This is just sabre rattling. Iran will never be attacked.

Posted by: Cloned Poster | Jan 12 2006 22:09 utc | 3

Well, let’s bomb Eritrea and Turkmenistan first. Or let’s insure that Iraq doesn’t become a theocracy first. Or that we don’t.
Meanwhile the so-called “radical” cleric Muktada Al-Sadr is being wined and dined (metaphorically) by our good friends, the House of Saud. Not that we should countenance theocrats….
Why don’t we let others determine their own fates?

Posted by: Malooga | Jan 12 2006 22:11 utc | 5

I just don’t see that bombing raids are going to get anyone anything like what they want. They bombed Iraq back to the point where the infrastructure was tied together with elastic bands, and it got them jack-shit.
Despite the rhetoric coming out of the mainstream media, Russia probably, and China certainly will vote against any meaningful sanctions. The Europeans just copped a short sharp shock over their gas. Even the slimiest Brit known to man Foreign Secretary Jack Straw is saying ‘may request sanctions’ rather than ‘will pass sanctions’ which was what was being said before the Ukrainian fiasco.
The oil/energy bourse is likely to go ahead and even if China and Russia are the only large initial subscribers because the spineless dems have just agreed to let India off the same hook that they are trying to hang Iran on that will be enough for a start.
The rest will come because american military superiority, the only card Bushco knows to play, has been found impotent and wanting already, in Iraq.
The US will not be able to arm twist the rest of the world into paying a corporation surcharge on it’s energy much longer. Not when they can go up the road and get the stuff a lot cheaper, and without their voters calling them friends of assassins, torturers and murderers.
I’m fairly sure where NZ will end up. After the Iranian revolution when we had lots of sheep the world didn’t want and no oil, whereas the Iranians had lots of oil and not enough food, we got into a straight swap situation, a shipload of sheep for a shipload of oil.
There were initial problems, ie the oil was crude and the refineries here belonged to the big boys from USuk.
Plus the sheep had to be shipped live, that has since been worked out.
Both countries have moved from exporting raw resources. Iran has more refining capacity and NZ has large halal slaughterhouses which are regularly inspected by imams from most of the major schisms in Islam.
All BushCo can do is what they are doing now. Shout and wave a big stick. By the end of this year if Bush still has his job he is going to seem to people in the US exactly as he appears to the rest of the world, ie a small-dicked, spoilt brat who can’t organize a good shit.
The only thing BushCo can reasonably hope for is that they will manage to crank up enough people to get them to back an invasion of Iran. He can’t, and even if he could, without the rest of the world joining in he isn’t going to achieve anything, except getting his forces really hammered.
Once bitten twice shy is an excellent saying and even if the Bliar can be got on board again he will be unceremoniously chucked out of his job if he tries that one again. Howard’s nasty little nature will probably have him committing the rest of Australia’s forces. That should be good for nearly a thousand men, LOL.
They are pissing in the wind and the best thing to do is to keep hammering away at the fuck-ups already done and not let people get diverted by this imbecility.

Posted by: Debs is dead | Jan 12 2006 22:21 utc | 7

I got this email today from someone supporting the writings of Dilip Hiro, and Dilip wrote the following:
A geopolitical game has been underway ever since oil became a strategic commodity just before World War I. Once dominated primarily by Western nations, the game now includes many non-Western ones, with the countries dependent on oil imports increasingly reluctant to antagonize those endowed with oil.
A case in point, Western capitals have abandoned threats of placing Iran in the dock at the UN Security Council – at least for the time being. On January 10, to the chagrin of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), Iran resumed research in enriching uranium that it had voluntarily stopped earlier
Last September, the European Union Troika (EU3) succeeded in convincing the IAEA Board of Governors to declare that Iran was in non-compliance with the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) it had signed. But the EU3 did not take the next logical step of referring Tehran to the UN Security Council.
Backed by the United States, the EU3 opted for a consensual resolution at the subsequent IAEA board meeting in November, urging that Iran and the EU3 restart talks that had precipitately been terminated by EU3 less than four months before. The fresh negotiations, to be resumed without any preconditions by either side, will start formally later this month.
What explains the softening of Western capitals toward the Islamic Republic? Western leaders realize that UN sanctions, including an oil embargo, are the only effective way to punish Iran for non-compliance with the nuclear NPT. But that step would inevitably lead to increases in petroleum prices and damage Western economies.
A secondary factor is the change in the rotating membership of the 35-strong IAEA Board and India’s position on the issue: Three pro-Western countries that voted with the EU3 and the US in September were then replaced by Belarus, Cuba and Syria, all of them anti-Western. Also, India, which had voted for the EU3 resolution in September to raise the “yes” tally to 22, was expected to abstain on any fresh anti-Iranian resolution, thus reducing the pro-Western total to a bare majority of 18 for a vote on referring Tehran to the UN Security Council, hardly a propitious move.
The anticipated change in New Delhi’s stance stems from the proposed $22 billion worth supply of Iranian natural gas to India for the next quarter century. Between now and 2025, the imports of hydrocarbon energy required by a fast industrializing India will rise from 70 percent to 85 percent.
This is only the latest instance of how the scramble for petroleum by developing countries worldwide is reshaping the global geopolitics in favor of the oil-rich nations.
Along with India, fast industrializing China has joined the geopolitical race: Last year China’s state-owned oil companies signed a 25-year natural gas deal worth $20 billion with Tehran and acquired rights to exploit a vast Iranian oilfield on buy-back terms.
Another recent example of oil diplomacy was on public display at the summit of the 34-strong Organization of the American States at Mar del Plata in Argentina in November. There, US President George W. Bush, the world’s most powerful person who is known to speak Spanish, barely managed to engage other leaders in friendly conversations, leaving the field open to his adversary, President Hugo Chávez of Venezuela. By all accounts Chávez was a focal point both inside and outside the summit venue.
Part of Chávez’s popularity stemmed from the Petrocaribe Initiative that Venezuela’s state-owned oil company, Petroleos de Venezuela SA, signed last June with 13 Caribbean and Central American countries. It codified a scheme dating back to October 2000 which gave the signatories up to 15 years to pay for Venezuelan oil with a nominal 2 percent interest at $20 a barrel, one-third less than the prevalent price of $30. The updated scheme enabled the signatories to pay only $40 a barrel instead of the market rate that shot up to nearly $70 in October.
Venezuela — producing petroleum since the 1920s and among the top four suppliers of crude oil to the United States — belongs to the middle-income nations of the world.
But even newcomers to the game can wield geopolitical power they could not have imagined a decade earlier. This is the case with Sudan, one of the poorest countries on the planet.
Khartoum acquired a geopolitical leverage with the assistance of China, a veto-wielding permanent member of the UN Security Council. The China National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC) won an oil exploitation contract in Sudan in 1995. Two years later when Washington put Sudan on the list of countries that support international terrorism, American oil companies had to withdraw from the country. The Chinese quickly filled the subsequent void.
In 2000, Sudan gave a contract to a consortium headed by CNPC in the Melul Basin region, which proved a prolific source of petroleum. Besides developing oil fields, the Chinese have erected refineries and laid pipelines. Sudan, an oil importer before the arrival of the Chinese, now earns $2 billion in oil exports annually, half of which goes to China. Khartoum is now the second largest African supplier of oil to China, after Angola.
When the UN Security Council debated the massacres in the troubled Sudanese western region of Darfur in September 2004, the United States wanted to impose economic sanctions against the Sudanese regime. Beijing threatened to veto such a resolution. As a result the Security Council passed a weakened resolution on Darfur.
As yet, the significance of these developments appears to have been lost on the policy-makers in Washington. Though seemingly disparate, they collectively represent a trend that will come to dominate global geopolitics in the coming decades.
The overarching fact is that political leaders all over the world are committed to raising living standards through economic growth, heavily dependent on energy in the form of oil and gas. That includes the United States.
Ever since 1932, when American oil companies acquired a stake in the oil resources of Saudi Arabia, Washington’s policies have been geared to securing Middle East oil at the expense of all else – including human rights and democratic regimes.
So the US administration cannot rush to criticize other rising world powers for following its example over the past seven decades. In any case, the US lacks the power to unilaterally punish the countries that are supping with the devil for their own economic welfare.
Ultimately it is the logic of economic competition that prevails in buying or selling oil and gas. So how can the US, the prime upholder of capitalist values, oppose such a state of affairs?
Sorry b, for the long post, but JR should realise the real world has fuck all to with democracies and theocracies.
PS: I haven’t seen R’Giap on here for a while, I hope all is ok.

