A Blank Check For War on Iran

By Patrick J. Buchanan

As we approach the centennial of World War I, we will read much of the blunders that produced that tragedy of Western civilization.

Among them will be the “blank check” Kaiser Wilhelm II gave to Vienna after the assassination by a Serb terrorist of the Austrian Archduke Francis Ferdinand.

If you decide to punish the Serbs, said the Kaiser, we are with you.

After dithering for weeks, Austria shelled Belgrade. Within a week, Germany and Austria were at war with Russia, France and Great Britain.

Today the Senate is about to vote Israel a virtual blank check — for war on Iran. Reads Senate bill S.1881:

If Israel is “compelled to take military action in legitimate self-defense against Iran’s nuclear weapons program,” the United States “should stand with Israel and provide … diplomatic, military and economic support to the Government of Israel in the defense of its territory, people and existence.”

Inserted in that call for U.S. military action to support an Israeli strike on Iran, S.1881 says that, in doing so, we should follow our laws and constitutional procedures.

Nevertheless, this bill virtually hands over the decision on war to Bibi Netanyahu who is on record saying: “This is 1938. Iran is Germany.”

Is this the man we want deciding whether America fights her fifth war in a generation in the Mideast? Do we really want to outsource the decision on war in the Persian Gulf, the gas station of the world, to a Likud regime whose leaders routinely compare Iran to Nazi Germany?

The bill repeatedly asserts that Iran has a “nuclear weapons program.”

Yet in both 2007 and 2011, U.S. intelligence declared “with high confidence” that Iran does not have a nuclear weapons program.

Where is the Senate’s evidence for its claim? Why has Director of National Intelligence James Clapper not been called to testify as to whether Tehran has made the decision to go for a bomb?

Why are the American people being kept in the dark?

Are we being as misled, deceived and lied to about Iran’s “weapons of mass destruction,” as we were about Iraq’s?

The bill says that in a final deal Iran must give up all enrichment of uranium. However, we have already been put on notice by President Hassan Rouhani that this is an ultimatum Iran cannot accept.

Even the reformers of Iran’s Green Revolution of 2009 back their country’s right to a peaceful nuclear program including enrichment.

Senate bill S.1881 imposes new sanctions if Iran fails to live up to the interim agreement or fails to come to a final agreement in six months.

Yet the Senate knows that Iran has warned that if new sanctions are voted during negotiations, they will walk away from the table.

Why is the Senate risking, or even inviting, a blowup in these talks?

When the interim agreement was reached, it was denounced by neocons as “worse than Munich.” Now the War Party piously contends this Senate bill is simply an “insurance policy” to ensure that the terms of the deal are met and a final deal reached.

It is nothing of the sort. This bill is a project of AIPAC, the Israeli lobby, designed to sabotage and scuttle the Geneva talks by telling Tehran: Either capitulate and dismantle all your enrichment facilities, or face more severe sanctions which will put us on the road to war.

What terrifies AIPAC and Bibi is not an American war on Iran, but an American rapprochement with Iran.

Who are the leaders of the push for S.1881? Sens. Mark Kirk and Robert Menendez, the biggest recipients of AIPAC campaign cash.

Last weekend, the Obama National Security Council finally belled the cat with a blunt statement by spokesperson Bernadette Meehan:

“If certain members of Congress want the United States to take military action [against Iran], they should be up front with the American public and say so.”

Exactly. For whether or not all these senators understand what they are doing, this is where their bill points — to a scuttling of the Geneva talks and a return to the sanctions road, at the end of which lies a U.S. war with Iran.

A majority of Democratic senators have thus far bravely bucked AIPAC and declined to co-sponsor S.1881. However, all but two Republican senators have signed on.

If, after Afghanistan, Iraq, and Libya, the GOP has once again caught the war fever, the party should be quarantined from the White House for another four years.

Press Secretary Jay Carney says that if S.1881 passes, Obama will veto it. The president should tell Congress that not only will he veto it, but that if Israel decides on its own to attack Iran, Israel will be on its own in the subsequent war.

