you think President Bush would agree to do so? And/or if elected, would John McCain agree a year from now, if asked?
Even if, by either of their definitions, the US mission there was not complete?
What does it say about the state of world affairs that when high-ranking U.S. officials visit Iraq they wear flak jackets, there is no advance notice and the trips are rushed and cloaked in secrecy, whereas when Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad drops by as he did today his trip and itinerary are announced well in advance and he is greeted with pomp and ceremony?
February 29th, 2008 By MICHAEL STICKINGS, Assistant Editor
Question: Which is the craziest?
a)John McCain claiming that Obama is all about “the past” on Iraq. b)Bill O’Reilly equating Arianna Huffington with the Nazis and the KKK. c)Rush Limbaugh defending the “Husseinization” of Obama. d)Mahmoud Ahmadinejad calling Iran the world’s #1 power.
I’ll go with b) and d) — a tie. McCain’s claim is just silly, while Limbaugh’s defence of the predictable Republican smear is, well, predictably stupid. Both O’Reilly and Ahmadinejad, however, are nuts.
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Speaking of the “Husseinization” of Obama — and I wrote the other day about how the Republican Smear Machine (RSM) will portray Obama as a black Muslim terrorist — one of the bigger right-wing bloggers, Pamela of Atlas Shrugs, is already on the bigoted offensive: “My objective is to unearth Obama’s relationship to Islam. Islam is a political ideology and it is incompatible with democracy.”
Actually, Islam is a religion, a faith, just like Judaism or Christianity, and, of course, Christianity has a long and decidedly anti-democratic history. (Yes, she’s that ignorant.) But no matter. Her real objective is clearly to smear the entirety of the Muslim religion, and all Muslims, and to argue that Obama is a terrorist, or at least a friend to terrorists. Read the rest of this entry »
In light of the Bush Administration’s hard line on Iran and the White House’s perceived lack of credibility, the question is often asked how much influence Tehran really has in Iraq. According to this op-ed article by Khadir Taahar, an admittedly pro-Western columnist for Iraq’s Kitabat newspaper, ‘All posts given to Shiites, starting with the position of Minister to that of Deputy Minister, ambassador, director-general, governor, chief of police, mayor and others … were awarded based on lists provided by Tehran and cross-referenced with lists of people working with the coalition [the U.S. and its partners]. All names were checked in terms of history and absolute loyalty to Iran, and in light of these results, these individuals were given these posts.’
By Khadir Taahar
Translated By James Jacobson
January 30, 2007
Iraq - Kitabat - Original Article (Arabic)
It seems that Iraqi culture has become a prisoner of Islamic political terrorist groups. After former Minister of Culture Asad Al-Hashemi fled [a Sunni ], Jaber Al-Jabri, who formerly bore the name Mudin al-Musawi, assumed the post of Culture Minister. He’s a member of the Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council , which was established by Iranian intelligence during the war against Iraq [1980-1988], and which was tasked with missions of spying, torture, the execution of the captured Iraqi soldiers and participating in the war against Iraq as a state - and not against the regime of Saddam Hussein!
It is known that all the posts given to Shiite elements, starting with the position of Minister to that of Deputy Minister, ambassador, director-general, governor, chief of police, mayor and others … all of these were awarded based on lists provided by Tehran and cross-referenced with lists of people working with the coalition [the U.S. and its partners]. All names were checked in terms of history and absolute loyalty to Iran and in light of these results, these individuals were given these positions.
And when Jaber Al-Jabri was appointed Deputy Minister of Culture … it was not a random appointment … Iranian planners are working quietly behind the scenes to “Persianize” Iraqi culture, seeking to undermine the Arabic national identity of Iraq. Al-Jabri was put into this position to implement that plan and under the pretext of nationalism and opposing Baathism [opposing support for Saddam’s political party], has begun his activities of attacking everything that has anything to do with Iraqi and Arabic culture.
In the name of “Islamic culture,” Iran is seeking to penetrate and poison Iraq’s national culture by suggesting that those who produced Arab culture were Persians, rather than “camel-riding Arabic Bedouins.” Such were the comments of Finance Minister Bayan Jabr Solagh , when he attacked the Saudi Foreign Minister. Solagh, who as Finance Minister is a colleague of Culture Minister Al-Jabri, is also on the Supreme Islamic Iraqi Council!
In the spirit of the holiday season, I am inviting nominations for the “Top Ten Fibs of 2007″. There are two categories in the competition: “Presidential Candidates” and “Best of the Rest.” Post your nominations in the comments section or use the “Contact the Fact Checker” form. Also feel free to cast a non-binding vote for your favorite fib. The deadline is Friday, Dec. 28. A panel of crack Fact Checkers will select the Top Five Fibs in each category and post them online on Monday, December 31. We will also make a Geppetto truth-telling award in the “Presidential Candidates” category.
To kick the competition off, here are some early nominations (in no particular order):
I actually heard most of this one while I was out running errands. As a Democrat who is dubious of the new NIE, I am not happy with our candidates’ insistence that the military option be “off the table” with Iran. I hope I don’t have to cast my first vote for a Republican presidential candidate in November of 2008.