Posted by: Cloned Poster | Jan 12 2006 22:47 utc | 9

weeping we wait for war

Posted by: remembereringgiap | Jan 12 2006 23:37 utc | 11

Dilip Hiro is correct in the main thrust of his argument. The US cannot attack all the countries he listed. But what the US can do, similar to what it did in Vietnam, is pick a single test case, and destroy it; with the hope that it serves as an object lesson or example to the rest of the straying nations. After all, who knows who might come next? Iran only contains twenty five more years worth of exportable petroleum. Perhaps the US, employing the “madman” theory, calculates that it is worth destroying this resource, which it is not benefitting from in any case, to enforce compliance among other exporters.
He is also manifestly correct in treating the crisis in Darfur, The Sudan, as, primarily, a resource war. The progressive press, including the influential “Democracy Now”, do not properly contextualize their coverage. I distrust the theme or myth, so prevalent in contemporary press coverage, that two historically collocated and formerly peaceable tribes, suddenly become murderous enemies because of some obscure disagreement or loss of face, or whatever other trifle they can come up with.
The overarching fact is that political leaders all over the world are committed to raising living standards through economic growth, heavily dependent on energy in the form of oil and gas. That includes the United States.
Whether political leaders are committed to anything as altruistic as raising living standards, especially as measured by some more human-centric metric than GDP (Whereby if your nuclear reactor melts down, spewing radiation over your populace, doubling medical, energy and other costs, your “Standard of Living” goes up concommitantly.), is highly debatable. I subscribe to the alternate theory, far more proveable by evidence, that the elite of different countries are rushing to concentrate wealth within their jurisdictions, to better control their populations, in preparation for the coming resource shortages. This puts a far more dire spin on events.

Posted by: Malooga | Jan 13 2006 0:03 utc | 13

The US or Israel will attack Iran. These people don’t care about “winning” anything. They clip the coupons of war, they reap the profits of higher oil prices, they grab the rest of Palestine while everyone else is choking in rage or crying in pain at their latest crime.
And when they’ve done their job they retreat… to the presidency of the World Bank, for instance. Leaving bozos like George W to live in infamy, and to stand trial if it ever comes to that.

Posted by: John Francis Lee | Jan 13 2006 1:32 utc | 15

@jdp
I mentioned above that the difference here is that China is a nuclear power… they don’t need US consent and US opposition isn’t going to help out anyone. There was some cross-talk here awhile ago about how Thomas Donnelly let slip that India was on deck to deal with China as our proxy (which would go a ways toward explaining why we have spent the last ten years making them beholden to US corporations), but the US doesn’t have the man or firepower (much less the geography) to do much more than piss Hu Jintao off.
The fact that we are talking about this Iranian situation means one of two things: namely, the US has no plans to do anything, or they will do something in very short order. As we have seen with Operation Steal Iraq’s Resources, they make these decisions well in advance of any facts on the grounds to precipitate them. So if tactical nukes aren’t flying inside of two months, it’s a safe bet this is all just another sideshow of the puppet theatre.