Obama should order U.S. intelligence to tell us the truth.

Is Iran truly hell-bent on acquiring a nuclear bomb? Does Iran have a nuclear bomb program? If so, when did Tehran make that decision?

Or are we being lied into war again?

Lindsey’s Plan for War on Iran

By Patrick J. Buchanan

This summer produced a triumph of American patriotism.

A grassroots coalition arose to demand Congress veto any war on Syria. Congress got the message and was ready to vote no to war, when President Obama seized upon Vladimir Putin’s offer to work together to disarm Syria of chemical weapons.

The war America did not want — did not come.

Lindsey Graham is determined that this does not happen again.

The next war he and his collaborators are planning, the big one, the war on Iran, will not be blocked the same way.

How does Graham propose to do this?

Iran to Execute Christian Pastor for Renouncing Islam

From Catholic World News

Youcef Nadarkhani, a 32-year-old Protestant pastor who became a Christian at the age of 19, has been sentenced to death for renouncing Islam. Nadarkhani maintains that he did not practice any faith before his conversion to Christianity. 

The “draconian language in the verdict makes it very clear that the Iranian authorities mean business,” said Leonard Leo, chairman of the US Commission on International Religious Freedom. “He could be executed at any time. And for what? For being a Christian.” 

“We call upon the Obama administration and the international community to use every means available, to raise this issue and demand the unconditional release of Mr. Nadarkhani.” 

Nadarkhani’s attorney has appealed the verdict to the nation’s supreme court. 

Source(s): these links will take you to other sites, in a new window.

• In Iran, a Christian pastor faces death sentence (CNN)

US, Israel Warships in Suez May Be Prelude to Faceoff with Iran

An armada led by the USS Truman, with 5000 sailors
and marines, is the largest assembled in years.

Here comes the manufactured crisis we predicted only last week, and just in time for the November elections, too. An opportunity to look tough with Iran, while doing absolutely nothing about their development of nuclear weapons.

From Arutz Sheva-IsraelNationalNews

Egypt allowed at least one Israeli and 11 American warships to pass through the Suez Canal as an Iranian flotilla approaches Gaza. Egypt closed the canal to protect the ships with thousands of soldiers, according to the British-based Arabic language newspaper Al Quds al-Arabi.

One day prior to the report on Saturday, Voice of Israel government radio reported that the Egyptian government denied an Israeli request not to allow the Iranian flotilla to use the Suez Canal to reach Gaza, in violation of the Israeli sea embargo on the Hamas-controlled area.

International agreements require Egypt to keep the Suez open even for warships, but the armada, led by the USS Truman with 5,000 sailors and marines, was the largest in years. Egypt closed the canal to fishing and other boats as the armada moved through the strategic passageway that connects the Red and Mediterranean Seas.

Despite Egypt’s reported refusal to block the canal to Iranian boats, the clearance for the American-Israeli fleet may be a warning to Iran it may face military opposition if the Iranian Red Crescent ship continues on course to Gaza.

The warships may exercise the right to inspect the Iranian boat for the illegal transport or weapons. Newsweek reported that Egyptian authorities could stop the ship for weeks, using technicalities such as requiring that any official documents be translated from Farsi into Arabic.

The magazine’s website also reported that the Iranian navy is the weakest part of its armed forces. Tehran has already backed down from announced intentions to escort the Iranian ships with "volunteer marines” from the Iranian Revolutionary Guards.

The Iranian news site Hamsayeh.net reported, “The move might be in connection to U.S. self-inflicted embargo against Iran aimed at inspecting Iran bound ships for suspected goods related to the country’s nuclear program.”

Another battle on the high seas may involve one, and possibly two, Lebanese vessels that are aimed at challenging Israel’s sovereignty over the Gaza coastal waters. Hizbullah, gearing up for a reaction to a possible clash between the Israeli Navy (pictured) and the Lebanese boats, has delayed rocket units near Lebanese ports, according to unofficial military sources.

