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Christians4LessGvt

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Obama Fine-Tunes His Iran Options

The Watchword of His Secret PPD Is "Prevention"

President Barack Obama "Prevention" rather than "containment" was the watchword of the secret Presidential Policy Directive (PPD) on Iran, which President Barack Obama signed in the second week of April, White House circles familiar with its contents have told sources.
But by affixing his signature to this directive and endorsing this course, Obama did not put an end to the internal debate n the administration and the military and intelligence communities over its content. They are not clear about the meaning of "prevention." Does it mean preventing Iran developing and acquiring a working nuclear weapon? Or preventing Iran crossing the threshold from the accumulation of the parts and materials for assembling the bomb by holding the tangible threat of American or Israel attack over its head for crossing that threshold?

The object of "prevention" is therefore no more than a punctuation mark before the next stage of the jostling over America's policy for Iran. When circles close to the president are asked how it should work, their reply comes in two parts. Part One, they say, will be the imposition of tough American-European sanctions against the Iranian Revolutionary Guards, their affiliates and elements active in the IRGC-supervised nuclear program. Vice President Joe Biden got it almost right Thursday, April 22, when he said: "I expect new UN sanctions on Iran by late April or early May."

US sanctions first, UN sanctions next

(Biden also dismissed the notion that Israel might attack the Islamic Republic before first allowing sanctions to take their course. A comment relating to a Middle East war this summer is addressed in another article in this issue.) Sources in the White House say that the vice president should have said US sanctions, since a UN Security Council sanctions resolution is not expected by the most optimistic Washington sources to become feasible before August or September. They believe there is a good chance that by then, Moscow and also Beijing will come aboard. In fact, Tuesday, April 27, Russian President Dmitri Medvedev made his most condemnatory and unequivocal comment yet by any Russian about the need to impose penalties on Tehran: "Iran so far does not show proper understanding or behave responsibly enough," he said. "This is all sad of course. Therefore, if this situation continues, we exclude nothing - and sanctions as well," Medvedev told the Danish Broadcasting Corporation ahead of his official visit to Denmark. Another encouraging sign for Washington came from the remarks of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad himself. On Monday, April 26, he attacked the veto prerogative held by the five permanent members of the Security Council as "oppressing and destroying the true nature of mankind and?satanic tools." Washington took this to mean that Iran's leaders already know Beijing will not wield its veto on their behalf to block new sanctions.

What if sanctions don't work - even with Moscow and Bejing aboard?

Not only is China slipping away from Tehran but, according to our Washington and Gulf sources, the most important West European powers have given the nod to new American sanctions and all the Gulf and Arab states, barring Syria, Lebanon and Yemen, have quietly promised to cooperate in their implementation. Even the United Arab Emirates (UAE), a large part of whose economy relies on trade with Iran, has agreed to pull its weight. Our Middle Eastern sources reveal that Washington took advantage this week of a trip to Beijing this week by the Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas to relay a message to the Chinese leadership on behalf of all the main Arab rulers: They asked him to convey a clear message that preventing Iran's acquisition of a nuclear weapons capability is not just a vital Western or Israeli interest, but is shared equally by the Arabs and the Palestinians. Part One of the Obama administration's strategy of prevention is therefore directed at holding Iran back from the critical stage from which it can develop a nuclear weapon. Part Two supposedly scripts a What Next? scenario, should this objective fail and Iran's leaders defy sanctions and international opprobrium to order the masters of their nuclear program to cross the threshold and start assembling nuclear bombs and warheads in earnest.
On this eventuality, the president's close advisers break down into three factions:

Group No. 1: A second PPD is needed

National Security Advisor General James Jones, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Deputy Chairman of the Joint Chiefs General James Cartwright lead the group which holds that this situation would call for a follow-up PPD to be signed by the president and determine whether he is prepared to accept a nuclear-armed Iran or abort it by military action. They argue that a choice between the two options was not laid out in the April PPD, which was only a step towards that decision without going all the way.