Posted by: Monolycus | Jan 13 2006 2:34 utc | 17

@ Malooga I would so like you to be right.
Same here. As per usual the board is split between the glass half full and the glass half empty groups. The only thing unusual about that is that I’m with the half full mob. That could still be a function of my innate pessimism, if only because the half empty faction pre-supposes BushCo has ‘a plan’.
Nothing they have done of late suggests anything other than knee jerk behaviour has replaced all ‘strategic planning’. Probably to the good for the people of the US because they (BushCo) were woefully bad at the planning bizzo.
Does anyone think that the Joint Chiefs are going to stand idly by and let these morons make their once immaculate construction commit mass hari kari?
Bernhard knows german politics far more than I do but is it likely that all the SDP will support this? If not what happens to the grand coalition?
Of course something weird could happen like BushCo trying to make the US behave like a lunatic on crystal meth, but if that is a chance , there is IMHO the same sort of chance that Ms/Frau Merkel will turn out to be a deep cover Russian Agent of influence.
I realise that leftish people everywhere and more particularly US lefties need to get a win on the board before they can cast the pall of pessimism they have been wearing like a badge of honor since the raygun years. It’s a coming. Can’t you feel it? Now more than ever the wobbling wheels are falling off and no you won’t see that in the MSM until all wheels have been seen spinning down the highway in front of the BushCo former jggernaut.
I can still remember when my mother cancelled her subscription to Time magazine back in the 60’s. The reason she subscribed was an attempt to get any other point of view than the unison chorus of NZ media that was prevalent at the time.
She said that while she quite enjoyed Time for it’s support for many of the liberal domestic policies of LBJ, that wasn’t enough. It’s continued support for war in Vietnam which by that time had been demonstrated to be a cruel and selfish attempt at colonialism, proved something her father had told her during the build up to Pearl Harbour, namely that the US media always backs US foreign policy even when the bulk of US citizens don’t.
That digression was there in the hope that people would consider what the actual opinions of the people around them about this are, rather than what the media claimed that was their opinion.
BushCo are racking their brains to divert attention away from their failures.
Instead of getting hot under the collar about something that may never happen if I lived in the US I would be more concerned about the nasty little deal that the dems and rethugs have cooked up down in new orleans.

Posted by: Debs is dead | Jan 13 2006 3:56 utc | 19

Coming home from the radio station today I flipped between the BBC and NPR only to hear a lot of babble about our “diplomatic” efforts to “resolve” the “crisis” with Iran peacefully. BushCo, with Rice at point today, is racheting up the rhetoric and the newsfolk are dutifully following the script. Will Iran back down? Can we reach accomodation? Blah blah blah… Just like the Iraq screenplay. Seems to me this is too much histrionics to see them eventually back down. And, if these news reports are credible, they have lined up some significant EU allies in the diplomatic war.
As several have noted above, none of this has anything to do with Iran’s nuclear program – real or imagined. Of course they will eventually get nukes if they can; they are surrounded geographically by countries that have them and are confronted by the presence of the country that has the most nukes right next door in Iraq. So what? They would still not be a threat to the US – or even Isreal – unless one of those countries tried to impose it’s will on Iran. Hmmm.
I linked a week or so ago to an Asia Times article (too much wine to find it again) that reported China and India were planning to finance a pipeline from Iran that did not go through US controlled territory. As several Asia Times articles in recent days pointed out, the ultimate objective of US foreign policy is to thwart the rise of China and re-emergence of Russia. Hegemony. Level Iran and China doesn’t get their oil. If we can’t have it, neither can they; so there. Russia, which has oil, is another problem for the US imperialists and the Russians are starting to play that card in their own diplomacy. All the US has is their military, which the neocons seem to regard as the ace of trumps. As any bridge player knows, you can hold that card, either not have enough other strength or play the hand badly and go down in flames. (In the US’ case, they are playing a lousy hand badly.) I hope Noisette is right that this is all a noisy bluff, but I doubt it at this point. These people are reckless, believe they make their own reality that others will conform to and are following the same pattern they have pursued before. Their choice is to win on their terms or back down, something they see as weakness. I think that either Iran caves in or the US/Israel starts shooting.
What I don’t understand is why any European govts would back the US in this fiasco. The US doesn’t hold any economic cards to play at this point. Their oil dependency, massive debt and concurrent dependency on the kindness of foreigners to support it as well as the weakening dollar all indicate decline. The Iranian oil bourse, sceduled to go live in March, would weaken the dollar even further. The US military is bogged down in Iraq and largely broken, so all that is really left is black ops and nukes. Add to that a supply line that is over 10,000 miles long, dependent on willing (bribed) foreign hosts and virtually no reliable local intelligence and the military option is looks weak even if destructive. They simply can’t win. So why would any practitioner of realpolitic (let alone actual morals) in Europe side with an obvious loser? Why not seek accomodation with Russia to get as much of her oil flowing to Europe as possible? Friendly cooperation, mutual interests and benefits, defused tensions, etc. I’m a rank neophyte in the Great Game, but none of this makes sense to me in realpolitic terms to say nothing of moral and human ones. There must be at least some greedy elites who can see this. Aren’t there?
BTW, thanks for stopping by RGiap. Hope things are going all right.
Outraged, are you there? Please let us know you are OK.

Posted by: lonesomeG | Jan 13 2006 4:39 utc | 21

A cynic might observe that Iran (and others) will be getting >$5.00 more per barrel just by breaking the seals. In time the seals will return for another round. Americans have stopped wanting to put quarters in their video game of war. I doubt the Shi’a in Iraq would stand for an attack on Iran.

Posted by: biklett | Jan 13 2006 6:54 utc | 23

Then, one other idea occurs to me so diabolical as to be unimaginable. What if all these countries are purposefully leading Bushco into this, knowing it will be an even larger morass than Iraq, as a sort of coup-de-grace for American dominance. Then they can again pay pretty lip service or send 100 servicemen while Bushy sinks up to his tushy in quicksand. Anybody think old Europe is gutsy enough? I know Putin is.
Nice idea, it would fit Putins career. For the EU3 maybe the French are thinking along this line. Blair isn´t, Merkel may be, but I don’t think so.
This AP piece gives a bit of the Iranian position.

Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki said Europeans will lose opportunities they currently have in dealing with Iran and Tehran would block snap inspections of its nuclear facilities, state-run television reported.
”In case Iran is referred to the U.N. Security Council …, the government will be obliged to end all of its voluntary cooperation,” the television quoted Mottaki as saying.
The statement reflected a law passed late last year that requires the government to block intrusive inspections of Iran’s facilities if the U.N. nuclear agency refers the Iranian program to the U.N. Security Council.
Iran has been voluntarily allowing the short-notice IAEA inspections since 2003.
The law also requires the Iranian government to resume all nuclear activities that it had stopped voluntarily, foremost among them enriching uranium.
…
The calls to refer Iran to Security Council were made two days after Iran removed some U.N. seals in the presence of inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency from its main uranium enrichment facility in Natanz, central Iran, and resumed research on nuclear fuel.
Iran said it was resuming ”merely research” and that ”production of nuclear fuel” — which would involve enrichment — ”remains suspended.” But the IAEA said Tehran also planned small-scale enrichment of uranium — a process that can produce fuel for nuclear reactors to generate electricity or material for nuclear weapons.
”I recommend to European countries that they should separate the issue of research from production of nuclear fuel and not make propaganda over research which is natural and normal but had unjustly been subject to suspension in the past,” Mottaki was quoted as saying.

At least some distinctions here you don´t find in the headlines:
– The seals were removed (not “broken” – which would be a crime in some countries) under the eyes of IAEA inspectors.
– There are voluntary snap inspections.
– There will be no enrichment of any scale.

Posted by: b | Jan 13 2006 8:38 utc | 25

Question: do the neocons think that the Israeli attack on Iraq’s burgeoning nuclear weapons capabilities was a success or not?
I haven’t seen anything specifically saying that the neocons believe this, but given their love of preemptive strikes, support for Israel, and beliefs that force can solve problems, I see no reason to think that they do not believe that the Israeli raid was a success.
Given all these things, and that most of the available American land forces are tied down in Iraq, I think it’s pretty clear that this should be considered a viable option. The question then would seem to be whether the neocons – narrowly defined, excluding Bush and Rice, for example – have the influence in Washington to get the go-ahead. With the Libby indictment and the rumors of Bush’s emotional meltdown, and of course the Iraq fiasco, I think they don’t. But a slight swing might give them Bush’s ear (or brain!) in which case I wouldn’t be surprised to see raid on Iran. With mushroom clouds? I’d be surprised, but not shocked.

Posted by: Rowan | Jan 13 2006 10:34 utc | 27

Uncle, I think it’s accepted wisdom that “In June 1981, Menachem Begin, then Prime Minister of Israel” “as Saddam appeared to be nearing a nuclear weapons capability” with the “French-built Osirak-type nuclear reactor turning out plutonium at Tuwaitah.”
Did bomb the living daylights out of the thing, women and children too if there were any.
Link: Institute for International Studies — Israel’s Osirak Attack.

Posted by: jonku | Jan 13 2006 10:49 utc | 29

Uncle, the link isn’t there anymore but the disinformation site debka had a brief post this afternoon (early morning in Israel I think) that said sadly the main republican guard team on some kind of missile command had perished in an unexplained crash,
Your link says that due to fog etc. and “failure in both engines …”
“The Fars news agency, which has close links to the Revolutionary Guards, said a number of other top commanders, including an intelligence chief, were also on board.”
Looks like a confirmation to me. Cui bojo? Who benefits?
(I wish I knew more Latin, it sounds so legal and philosophical.)

Posted by: jonku | Jan 13 2006 11:05 utc | 31

Why would anyone think that an American attack on Iran would not prompt an Iranian attack on the oil tanker traffic through the Straits of Hormuz? They needn’t even make it a high-tech attack. It could just be groups of Zodiac boats loaded with boarding parties and high explosives. Hell, unorganized pirates takes ships all the time in the Malaccan Straits using such tactics and hardly anyone even comments on it.
Once an organized group starts sinking tankers, the maritime insurance for such voyages will skyrocket. It would likely become unavailable for many, prompting some shippers to withdraw their vessels from that market. Does anyone sanely think that this won’t have the effect of driving up the price on petroleum to new heights when you’ve effectively shut down the Gulf oil fields from their markets?
So, how likely is Europe to support an American attack when they know the global price for petroleum will climb to $120 per barrel. How likely will the average American voter be to support an attack on Iran when he or she learns they’ll be paying $6 per gallon for gasoline?

Posted by: PrahaPartizan | Jan 13 2006 11:55 utc | 33

Other war drums in the Ukraine? It’s all we need!

Posted by: Hannah K. O’Luthon | Jan 13 2006 12:45 utc | 35

steel steel rgiap.

Posted by: Uncle $cam | Jan 13 2006 13:07 utc | 37

Nice to see you R’Giap.
Great thread read over my lunchbreak.

Posted by: Cloned Poster | Jan 13 2006 13:22 utc | 39

Good thoughts to you r’giap. Be well.

Posted by: beq | Jan 13 2006 13:27 utc | 41

best wishes for your improving health, rgiap.
Then, one other idea occurs to me so diabolical as to be unimaginable. What if all these countries are purposefully leading Bushco into this, knowing it will be an even larger morass than Iraq, as a sort of coup-de-grace for American dominance. Then they can again pay pretty lip service or send 100 servicemen while Bushy sinks up to his tushy in quicksand. Anybody think old Europe is gutsy enough? I know Putin is.
Posted by: Malooga
This was the precise tactic that Carter, Reagan, and Bush Sr. employed in Afghanistan when we supported the mujahadeen against the Soviets. The goal was to provide the USSR with its own “Vietnam,” and the process bankrupted them and destroyed their empire. Probably part of Brehzinski’s Grand Chessboard strategy.
The irony is that the current US leaders seem to fail to see that bin Laden has turned the US tactics on itself. Obviously bin Laden cannot destroy the US, but he can be smart enought to see that what worked to drive out the Soviets can also drive out the US.
The US can destroy itself by war-deficits and a long-standing quagmire and the reactions of the US populace to both and the over-reaction of US leaders toward citizens (while govt. insiders line their own piggie pockets ala Halliburton.)
I think this strategy has been clear since 2002, at least to me, if not before. With that in mind, it makes sense for the prez of Iran to make one inflammatory statement after another to goad the codpiece cowboy’s cabinet to a destructive action.