Israel has warned U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon that Israel will use force, if necessary, to stop the boats, one of which is carrying approximately 70 women passengers and crew organized by Hizbullah support Samar al-Hajj. Her husband is one of several jailed suspects involved in the assassination for former Lebanese anti-Syrian Prime Rafik Hariri.

Hizbullah has denied it is connected with the Lebanese flotilla, but it has been reported that Al Hajj met with Hizbullah leader Hassan Nasrallah last month.

Feds Move to Seize 4 Mosques, Tower Linked to Iran

By Adam Goldman, Associated Press Writer

Federal prosecutors took steps Thursday to seize four U.S. mosques and a Fifth Avenue skyscraper owned by a nonprofit Muslim organization long suspected of being secretly controlled by the Iranian government.

In what could prove to be one of the biggest counterterrorism seizures in U.S. history, prosecutors filed a civil complaint in federal court against the Alavi Foundation, seeking the forfeiture of more than $500 million in assets.

The assets include bank accounts; Islamic centers consisting of schools and mosques in New York City, Maryland, California and Houston; more than 100 acres in Virginia; and a 36-story glass office tower in New York.

Read the rest of this entry>>

Obama, Iran, and the Rising of the Sun

The Wolf Howling blog provides evidence that blocked signals and a government's refusal to broadcast The One's speeches, do not prevent the masses from hearing the master's voice.

From Wolf Howling

The White House, along with the assistance of the NYT, is now taking credit for the revolt in Iran, tying the motivation of rank and file Iranians to risk life and limb in protest of their government to Obama's Cairo speech occurring two weeks before the election. This becomes truly an act of divine intervention when one realizes that the "speech was not broadcast in Iran, where the goverment jammed signals to block satellite owners from watching." But Obama and his many Obamaphiles in the MSM are not about to let facts get in their way. It is impossible to imagine a more aggrandizing and arrogant spin of fantasy.ngton Post reported today:

. . . Since taking office, Obama has argued that reclaiming America's moral authority by ending torture and closing the prison at Guantanamo Bay provides essential diplomatic leverage to influence events in such strategic parts of the world as the Middle East and Central Asia. The speech he delivered to the Islamic world in Cairo eights days before the June 12 Iranian election sought to do that by providing what the president saw as an unvarnished accounting of U.S. policy in Iran, Iraq, and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Yesterday, the NYT attempted to make essentially the same argument. The claims of the White House and their NYT sycophants to the contrary, Obama contributed nothing to the cause of this rebellion. There is not a single fact to suggest that this rebellion in Iran occurred because of an "Obama effect," nor that "the mere election of Barack Obama in the United States had galvanized reformers in Iran to demand change." In his prior acts of outreach to the mad mullahs, Obama only bestowed legitimacy on Iran's theocracy.

The Washington Post reported today:

. . . Since taking office, Obama has argued that reclaiming America's moral authority by ending torture and closing the prison at Guantanamo Bay provides essential diplomatic leverage to influence events in such strategic parts of the world as the Middle East and Central Asia. The speech he delivered to the Islamic world in Cairo eights days before the June 12 Iranian election sought to do that by providing what the president saw as an unvarnished accounting of U.S. policy in Iran, Iraq, and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

"We're trying to promote a foreign policy that advances our interests, not that makes us feel good about ourselves," said a senior administration official who, like others, declined to be identified, citing the sensitivity of the issue.

Obama's approach to Iran, including his assertion that the unrest there represents a debate among Iranians unrelated to the United States, is an acknowledgment that a U.S. president's words have a limited ability to alter foreign events in real time and could do more harm than good. But privately Obama advisers are crediting his Cairo speech for inspiring the protesters, especially the young ones, who are now posing the most direct challenge to the republic's Islamic authority in its 30-year history.