Group No. 2: Obama has decided to attack

Aside from White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel, this group is composed almost entirely of influential people outside the administration who are very close to the president, including statesmen, former military personnel, personal friends who influence the president's important political decisions, and some regular golfing companions. This group says no new Presidential Policy Directive is necessary because Obama has already made up his mind about what to do if Iran develops a nuke, without however confiding in any of his close circle: He will attack. "I have no doubt, that when the moment of reckoning arrives, the president will order an attack on Iran," one of these close associates told sources in Washington this week. Tehran appears to have come to the same conclusion. Tuesday, April 27, the influential Washington Web site Politico published a piece by Flynt Leverett & Hillary Mann Leverett, who reputedly run a private American lobby on behalf of Iran, under the title "The Slippery Slope to Strikes on Iran." This was the farthest Politico was prepared to go to signal that President Obama's policy is heading towards a single destination a strike on Iran.

Group No. 3: No more time to play around

This group includes Defense Secretary Robert Gates, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Mike Mullen, Deputy National Security Advisor Tom Donilon, and senior NSC Central Region Director Dennis Ross. They share the view that the president has not yet made up his mind how to handle Iran's assembly of a nuclear weapon, but are pressing him to decide right now. They say time is running out for the necessary preparations in the event US military action against Iran's nuclear facilities is decided on. If American and other Western intelligence evaluations are correct, Iran may be in a position to build a nuclear weapon by August or September, should it choose to do so. That time frame is too close for any delay in making preparations. The pullback of American troops from Iraq on schedule and the start of endgame negotiations for winding down the Afghan war would free up US military resources for any necessary attacks on Iran. But Tehran is fully aware of the pressures on the White House and is adjusting its own tactics and momentum to making sure that by the time Washington's hands are free for action, it will have missed the "prevention" boat. Certain US military and diplomatic steps are nevertheless in hand, accelerated by Tehran's military plans to beat the US and Israel to the military draw. Both are outlined in the next articles.

Who Will Pre-empt Whom?
Iran and Allies Plan a Middle East War This Summer


Ehud Barak, Robert Gates and Admiral Mike Mullen

"Syria and Iran are providing Hizballah with rockets and missiles of ever-increasing capability," US Defense Secretary Robert Gates told a news conference which he addressed jointly with Israeli Defense minister Ehud Barak on Tuesday, April 27. "And we're at a point now, where Hizballah has far more rockets and missiles than most governments in the world," Gates went on to say, "and this is obviously destabilizing for the whole region and we're watching it very carefully." Barak then said: We (Israel) do not intend to provoke any kind of major collision in Lebanon or with Syria, but are watching these developments closely."

However, intelligence and military sources report that neither defense chiefs represented the true state of affairs governing the ever-precarious Israeli-Syrian-Lebanese border triangle. According to intelligence reaching Washington from Iranian sources last week, Tehran is reckoned by some to have resolved to ignite a Middle East war within the next three months - May, June or July. Obama administration leaders and the Israeli defense minister, who spent the whole week in Washington, agreed that August may be the date-of-no-return for hostilities to erupt and judge Tehran has opted for this course for five reasons:

To pre-empt a US/Israel strike

To preempt a possible US or Israeli military strike on its nuclear facilities, by throwing their military preparations awry. To pre-stage its first military clash with the US and/or Israel in an arena far from home - preferably in Syria or Lebanon, if possible. To distract Iranian and world public attention from the threat of sanctions. A Hizballah attack on Israel, after some days or weeks of bloodshed, would put Tehran in a good jockeying position to parlay a ceasefire for the West's consent to drop sanctions. A war in foreign lands would give Iran time to attain its nuclear objectives undisturbed. Sheer opportunism: Tehran's war planners find the current international climate conducive to holding Israel responsible for violent hostilities regardless of the real aggressor. They cite the unhappy state of relations between the Obama administration and the Netanyahu government, the cracks in the close partnership between the Binyamin  Netanyahu and his defense minister, Ehud Barak and the open rift between Barak and Chief of General Staff Gabi Ashkenazi - all of which, the Iranians judge, have brought Israel to its lowest point, domestically, internationally and militarily.