Posted by: fauxreal | Jan 13 2006 15:06 utc | 43

Hannah, thanks for your response — of my litany of websites, a visit to Debka never fails to disappoint. I agree that the “party line” is most informative, why I also head straight from there to drudgereport. If only for the name!
From the Scott Ritter article, posted on Al Jazeera (!):

To the north, in neighbouring Azerbaijan, the US military is preparing a base of operations for a massive military presence that will foretell a major land-based campaign designed to capture Tehran.

There’s more about seizing towns that control the straights of Hormuz, but basically Ritter (former American WMD inspector, properly credentialed I believe, even though there was some attempt to discredit him a couple years back) is saying that the target is (“real men go to”) Tehran.

Posted by: jonku | Jan 13 2006 17:47 utc | 45

Debs, who knows? The wheels within wheels are kinda distracting. I’m trying to humanize this idea and think about the noise, smell and killing that the abstract idea of war on Iran ignores.
I don’t want to be “right” again like I was when the US “finally” did invade Iraq, “I told you so” is a cop-out.
Here’s the quote I thought was removed:

The latest DEBKA-Net-Weekly digs deep into Iran’s forward step on nuclear armament and its unforeseen misfortune: a plane crash that wiped out the entire Revolutionary Guards elite in charge of the Shehab nuclear-capable missile program

“Unforeseen misfortune” my left elbow. I don’t say they were responsible but the tongue is way too far inside the cheek here. So sorry to see that you all died.

Posted by: jonku | Jan 13 2006 18:04 utc | 47

@andrew in caledon-
Great article. It puts major pieces of the puzzle in place. But it is not comprehensive by any means. Major questions remain. Why is Putin lifting limits on foreign ownership of Gazprom? Do Russian defenses really perform as advertised? He neglects any economic analysis; what of the oil bourse? Or is it more of a natural gas bourse–Engdahl pierces the myth of a ‘world market price’ for natural gas.
Democracy Now covers the Iran crisis from a different angle which lluminates the domestic Iranian considerations. Again, no mention of the Oil Bourse. Perhaps it is less important than we think?
Ervand Abrahamian (Middle East and Iran Expert at Baruch College, City University of New York. He is the author of several books and is the co-author of “Inventing the Axis of Evil: The Truth About North Korea, Iran, and Syria”) does make several statements I find suspect:
“The Iraqi war was actually very much of an exception. Most wars come out of miscalculation, misjudgment, playing chickens, expecting the other side to climb down. And this is a classic case where the two sides have irreconcilable interests, and the two sides are going to, in fact, play chicken, expecting the other side to back down.”
We have surely planned and gamed the Iran war according to many sources.
“…the bottom line is when it comes to who can offer what, of course, the U.S. can offer China and Russia far more than Iran can. So Iran is not really going to get much protection from those countries, and it probably knows that.”
This directly contradicts Engdahl who sees Iran as essential to Russian Great Game plans.
” It’s (Iran) willing to go along, because it feels it has other cards it can play against United States. So, Iran’s actually acting from a position of strength, the way they see it. “
What are those cards?
” If you look at it in the Middle East arena, in the Sunni Arab world Iran is seen as a collaborator with United States. This may sound strange in United States, but from their perspective, what’s happening in Iraq is the government is set up in Baghdad, is a Shia government, pro-Iranian, but it’s also working together closely with United States. I think this is a marriage of convenience that’s not going last long, but from the Sunni, especially rightwing Sunni fundamentalist perspective, the Shias and the Iranians are actually in cahoots with United States. “
Interesting.
” the casualty has been the democratic movement, because under the Carter and the Clinton administrations, there was actually a rapprochement, a détente. The two were pretty — on good terms. And then you had the neo-cons coming into Washington and the “axis of evil” speech that basically undercut the reformers in Iran, because the reformers by basically — inevitably were associated with good relations with United States.”
Yes.
As to the whole rigarmarole of the bomb, I’m not sure what to believe. What happened to the unguarded Yellowcake in Iraq; does Iran have any of it? Would Russia help Iran develop a bomb. How difficult is it, really? How much testing is needed to ensure that you have not developed a dud? Everybody talks about “plans” for a bomb. Any Architects or Scientists here? When I worked at the Oil Refinery the schematics alone took up an entire small library. And that is just schematics, not plans and specifications for building anything. We also had fairly complete schematics of the Oak Ridge Nuclear facility in my house when I grew up, as my Dad had worked on the Manhattan Project. I seriously doubt anyone who believes that the “plans” for building a nuclear bomb, including all the stages of enrichment, fit into a small dossier that can be passed from one spy to another. On the other hand if they are digitized, perhaps a large hard drive, or several, is sufficient.
What I would like to see leaked is what the US invasion and war plans essentially look like and what the Iranian defense looks like. That is, unless they are planning to just bomb the facilities and not invade. Major Armies swooping down from the North to “take Tehran” does not seem very realistic. Is it possible that the Iranian soldiers were not killed, and it is a ruse? It seems suspect that one would fly a whole essential contingent together, like when a ball team crashes and you have no more team. I can’t believe that Iran is unable to buy serviceable jets for its elite.
UHHH. Too many questions.
Not to go epistemological on y’all, but how can we really know anything, or distinguish between fact and fiction with all the disinformation campaigns going on.
I