Yesterday, the NYT attempted to make essentially the same argument. The claims of the White House and their NYT sycophants to the contrary, Obama contributed nothing to the cause of this rebellion. There is not a single fact to suggest that this rebellion in Iran occurred because of an "Obama effect," nor that "the mere election of Barack Obama in the United States had galvanized reformers in Iran to demand change." In his prior acts of outreach to the mad mullahs, Obama only bestowed legitimacy on Iran's theocracy.

The fact that Obama's Cairo speech never made it into Iran kind of puts the kibosh on the White House claims that the speech played a role in motivating the protests. Further, even if Obama's Cairo speech was not jammed throughout Iran, nothing Obama said in Cairo could possibly be construed as giving impetus to Iran's rank and file to risk their very lives for democracy. Indeed, Obama clearly signalled in the speech that he had no intention of continuing to promote democracy in the Middle East. And lest there be any question about that, Obama "zeroed out funding for pro-democracy programs inside Iran from the State Department budget for fiscal 2010."

A viable argument can be made that we are seeing the wages of Bush's decision to invade Iraq. As I wrote last year:

The greatest threat to Iran today comes from a democratic Iraq on its border that honors the traditional Shia practice of quietism - i.e., maintaining a wall between mosque and state. Iran is a deeply troubled country of 60 million people held under the rule of a medieval theocracy by ever greater repression. The theocracy itself is illegitimate when looked at in terms of a millenium of apolitical Shia tradition - a tradition shredded in 1979 by Ayatollah Khomeini and his velyat-e-faqi, a new philosophy justifying and requiring theocratic rule. And indeed, the most popular religious figure in both Iraq and Iran is now Grand Ayatolah Ali Sistani, an adherent to the quietist school.

And if you want to see how that was having an impact on Iranians, do see this 2007 Boston Globe article, "Shi'ite Cleric Gains Sway Across The Border."

That said, even if Iraq plays some role in Iran's uprising, it is beyond challenge that the major causes of Iran's rebellion have been present for years. Brutal repression, a mysoginist culture that legally treats women as second class citizens, a thoroughly corrupt theocracy, unemployment above 20% and inflation at equal numbers. All of that is multiplied in importance by the fact that a majority of Iranians are under thirty years old and who have little opportunities open to them under Iran's theocracy. Most of these causes were present in Iran a decade ago and gave life to the "Tehran Spring" uprisings. The final straw giving rise to those uprisings was a belief that conservatives were keeping the reformist President Khatami from enacting reforms. In the instant case, what has caused today's revolt is the perception that mid level cleric cum Supreme Guide Khameini committed massive election fraud in order to keep a reformer out of office.

For Obama or his sychophants to claim credit for this uprising leaves one near speechless. It follows the same logic as saying that, because Obama said the sun will rise yesterday, the fact that it rose today is proof that Obama is the cause of it. That this tripe is being peddled by the NYT yesterday and reported without the scorn it deserves from the Washinton Post today - apparently without either even checking to see whether the speech was broadcast in Iran - establishes possibly the high water mark of the MSM's unquestioning love for the One. They are not a questioning press. They are instead unfiltered conduits for raw spin from the White House. To go any further than this in order to show their love for the One requries a hotel room.

America's Betrayal of the Iranian Freedom Fighters

President Obama has been handed a huge opportunity to contrast the ideals of American freedom, democracy and self-determination, with the fascist terror regime ruling Iran. The freedom fighters bleeding and dying in Iran would welcome America's leadership in galvanizing world opinion and supporting an end to that tyranny. Such leadership would also make reparation for the policies of Jimmy Carter that did so much to bring the current regime to power.

Unfortunately, when Obama finally spoke, his statement was so ambivalent it was not clear whether he was condemning the violence of the government, the freedom fighters, or in his usual way, seeing moral equivalence between the mullahs and those risking their lives in the streets.

We should not be surprised. We can hardly expect one who is embarrassed by, and apologetic for America's role in the world, to understand the aspirations of young freedom fighters in Tehran. Obama's indifference to their struggle was even too much for members of his own party in Congress, which has passed a resolution supporting the freedom fighters.