Syrian troops moved from Turkish to Israeli border

This line of thinking was laid out at length in a secret phone conversation Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad held with Syrian president Bashar Assad before dawn on Thursday, April 22, which several Western intelligence organizations in the Middle East were able to intercept. It was echoed in a remark by Syrian Vice President Lt-Gen. Hasan Turkmani Wednesday, April 28, when he inspected the ground maneuvers held jointly by the Syrian and Turkish armies along the northern Syrian border. He lauded the deepening of military ties between Ankara and Damascus because, he said, they made it possible to transfer substantial numbers of Syrian troops from the Turkish border to Syria's border with Israel in readiness for a military confrontation between them. The talks at the Pentagon between Gates and Barak this week therefore revolved around two main questions: A. Israel's response to certain credible scenarios: A clash with Hizballah which the Syrian president decides to expand by pushing into Lebanon the advanced weapons systems standing ready on the Syrian side of the border, the most dangerous of which are Scud ground missile batteries and mobile Igla-S or SA-18 anti-aircraft missiles; or a Hizballah terrorist outrage against an Israel target at home or overseas in Africa, Central Asia or Europe. Barak informed Gates that Israel would view any one of these acts of aggression as a casus belli. B. How to keep this armed conflict from expanding into all-out regional war against Iran or, alternatively, the conditions in which a Middle East war would require America or Israel to attack Iran, separately or together.

Work at feverish pace to prepare logistic base on Diego Garcia

At this time military sources do not have reliable information on what was agreed by Gates and Barak with regard to military cooperation. Those sources have, however, obtained a good picture of the Obama administration's next steps with regard to the Middle East, the Persian Gulf and the Indian Ocean, having gained new impetus from Iran's war planning:

A phased US Navy buildup off Iranian shores.

US fleets will be expanded in the Persian Gulf and Arabian Sea. The single aircraft carrier in the Gulf, USS Dwight D. Eisenhower, will be joined by two more carriers and their assault forces taking up position opposite Iran by the end of July.

Diego Garcia prepared as logistical base

Work is going ahead at a feverish pace to ready the US air and naval installations of Camp Justice, on the Indian Ocean island of Diego Garcia, some 1,000 miles south of the southern Indian and Iranian coasts, to serve as logistical base for a potential US military action against Iran. These island-bases are out of effective range for Iran's missiles, aircraft and the ships, which makes it possible to deploy there already the American warplanes for a possible air strike, along with ordnance such as bunker-buster bombs.
The transfer of all this hardware and troops to the Indian Ocean has been rushed forward in recent days.
In war, Qatari base becomes off-limits US territory Washington has privately warned Qatar ruler Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani that in the event of an outbreak of hostilities in the region, its contractual restrictions on the American use of the Al Udeid Air Base, the largest outside America, will be suspended and the facility wil revert to its status during the US invasion of Iraq in 2003.

US undercover operations in Iran make inroads

American clandestine agencies have intensified their covert activity inside Iran, believing they have acquired very good sources in the country which they did not have a year or two ago. Iran's intelligence agencies seem to share this evaluation and act as though they feel uncomfortably exposed to a more capable alien surveillance. So pleased are America's spymasters with their improved capabilities that , on Monday, April 26, the Washington Post quoted senior US officials as saying openly: "Iran's political turmoil has prompted a growing number of the country's officials to defect or leak information to the West, creating a new flow of intelligence about its secretive nuclear program." A former government official commented: "There is a wealth of information-sharing going on, and it reflects enormous discontent among Iranian technocrats." He added that among senior technocrats in the nuclear program and other fields, "the morale is very low." That same day, an Iranian nuclear scientist was reported by the Israeli media as having recently defected and requested political asylum - the sort of event that rarely sees the light of day.