Posted by: Malooga | Jan 13 2006 19:30 utc | 49

@Jonku I have a great deal of difficulty going with anything a pro Zionist propagandist like Debka claims.
It is in Israel’s interest to continue the fable of Mossad omnipotency, particularly in the light of recent revelations about it’s greatest ‘coup’ the slaughter of anyone involved in the Munich Olympics hostage taking (Read the US marine corps critique such pithy comments eg “The goal in extremely high risk operations is to optimize the teams’ talents and not to restrict the success ratio by managing the teams’ efforts through lawyers and politicians.”).
The whole operation has now been shown to be a fiasco from beginning to end.
In fact it has been revealed to be a mindless butchery that led to the death of many innocents. As gmoke said in daily Kos :

:”Nobody mentioned Lillehammer.”….
….”Nobody mentioned the death of Ahmed Bouchiki, an Algerian with a Moroccan passport working as a waiter in that Norwegian town. Nobody mentioned that he was assassinated by a Mossad hit team in front of his pregnant wife. Nobody mentioned that he was murdered by mistake, misidentified as a Black Septembrist mastermind. Nobody mentioned that the hit team was rounded up and tried for his murder. Nobody mentioned that all of them were repatriated to Israel within less than two years. Nobody mentioned that Israel still refuses to accept public responsibility for Ahmed Bouchiki’s death but has paid his widow a significant amount of money.”

Or Wikipedia:

“Simon Reeve writes that the Israeli revenge operations continued for more than 20 years. He details the assassination in Paris in 1992 of the PLO’s head of intelligence, and says that an Israeli general confirmed there was a link back to Munich. Reeve also writes that while Israeli officials have stated Operation Wrath of God was intended to extract vengeance for the families of the athletes killed in Munich, “few relatives wanted such a violent reckoning with the Palestinians”. Reeve states the families were instead desperate to know the truth of the events surrounding the Munich massacre. Reeve outlines what he sees as a lengthy cover-up by German authorities to hide the truth (Reeve 2001). After 20 years of fighting the German government, the families acquired official documentation proving the depth of the cover-up. After a lengthy court fight, in 2003 the families of the Munich victims reached a financial settlement with the Berlin government.
In a new book reviewed by Time magazine, author Aaron J. Klein (who based his book in large part on rare interviews with key Mossad officers involved in the reprisal missions) contends that the Mossad got only one man directly connected to the massacre. The man, Atef Bseiso, was shot in Paris as late as 1992. Klein goes on to say that the intelligence on Zwaiter, the first Palestinian to die, was “uncorroborated and improperly cross-referenced. Looking back, his assassination was a mistake.” He elaborates, stating that the real planners and executors of Munich had gone into hiding along with bodyguards in Eastern-Bloc and Arab countries, where the Israelis couldn’t reach them. Meanwhile, it was lesser Palestinian activists that happened to be wandering around Western Europe unprotected that were killed. “Israeli security officials claimed these dead men were responsible for Munich; PLO pronouncements made them out to be important figures; and so the image of the Mossad as capable of delivering death at will grew and grew.” The operation functioned not just to punish the perpetrators of Munich but also to disrupt and deter future terrorist acts, writes Klein. “For the second goal, one dead PLO operative was as good as another.” Klein quotes a senior intelligence source: “Our blood was boiling. When there was information implicating someone, we didn’t inspect it with a magnifying glass” (Time, 12/04/2005).”

After that digression back to the Iranian plane crash which as the Iranian impeachment of the minister of defence shows, was the result of poor maintenence not sabotage.
The whole Iranian thing is a windup as the latest BushCo climbdown reveals:

“US President George W Bush has said he wants to resolve the Iranian nuclear crisis through peaceful means.
After talks in Washington with German Chancellor Angela Merkel, Mr Bush said both leaders sought to solve the issue “diplomatically by working together”.
President Bush refused to be drawn on whether the UN Security Council should impose sanctions on Iran. “….
….”But, in a sign of divisions within the international community over how to proceed, China’s UN ambassador Wang Guangya warned on Friday that referring Iran to the Security Council “might complicate the issue”.

Of course BushCo would love to swallow up Iran but the simple facts are that the US has neither the means nor the will to do so at the moment.
We are all wary of a repetition of the Iraqi murders but BushCo eyes and mouth are far bigger than the stomach.
Paying too much attention to this bluff and bluster distracts from the multiplicity of crimes that BushCo were lined up in the sights for before Xmas. I’ll say this for the nth time. Instead of worrying about what may never happen take a look at what these animals have already done and are currently actually attempting. New Orleans is a good place to start. Or if you’re an internationalist the sudden admission that the US isn’t going to mend a broken lightbulb in Iraq much less repair any of the destruction they have wreaked:

“The Bush administration has scaled back its ambitions to rebuild Iraq from the devastation wrought by war and dictatorship and does not intend to seek new funds for reconstruction, it emerged yesterday.
In a decision that will be seen as a retreat from a promise by President George Bush to give Iraq the best infrastructure in the region, administration officials say they will not seek reconstruction funds when the budget request is presented to Congress next month, the Washington Post reported yesterday.”

BushCo like breaking stuff. Fixing them is a lot more boring. Is that a spoiled brat’s behaviour or what?
Even Afghanistan is in more shit than a sewer duck.
At the moment BushCo couldn’t organise a booze-up in a bar much less the invasion of a developed nation like Iran. There are much more urgent topics to hang these crooks on.

Posted by: Debs is dead | Jan 13 2006 20:39 utc | 51

Sticking with the random hypotheticals – the neocons launch an air raid at Iranian nuclear facilities. Iran decides to retaliate – by sinking the tankers as someone suggested, but hey – there’s a huge pile of US soldiers just across the border. A ‘popular rebellion’ against the Great Satan sends Iran, unofficially, to invade Iraq. The neocons might have faith both in the ability of US troops to repel such an assault, and they might think it will bond the Iraqis with their defenders nee occupiers.