In the following article, Paul Kengor contrasts the ambivalence of the current administration with President Reagan's support for freedom-loving insurgents around the world.

From American Thinker
By Paul Kengor

I frequently get asked how Ronald Reagan would react to certain situations. I've gotten those questions a lot lately given the penchant for central planning by the new team Americans elected in Washington.

But nowhere is there a Reagan lesson that needs heeded as desperately as in Iran right now. The desperation is more apparent daily as President Obama doesn't seem to recognize -- or doesn't know how to support -- the huge historical opportunity before his eyes, and quickly slipping through his fingers.

What would be Reagan's reaction to what's happening in Iran? That's a slam-dunk: He would have responded as he did to every cry for freedom suffocating under the last global scourge America battled -- Soviet communism. Wherever those resisting the despots resided and raised their voices, in Afghanistan, in Nicaragua, in Poland, Reagan was consistent, never missing the opportunity, always staying on theme. He called these people "freedom fighters."

He did so unequivocally, boldly, proudly, loudly, with the left often trashing him and undermining him, contesting whether this or that group met their criteria as legitimate "freedom" fighters. Reagan was undeterred. He recognized the historical imperative, what he called the March of Freedom. The freedom marchers needed America and its president to urge them on.

The total Reagan statements promoting these freedom fighters are literally uncountable. I know this well, as I collected them for research purposes. Reagan didn't simply step to the microphone to encourage these people at certain crisis moments; he called them out routinely, regularly, including in special, newly created ceremonies with names like Afghan Freedom Day, Solidarity Day, Captive Nations Week, and honoring things like "Observance of the Afghan New Year" or speaking at the annual Pulaski Day Banquet in New York City. In these statements, the president of the United States and unapologetic leader of the free world -- Reagan took that task to heart -- mercilessly blasted the tyrants with just about every name in the book.

Reagan didn't play footsies with dictators. He knew human nature. He knew evil. He knew who was wrong. He knew the dictators were bad regardless of whether we were nice. Not condemning them wouldn't make them behave better.

Read the rest of this entry >>

Iran Election: The Beginning of the End

The following article from American Thinker is a clear and cogent explanation of the extraordinary events taking place in Iran. It was an incompetent American President that brought the current Islamofascist regime to power. Jimmy Carter's misguided and impotent policies were made plain, for all the world to see, during the 444 days Americans were held hostage by thugs like Ahmadinejad.

Ahmadinejad's regime, and the mullahs that ultimately control it, have now demonstrated that they are willing to do what the Shah would not -- fire on and kill peaceful demonstrators. As with Jimmy Carter, how this crisis between freedom loving Iranian citizens and their brutal regime plays out will reveal as much about America's leadership as Iran's. As a great American poet, James Russell Lowell, wrote:

Once to every man and nation, comes the moment to decide,
In the strife of truth with falsehood, for the good or evil side;

From American Thinker
By Amil Imani & Dr. Arash Irandoost

Iran's President Ahmadinejad, a veteran of the Islamic Republic's repressive Revolutionary Guard, took office on August 3, 2005, after unexpected win in a sham presidential election -- there are no democratic elections in the Islamic Republic of Iran. All candidates are prescreened by the Guardian Council before they are allowed to run for office. In practice, a president of Iran is already chosen through a farce process of giving the voters a chance to elect one of the men hand-picked from the regime's functionaries, as was the case with President Ahmadinejad.

During the previous "election," only a small percentage of the voters bothered to vote, since voting under the pre-screening and undemocratic system of the mullahs is more like selection than election. The result of staying away from the polls materialized in the person of the fascist Ahmadinejad.

The great majority of the people of Iran are disillusioned and even disgusted by the mediaeval incompetent, oppressive, and corrupt rule of the mullahs, irrespective of which mafia gang is in power. The votes, more than anything else, are protest ballots cast against the entire system, rather than indications of support for the so-called conservative-moderate coalition.