US envoys to brief Arab rulers

Special US administration envoys are due over the coming weekend and next week to start fanning out through Middle East and Arab Gulf capitals to brief local rulers in person on the new policy the Obama administration is developing for Iran.

Iran's Missiles: Fictional or Real?
Many Are Bluster and Fresh Paint - Some Are Real

Iran announced the firing of five new types of homemade shore-to-sea and sea-to-sea missiles Sunday, April 25 on the third and last day of its "Great Prophet 5" maneuvers in the Persian Gulf and Strait of Hormuz. The Revolutionary Guards Navy's commander of the exercise claimed all five were fired and all struck a single target simultaneously - a major feat for the Islamic Republic of Iran. Only two of the missiles tested were identified as Noor (Light) and Nasr (Victory) missiles. The third was described as having a range of 300 kilometers, but given no name.

However, American intelligence sources, working from US satellite and aerial recon which photographed the entire exercise, say that none of the five "new" missiles was new; they were all old weapons which have been around for a long time and were simply repainted with new colors and given new names. An attempt was made to upgrade some of them, but these alterations were described as "minor and unimportant" in terms of their operational capabilities.

Military sources reports that US and Israeli intelligence analysts decided to take a closer look at Iran's "successfully" tested missiles after an excited Iranian broadcaster described the huge missiles on display on giant trucks at a military parade in Tehran on April 18 as "more advanced than the Russian S-300 interceptor" which Moscow continues to withhold from Tehran. The announcer said the Islamic Republic no longer needs Russian favors since it is capable of manufacturing its own superior product. But then, a sharp examination of the vaunted missiles trundling by revealed cardboard cones or empty canisters freshly painted in military colors.

The Shehab-3 ballistic missile is stuck in its early development



An American missile expert who has been monitoring the Iranian nuclear program told sources that not since 1960s, when Gemal Abdel Nasser's Egyptian Army was wont to parade fake weapons, has any power gone in for displaying phony weapons - that is until the Islamic Republic of Iran tried this out today.

The Shihab-3 ballistic missiles are another case in point. Vaunted by Tehran as its weapon of choice for striking back at US forces and Israel if attacked, and designated to carry Iran's first nuclear warheads, photos taken in the last two years of the Shihab-3 in parades, war games and at Iranian military facilities, reveal long delays in development. Their domestic industry has not managed to produce a warhead capable of carrying more than a half-ton to one-ton of explosives. US intelligence analysts rechecked this finding with comparisons of the Shehab-3 displayed farther back than two years, only to find that the program is essentially "running in place."

According to our Washington sources, Iran owes its lack of progress primarily to Beijing's promise to President George W. Bush, extended for President Barack Obama, to withhold from Iran advanced Chinese technology for advanced ballistic and medium range missiles. Iran has proved unequal to the task of filling the gap on its own and has to be satisfied with Chinese short-range missile data.

So how has Iran come up with solid-fuel missiles?

But China is only one source, our military sources note: North Korea, whose relations with Iran are kept under tight wraps, is a major supplier of missiles and technology, so too are the black markets in arms trade of the former Soviet republics.
In 2001, Ukraine exported to Iran a dozen 18 x 55 cruise missiles (also known as kh-55 or AS-15) complete with ready-made nuclear warhead casings. The X-55 has a range of 3,000 kilometers. So, is Tehran running a clandestine parallel program for developing and manufacturing missiles which are never displayed in public parades or war games? None of the Western officials tracking the Iranian missile program can answer this with much confidence. But clearly, Tehran is not putting all its ballistic achievements on show. It is a fact that Iran has in the past two years produced missiles that run on solid fuel, such as the Samen-Ghadr-10-1 tactical solid propellant ballistic missile, which has a range of 1,000 kilometers; the Sejil, a 2-stage missile with a range of 2,000-2,500 kilometers; and the Ghadr-110A/Ashura, with a range of 3,500 kilometers. On February 3, Iran's Kavoshgar-3 boosted into earth orbit a space capsule carrying a mouse, two turtles and some worms. It is therefore clear that not all is what it seems in Iran's missile industry.