Posted by: Rowan | Jan 13 2006 21:28 utc | 53

@ Mallooga At the risk of straying disastrously off topic in this thread Tom Engelhardt provides some excellent issues that will really matter in 2006.

Posted by: Debs is dead | Jan 13 2006 22:18 utc | 55

an important post by Dunvan Black aka Atrios
How It Goes

Winter/Spring – The clone army of foreign policy “experts” from conservative foreign policy outfits nobody ever heard of before suddenly appear on all the cable news programs all the time, frowning furiously and expressing concerns about the “grave threat” that Iran poses. Never before heard of Iranian exile group members start appearing regularly, talking about their role in the nuclear program and talking up Iran’s human rights violations.
Spring/Summer – “Liberal hawks” point out that all serious people understand the serious threat posed by serious Iran, and while they acknowledge grudgingly that the Bush administration has fucked up everything it touches, they stress, and I mean stress, that we really must support the Bush administration’s serious efforts to deal with the serious problem and that criticisms of such serious approaches to a serious problem are highly irresponsible and come only from irrational very unserious Bush haters who would rather live in Iran than the U.S.
Late Summer – Rumsfeld denies having an Iran war plan “on his desk.” He refuses to answer if he has one “in his file cabinet.” Andy Card explains that you don’t roll out new product until after labor day.
Early Fall – Bush suddenly demands Congress give him the authority to attack Iran to ensure they “disarm.” Some Democrats have the temerity to ask “with what army?” Marshall Wittman and Peter Beinart explain that courageous Democrats will have the courageous courage to be serious and to confront the “grave threat” with seriousness and vote to send other peoples’ kids off to war, otherwise they’ll be seen as highly unserious on national security. Neither enlists.
Late October – Despite the fact that all but 30 Democrats vote for the resolution, Republicans run a national ad campaign telling voters that Democrats are objectively pro-Ahmadinejad. Glenn Reynolds muses, sadly, that Democrats aren’t just anti-war, but “on the other side.” Nick Kristof writes that liberals must support the war due to Ahmadinejad’s opposition to gay rights in Iran.
Election Day – Democrats lose 5 seats in the Senate, 30 in the House. Marshall Wittman blames it on the “pro-Iranian caucus.”
The Day After Election Day – Miraculously we never hear another word about the grave Iranian threat. Peter Beinart writes a book about how serious Democrats must support the liberation of Venezuela and Bolivia.

Possible yes, though I am afraid it might go further. Imagine a little Anthrax scare mixed into that brew and “serious” intelligence information Iran is connected and you end up nuking Teheran.

Posted by: b | Jan 14 2006 22:33 utc | 57

For me I wouldn’t expect Putin to be interested in saving anyone other than himself.
They are the enemy; all the politicians and leaders who seek to control the uncontrollable for their own ends.
We must save ourselves which will be possible but not easy.
Over the past few weeks I have been formulating an idea that the conflict isn’t between left Vs right, East Vs West, or Xtian vs Islam.
It is type A personalities vs type B’s.
This has become much clearer since we moved into a ‘free market’ ie every person for themselves and the devil take the hind most economy.
Within every society that this has occurred Type B’s who tend to be the majority, people who just want to live their lives with family and friends and who work to live don’t live to work have copped the rough end of the pineapple.
Meanwhile type A’s who spend most of their lives at the office and get home only to get into a frenzy of redecorating, home improvements and taking the children from one intensive and repressive ‘activity’ after another, have done really well.
The type a’s rationalise the type B majority plight as being the inevitable outcome of life for ‘lazy’ ie non obsessed people.
it was a week ago after the war crims’ strokes and imagined heart attacks (cheney) that really clued me onto it.
As I have prattled about endlessly I lived in northern australia for many years in the largest town on the northern coast of australia. It had become big enough for it’s own university. (get those tax dollars outta Canberra. We’ve got far more use for them, and if they send up some ‘auditors’ we’ll just fill em up with beer and take them fishing)
The first few research projects were run in conjunction with other universities and research institutions from ‘down South’.
One of these was put up by an organisation called the Menzies School of Health Research.
They were concerned although the Darwin population’s average alcohol consumption was 4 times the national average and the tobacco consumption way above any other similarly sized (about 100,000 pop) town’s, that heart disease and other circulatory disorders were way below the incidence of anywhere else.
A few million dollars were spent on finding out if it was something in the water or somesuch before the learned academics came to the astute conclusion that Darwin ‘suffered’ a far higher incidence of type B personalities than any other similarly sized population centre.
I’m not sure if they did any research into why this was but my view is that firstly there are a lot of aboriginal people in Darwin (approx 50% of the population) and people living or close to a hunter gatherer or basic agrarian society are far less likely to be the ‘driven’ types seen in any office situation.
The other reason is type A’s wouldn’t be too comfortable roughing it and Darwin in the first 10 to 15 years after Cyclone Tracy hit the town was pretty basic in a friendly and relaxed sort of a way. I suspect this is true of many ‘frontier’ societies that evolve into major population bases. The attitude toward native people changes profoundly too. Although type b’s are not short of their own racists most of it is talk mixed with a bit of live and let live . Type A’s feel a ‘need’ to ‘fix’ any problem. So the racists amongst them are far more pro-active.
Once again I could prattle on for hours on this subject (what my kids impudently call a ‘dollar in the jar’ topic. Everytime someone brings up a subject which gets Dad expounding the person has to put a dollar in this big old cigar jar), however I would be interested to know how others feel/think about this. can people be classified into 2 obvious categories so easily? I have my doubts but certain social ‘scientists’ hold forth on type A and type B personalities ad nauseum.
Is this behaviour learned, innate or a mixture of the two?
(apologies to those who would rather this discussion were in the OT thread but I reckon b must be about ready to open up a weekend OT in which case he’s welcome to drop this in it.)