It took less than 4 years for Iranians to realize that boycotting the so-called elections in the Islamic Republic of Iran can only bring to power even a worse bunch of Islamofascists. This time around the people turned out to vote for the lesser of two camps of evil -- the mullah dominated gang of conservatives and "moderates."

After a fiery month long campaign and unprecedented passions and tensions, the mass rallies, polished campaign slogans, savvy Internet outreach and worldwide televised debates, which revealed rampant corruption, ineptitude, and illegal and criminal activities of all four candidates, on June 12, 2009, the Iranian people went to the polls, challenging not only the incumbent president Ahmadinejad, but the entire establishment of the Islamic regime.

Iran's elections are considered extremely unfair and the Islamist government does not allow international monitors to be present. The ruling clerics put their stamp on the elections from the very beginning by deciding who can run. It is really a joke. More than 470 people sought to join the presidential race, but only Ahmadinejad and three rivals were cleared.

However, the turnout was massive, a near record high 85 percent of Iran's 49.2 million eligible voters. Based on the information from Mousavi's website , a group of Interior Ministry employees have leaked out the following results which seem to be closer to reality than the one released by the establishment:

Total eligible: 49.2 Million

Participated in the election: 75% to 85%
Mir Hussein Mousavi: 45%
Mehdi Karoobi: 33%
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad: 13%
Mohsen Rezai: 9%

Cancelled votes: 3%

It is clear that Mr. Mir Hussein Mousavi won the election by a large margin. Ahmadinejad came out third. But on Friday June 12, 2009, in the Islamic election (selection) something happened. Something beyond what anyone could have ever imagined. Something huge. A daylight coup d'état by the elements of the establishment, particularly, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), which the Senate designated as a terrorist organization (with Senator Obama not voting). The clerical leadership in Iran has grown increasingly reliant on the IRGC to help it stave off internal pressure for political and economic reform and external pressure resulting from international concern over Iran's nuclear program.

An Iranian journalist said, "The important event that took place in Iran is that it wasn't an election; it was a coup d'état. [They] stole 24 million votes of the nation and took them away for themselves. If there were really a winner, they would have to celebrate, but instead they beat people. They performed a coup, but they don't call it a coup."

He continued, "Please don't use the word "fraud" because it is mitigation of what has happened in Iran. Fraud is what was happening in the past 30 years. This is not fraud. They haven't [counted] people's votes. Using the word fraud is like calling a deep cut a small scratch. There was no fraud; it was a coup."

What the so called reformists call a coup was described today as a great achievement by the Islamic Republic Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the man who has the final say in all affairs of the country. It was no secret by that President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was Khamenei's favorite choice. If an electoral fraud, tantamount to a coup, had indeed happened, everyone believes that it certainly had Khamenei's blessing.

Demonstrators, on Saturday, were shocked and angry by Ali Khamenei's disregard for their vote and apparent coup. "If Mr. Khamenei cannot tolerate even a mild-mannered president like Mousavi, then I really don't know what to do," said a demonstrator, who was among thousands of students on Pahlavi Avenue before she started to chant "Death to the dictator". The day after the election, Khamenei urged the nation to unite behind Ahmadinejad and called the result a "divine assessment."

The political chief of the powerful Revolutionary Guard warned it would crush any "revolution" against the Islamic system by Mousavi's "green movement" -- the signature color of his campaign. However, on Saturday and Sunday, hundreds of thousands of opponents of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad clashed with Hizbollah thugs dressed in police uniforms in the heart of Iran's capital, pelting them with rocks and setting fires in the worst unrest in Tehran since the 1979 Islamic revolution. They accused the hard-line president of using fraud to steal the election victory from his reformist rival.

The ever-conniving mullahs dread the Iranian people. Granted that a small percentage of Iranians, known as the 3Fs -- fools, fanatics and frauds -- support the mullahs. No totalitarian rule can ever survive without a segment of the population, for one reason or another, supporting it. Yet, time is not on the side of the mullahs. By their mismanagement, thievery and oppression of the masses, they have created explosive internal conditions. As I have said over and over, the Mullahs need to have the N- bomb to create a fake sense of security so they can prolong their survival.