A Provisional Profile - Assad the Juggler


Bashar Assad

For two weeks, Syrian President Bashar Assad has been asking to visit the Egyptian president at the Sinai resort of Sharm el Sheikh and congratulate him on his recovery from a serious operation in Germany. But Hosni Mubarak refuses to see him.
No one in Damascus is talking any longer about the three-way Arab summit which it was hoped would take place between Assad, Mubarak and another visitor, the Saudi King Abdullah. Middle East Sources report that Mubarak has refused to receive the Syrian ruler because of his behavior in two key areas:

His unlimited support for the Lebanese terrorist group Hizballah, wielded ruthlessly with Iran's concurrence to exert Syrian dominion over Lebanon. Cairo has a score to settle with Hizballah. On Wednesday, April 28, Egypt's supreme state security court convened on President Mubarak's orders and sentenced 26 members of a Hizballah network captured in November 2008 to prison sentences ranging from six months to 15 years for conspiring to terrorize Suez Canal towns and shipping and Sinai tourist resorts. Its four ringleaders escaped and were given life sentences in absentia. This terrorist ring acted in conjunction with the Palestinian Hamas rulers of the Gaza Strip, thus supporting Cairo's strong suspicion that the Syrian ruler, who plays host to Hamas headquarters in Damascus, was in on the Hizballah terrorist plot against Egypt. Mubarak is also furious over Assad's systematic torpedoing of every Egyptian initiative to bury the hatchet between the feuding Palestinian Fatah and Hamas factions and the way he steps in to sabotage every initiative for restarting Palestinian peace talks with Israel. Easy consolation in Russian president's coming Damascus visit

To drive his insult home, Mubarak welcomed Sudanese President Omar al Bashir at his winter palace in Sinai on Wednesday and has invited Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to see him next Monday, May 3. The only leader he refuses to receive is Bashar Assad.
But Assad at 45 has plenty of patience. Our sources in Washington and Moscow report that he means to even the score with the Egyptian ruler in only two weeks: on May 11, Russian President Dmitri Medvedev arrives in Damascus for a three-day state visit, making Syria the first Middle East capital to be so honored. Assad will then have his chance to show the entire region, including Cairo and Tehran, how important he is and how indispensable his leadership to the region. Washington sources report that the Obama administration, which has just found out about the Russian president's gesture, finds it hard to account for Moscow's sudden interest in Damascus. Some say that President Barack Obama and secretary of state Hillary Clinton are only feigning surprise to cover the failure of their policy of reconciliation with the Syrian leader.

A new Russian-Syrian arms deal in the offing

Medvedev, these US sources say, is putting on his own act, which is pretty complicated too. Moscow wants to use Syria as a fig leaf for its deepening crisis with Tehran after the Russian president promised Obama to back tough sanctions against Iran. This promise was accompanied by Moscow's secret assurance to hold back from activating Iran's first nuclear reactor at Bushehr - in breach of Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin's pledge earlier this month to have the reactor up and running by August. The Russian president needs to demonstrate that he is not in Washington's pocket on Iran - hence his show of friendship toward Damascus. In fact, Washington expects Medvedev to go so far to underline his non-aligned position as to use his visit to announce a new Russian-Syrian arms transaction that may even include items withheld from Tehran to date. This announcement, by cutting through the US-Syrian crisis over Damascus' buildup of advanced missiles and rockets for Hizballah, aims to bring Moscow influence and respect in the Middle East and Muslim world. Military sources say that Medvedev will also take the opportunity to visit the two large Russian naval bases under construction at Syria's Mediterranean ports of Latakia and Tartous. Joined by Assad, he may well announce plans to expand these bases and augment Russian military presence in Syria.