Posted by: Debs is dead | Jan 14 2006 22:54 utc | 59

Here’s a poem I wrote back around 1979 when I decided to give up the faded jeans and put on the shiny boots and black jeans of the hipster:
Here becomes fascist
so will I
isn’t it becoming
For the record, I still wear black on any occasion but daily you will find me in pajamas or faded jeans and a t-shirt. So the poem notes a recognition, not a submission.

Posted by: jonku | Jan 15 2006 0:38 utc | 61

How difficult is it, really? How much testing is needed to ensure that you have not developed a dud? Everybody talks about “plans” for a bomb.
As far as I remember from the nuclear bomb lecture (it was a while ago) much depends on how good a bomb you want to get, how much bang you get for your uranium or plutonium. My teacher thought the latest models are able to convert some 80% or so of the mass to energy, whereas the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs were just in the level of 2-4%.
The key component to an atomic bomb is first and foremost fissonable material. You either need enriched uranium or weaponsgrade plutonium. This is a tricky part as it needs cyclotrones and stuff which are big and advanced. Of course you could steal the blueprints for cyclotrones (I believe Pakistan did), but you still need to build them and a functioning nuclear power sector.
The other mayor obstacle is good enough electronics. For a plutonium bomb to work you need to fire a lot of explosions around the core at the same time to compress the plutonium.
In conclusion, plans on how to construct an actual bomb is probably the least problem (download these schematics from wikipedia if you like some). The bigger problem is to have all the components and the plans for them probably does not fit in a briefcase.
To know that it works I guess you find yourself a piece of your territory you never liked very much and try it out. Then you do not even have to tell the world you got the bomb, they will know.
As a sidenote, Sweden had an atomic bomb project going in the fifties, but abandoned it because it would just been so darned expensive (plus the peacelovers were getting annoying with their protesting and asking questions and stuff). And that was with having a nuclear sector, state of the art electronics and an exporting weapons industry. Obviously it would have taken more then a suitcase of plans to make it work.
That was the scientist answer. The political answer is I think they talk about ‘plans’ because of the ambiguity of the word. Is it blueprints, a factfinding mission into the costs of building or just thoughts in somebody head who is planning to build a bomb? If they are crazy enough to attack they can use ‘plans’ now as meaning blueprints on bombs and later turn around and claim they were just saying that the iranian government planned to get bombs. It goes down with you a little sip of the propaganda wave.

Posted by: A swedish kind of death | Jan 15 2006 5:00 utc | 63

Some very interesting threads. Wish I had more time tonight. At one point Sweden was one of the top five or six countries in the world in scientific knowledge and industrial advancement. Of course Germany was the acknowledged world leader in Scientific development until the 1930’s when everyone left. I imagine factors like this affect policy. Skandinavia had to adjust from being a central part of the northern world to developing niche industries within the gobal market, generally very successfully. Of course Norway had fish and then oil to spare it. (Sorry I promise no Norwegian jokes). I’m overtired and rambling. Goodnight.

Posted by: Malooga | Jan 15 2006 7:14 utc | 65

there is the third type, the “potential leaders” who while not bossing others around are averse to being so bossed and capable of thinking for themselves, and occasionally standing up for principle. These are a tiny minority, no more than 2% of any group
hm. well i posit there are more than just type A or B and there’s got to be more than 2% of this type you mention who could be A or B.here try this one. i don’t experience life in black and white. most people are a combination of sorts.
i’m at a loss as to what to think the neocons will do. i remember being in australia during the runup to mar 03 and thinking ‘they just won’t do it’. that somehow rationality would prevail. and i was wrong. clearly it has nothing to do w/whether iran does or does not have the capability of a bomb and everything to do with the neo’s ability to squeeze as much juice out of the threat present or not to make their ends meet. seems like there’s a race to attack before they get the russian defense equipment.
I sometimes wonder how fair it is to blame the sheep for their cowardice
sheep aren’t always cowards. some people are just clueless or believe it’s never going to make any difference what they do so why try. they can’t be bothered to call a senator or 2 to filibuster alito. call the newspaper and ask why they drumbeat clintons impeachment and ignor the latest zolgby poll. is a type a artist a type b political person? how many of you can be aggressive posters yet not so in person? we need some type A saviors right now but maybe its a shotty life saving the world. can a person find happiness if others are suffering? do we have that right w/out being cowards?
i watched an interesting movie last nightenduring love about some people who witnessed a death after a flawed rescue attempt. were they cowards?

Posted by: annie | Jan 15 2006 10:45 utc | 67

@jonku believe it or not I considered posting that half assed ‘recipe’ a lot before I did. The reason I pushed the button was that there isn’t enough real detail to do jackshit and as askod pointed out enriched uranium is required and anyone who has access to enriched uranium, the process to enrich it, or the means to handle and transport it will know a lot more than I do already about how to blow up a chunk of the world.
I was trying to make a point that this PR about atom bomb secrets is just that pr bullshit. If the Iranians really wanted to they have the knowledge skills and technology to do it now and much better than I could suggest.
Then there is the other issue which made me wish I hadn’t hit enter straight after I did which is the wanky jerk-off way that people use limited amounts of specialised knowledge to bluster. Believe it or not that was not my intent but I realise that interpretation is out there for any to pick up and for that I apologise, especially because because we already have a few too many of those sorts of people striding the planet like assholes now.

Posted by: Debs is dead | Jan 15 2006 20:26 utc | 69

As the Founding Fathers realized, you CANNOT be a democracy and a theocracy at the same time. Either God or the People rule, not both. Even ancient Athens, the “original” democracy, had this conflict. Look what happened to Pericles.
Iran is currently a deeply corrupt theocracy— an excellent example of what happens when religious rule gets the upper hand. For more warnings, see 5th century Alexandria or the Renaissance Popes.

Posted by: Monty North | Jan 16 2006 3:58 utc | 71