It was reported and verified by a Spiegel German reporter in Iran that the regime has brought many Arab speaking Hizbollah factions from Lebanon to attack the Iranian people. Overnight Sunday, police reportedly raided student dormitories at Tehran University where some 3,000 students had earlier held an anti-Ahmadinejad rally. Rooms were damaged, computers smashed, and hard drives taken, and students beaten and arrested, according to the Associated Press (AP). It is that reported 5 students have died in the attack.

The vicious attacks on people by the hired thugs of the regime are failing more and more as the mullahs' instrument of rule by terror. The police and official security apparatus are less and less willing to exercise brute force to suppress the people. That's exactly why the regime has imported Arab speaking terrorist groups such as Lebanese Hizbollah and Palestinian thugs.

In short, Iran is in a state of serious upheaval. Replacing Ahmadinejad with the already tried and proven wanton gang of Rafsanjani-Khatami-Mousavi is not going to change matters much.

As for the West, it is prudent that it does not embark on a trigger-happy, self interested policy. The mullahs' lease on life, [short of brutal massacre of the Iranian people in the absence of any foreign media] is just about over. A concerted political, economic, and moral support for the long-suffering and valiant Iranian people and the secular opposition can put an end to the shameful and hate-driven Islamofascists of any and all stripes.

Russia to Start Iran Nuclear Plant by Year End

Iran's Bushehr Nuclear Power Plant

From the International Herald Tribune
By Denis Dyomkin and Guy Faulconbridge

Russia plans to start up a nuclear reactor at Iran's Bushehr plant by the end of the year, the head of Russia's state nuclear corporation said on Thursday.

"If there are no unforeseen events...then the launch will go according to the timetable," Rosatom chief Sergei Kiriyenko told reporters in the Kremlin.

"The launch is scheduled for this year," he said, adding that this was the original plan laid down in a timetable agreed with Iran. "I plan to be at the Bushehr plant in February."

Read the rest of this entry >>

Obama's Atomic Umbrella: U.S. Nuclear Strike If Iran Nukes Israel

From Haaretz
By Aluf Benn

U.S. President-elect Barack Obama's administration will offer Israel a "nuclear umbrella" against the threat of a nuclear attack by Iran, a well-placed American source said earlier this week. The source, who is close to the new administration, said the U.S. will declare that an attack on Israel by Tehran would result in a devastating U.S. nuclear response against Iran.

Read the rest of this entry >>

Israel Preparing Options for Iran Strike

The Jerusalem Post reports that Israel Defense Forces are drawing up plans "for a strike on Iranian nuclear facilities that do not include coordination with the United States." An Israeli Defense Ministry official states that "while it is always better to coordinate," they are also planning for action independent of the United States. The full story is here.

Patrick J. Buchanan: Who's Planning Our Next War?

War Buddies: Prime Minister Ehud Olmert with President Bush

The scenario presented by Pat Buchanan in the following column is horrifying and all too plausible. Certainly our President has all of the arrogance to carryout such a plan, and that he would confide its details to Ehud Olmert, but not to the American people or their representatives would surprise no one. But should a President, who has the confidence and support of 30% of the American people, at best, be allowed to do anything beyond pardon the White House Thanksgiving turkey and preside over the National Christmas Tree lighting? War on a third front will be even more disastrous than the two underway. Congress needs to ensure this does not happen.

Who's Planning Our Next War?

By Patrick J. Buchanan

Of the Axis-of-Evil nations named in his State of the Union in 2002, President Bush has often said, “The United States will not permit the world’s most dangerous regimes to threaten us with the world’s most destructive weapons.”

He failed with North Korea. Will he accept failure in Iran, though there is no hard evidence Iran has an active nuclear weapons program?