Sponsorship of terror brings Assad generous dollar returns

So far, the Syrian ruler has neatly outmaneuvered every Obama administration gambit for luring him into the fold. He has sidestepped every effort to persuade him to break away from his strategic bonds with Iran - and in fact strengthened them. And, far from pulling his meddling fingers out of Lebanon, he has succeeded in turning his most adamant Lebanese foes into obedient servants; even the pro-Western prime minister Sa'ad Hariri and Druze leader Walid Jumblatt are now at his beck and call.
Hariri is even on the point of knuckling under to Assad's demand for Beirut to withdraw participation from the UN commission probing the 2005 assassination of his own father, the former prime minister Rafiq Hariri, in which the Assad regime is the prime suspect. The investigation would then collapse.

Instead of weighing in behind a moderate US-Arab Middle East bloc, as Washington had hoped, the Syrian ruler has managed to pull Turkey into the camp he co-heads with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, thereby fortifying the extremist, terror-sponsoring axis of the eastern Mediterranean. They are next eying Iraq as a future candidate. And on the Assad clan's and his regime's military and intelligence prime activity, the business of sponsoring terrorist networks, there is no let-up. This growth industry has netted Bashar Assad a pretty penny year by year since he assumed the Syrian presidency in 2001. In addition to providing sanctuary for terrorist organizations of every stripe, Syria's security and military branches are responsible for seeing their cells and operational networks safely on their way, armed with weapons and cash, to one Middle East flashpoint after another. The organizations which enjoy Assad's favors include al Qaeda and other Muslim extremists, Iraqi Baath insurgents and an array of Palestinian rejectionists dedicated to violence. While acting in the sacred name of "resistance" and "liberation", the Assad regime makes sure the fees for its services are deposited punctually in various bank accounts in Syria or the Persian Gulf before their bombers and gunmen are seen off. With all that he gets away with in Washington and elsewhere, Assad has no trouble living with the Egyptian president's cold shoulder for now.

[SS]

« Last Edit: April 30, 2010, 10:54:25 PM by ChristiansUnited4LessGvt »
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Michael Tee

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Re: Behind the scene chess games...US/Iran/Israel/Russia/China/Ect....
« Reply #1 on: May 02, 2010, 06:03:21 PM »
God, this all sounds eerily familiar.  

Of course, it's our old friend DEBKRAP, voice of the ZioNazis.  (I googled a sentence lifted from the article.)  But it's more than just the familiarity of the DEBKRAP ZioNazi style of writing (a shitload of totally unverifiable "facts" coming from innumberable "sources" and "circles" and "informants" all "close to" or "familiar with" the President or his thinking.)   I meant that it's familiar in that it recalls the War Party's build-up to the Iraq War, another very successful operation, in which America, at the cost of a mere $3 trillion, a few thousand dead hillbillies and a couple dozen thousand more wounded, some crippled for life, successfully neutralized one of Israel's fiercest enemies in the Middle East.

Again we are promised the spectacle of unequaled American military might, the fleet of warships, each of them named (to give weight and authority to the source) the distant foreign base (Diego Garcia) giving them a peculiar untouchability (how the hell can the Iranians hit a ship based in Diego Garcia?) the missiles, the awesome power and special talents of the new weaponry.  Holy fucking shit, THIS TIME it will be a walk in the park.

No mention that the country (USA) is teetering on the brink of insolvency, with two unresolved wars still sputtering along.  Not a hint the the $3 trillion dollar Iraq war had originally been costed at $50 billion and billed as a cakewalk and/or a picnic.  No mention of the American bases in the region that are a hell of a lot closer to Tehran than is Diego Garcia, or that these are land bases whose precise location has undoubtedly already been fed into Iran's trajectory calculators.

I dunno, if the American sheeple had half the collective IQ of a third-grade moron, I'd say this would be an excellent case for a demonstration of the ancient maxim, "Fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice . . . "  However, I'm still stuck on the problem of whether the American sheeple does in fact have half the collective IQ of a third-grade moron.  It may just be that this stuff can be made to work its magic just one more time for the ZioNazi crew in Jerusalem.
« Last Edit: May 02, 2010, 06:14:24 PM by Michael Tee »