William Kristol of The Weekly Standard said Sunday a U.S. attack on Iran after the election is more likely should Barack Obama win. Presumably, Bush would trust John McCain to keep Iran nuclear free. tors

Yet, to start a third war in the Middle East against a nation three times as large as Iraq, and leave it to a new president to fight, would be a daylight hijacking of the congressional war power and a criminally irresponsible act. For Congress alone has the power to authorize war.

Yet Israel is even today pushing Bush into a pre-emptive war with a naked threat to attack Iran itself should Bush refuse the cup.

In April, Israel held a five-day civil defense drill. In June, Israel sent 100 F-15s and F-16s, with refueling tankers and helicopters to pick up downed pilots, toward Greece in a simulated attack, a dress rehearsal for war. The planes flew 1,400 kilometers, the distance to Iran’s uranium enrichment facility at Natanz.

Ehud Olmert came home from a June meeting with Bush to tell Israelis: “We reached agreement on the need to take care of the Iranian threat. … I left with a lot less question marks regarding the means, the timetable restrictions and American resoluteness. …

“George Bush understands the severity of the Iranian threat and the need to vanquish it, and intends to act on the matter before the end of his term. … The Iranian problem requires urgent attention, and I see no reason to delay this just because there will be a new president in the White House seven and a half months from now.”

If Bush is discussing war on Iran with Ehud Olmert, why is he not discussing it with Congress or the nation?

On June 6, Deputy Prime Minister Shaul Mofaz threatened, “If Iran continues its nuclear weapons program, we will attack it.” The price of oil shot up 9 percent.

Is Israel bluffing — or planning to attack Iran if America balks?

Previous air strikes on the PLO command in Tunis, on the Osirak reactor in Iraq and on the presumed nuclear reactor site in Syria last September give Israel a high degree of credibility.

Still, attacking Iran would be no piece of cake.

Israel lacks the stealth and cruise-missile capacity to degrade Iran’s air defenses systematically and no longer has the element of surprise. Israeli planes and pilots would likely be lost.

Israel also lacks the ability to stay over the target or conduct follow-up strikes. The U.S. Air Force bombed Iraq for five weeks with hundreds of daily runs in 1991 before Gen. Schwarzkopf moved.

Moreover, if Iran has achieved the capacity to enrich uranium, she has surely moved centrifuges to parts of the country that Israel cannot reach — and can probably replicate anything lost.

Israel would also have to over-fly Turkey, or Syria and U.S.-occupied Iraq, or Saudi Arabia to reach Natanz. Turks, Syrians and Saudis would deny Israel permission and might resist. For the U.S. military to let Israel over-fly Iraq would make us an accomplice. How would that sit with the Europeans who are supporting our sanctions on Iran and want the nuclear issue settled diplomatically?

And who can predict with certitude how Iran would respond?

Would Iran attack Israel with rockets, inviting retaliation with Jericho and cruise missiles from Israeli submarines? Would she close the Gulf with suicide-boat attacks on tankers and U.S. warships?

With oil at $135 a barrel, Israeli air strikes on Iran would seem to ensure a 2,000-point drop in the Dow and a world recession.

What would Hamas, Hezbollah and Syria do? All three are now in indirect negotiations with Israel. U.S. forces in Afghanistan and Iraq could be made by Iran to pay a high price in blood that could force the United States to initiate its own air war in retaliation, and to finish a war Israel had begun. But a U.S. war on Iran is not a decision Bush can outsource to Ehud Olmert.

Tuesday, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Adm. Michael Mullins left for Israel. CBS News cited U.S. officials as conceding the trip comes “just as the Israelis are mounting a full court press to get the Bush administration to strike Iran’s nuclear complex.”

Vice President Cheney is said to favor U.S. strikes. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates and Mullins are said to be opposed.

Moving through Congress, powered by the Israeli lobby, is House Resolution 362, which demands that President Bush impose a U.S. blockade of Iran, an act of war.

Is it not time the American people were consulted on the next war that is being planned for us?