| Author | Message | | Alpha | |  | | Alpha | | Posted: Wed Mar 05, 2008 6:54 am Post subject: |
| Looks like Israel and Hezbollah are going to go at it again which would be right in accordance with the rest of the 'A Clean Break'/war for Israel agenda:
Is the entire Middle East about to blow?:
http://lataan.blogspot.com/2008/03/is-middle-east-about-to-blow.html
'A Clean Break'/war for Israel:
http://neoconzionistthreat.blogspot.com/2008/02/clean-break.html
The youtube of the call is also linked at the following wakeupfromyourslumber URL:
Blood-thirsty ISRAEL seeks "clean break" to ensnare Iran/Syria into the war after "shoah" attacks on Gaza & Lebanon (be sure to take a look at the comments at the bottom of the following URL)
http://www.wakeupfromyourslumber.com/node/5890
See the additional posts on both pages of the following URL:
http://NEOCONZIONISTTHREAT.BLOGSPOT.COM
Subject: Israel, Hezbollah: Gearing Up for Another War?
Strategic Forecasting, Inc.
---------------------------
ISRAEL, HEZBOLLAH: GEARING UP FOR ANOTHER WAR?
Summary
A number of indications suggest that Israel and Hezbollah could be
readying themselves for a military confrontation in Lebanon in the near
future. Israel's operations in Gaza could be an attempt to ensure it only
has to fight on one front, and Stratfor sources report Hezbollah is
gearing up for a battle.
Analysis
With Palestinian rocket barrages continuing and Israel threatening to
reoccupy the Gaza Strip, U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is
visiting Cairo, Ramallah and Jerusalem on March 4 with the ill-fated goal
of reviving Israeli-Palestinian peace talks. While the
Israeli-Palestinian conflict is bound to flare up every now and then, there appears to
be a bigger issue in play. Israel's current focus on degrading the
Palestinians' rocket-launching ability could in fact be tied to possible
Israeli intentions to wage war against Hezbollah in the near future.
Israel launched a major offensive into the Gaza Strip on Feb. 29 after
Palestinian militants lobbed around 20 Soviet-designed Grad rockets (a
step up from the usual homemade Qassam rockets) into the coastal
Israeli city of Ashkelon, 11 miles north of Gaza. These rockets are more
disruptive than deadly, but they inflict a heavy psychological toll on
Israel. The Israeli government came under heavy pressure to respond in
force, particularly after a Qassam attack killed a civilian in the southern
Israeli town of Sderot.
Despite international condemnation, Israel has made clear that its
operations in Gaza are not over. Haaretz reported March 4 that Israeli
Defense Minister Ehud Barak said this is not a quick operation, but
rather a long process that will involve more intense offensives. Israeli
Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni even threatened that Israel would reoccupy
the Gaza Strip if necessary.
Israel's big push on Gaza might be driven by concerns larger than just
its conflict with the Palestinians, however. There are a number of
indications that Israel could be readying itself for a military
confrontation with Hezbollah in Lebanon in the summer. The Israelis have been
extending unusual carrot and stick offers to Syria as a warning to stay out
of their fight with Hezbollah; U.S. warships are sitting off the coast
of Lebanon, signaling possible U.S. intervention; and Hezbollah --
along with its Syrian and Iranian patrons -- appears to be making
preparations for a coming war.
According to a Stratfor source in Lebanon, a large contingent of
Iranian foreign intelligence officers, military officials and security
experts have recently arrived in Beirut. Iranian missile and tactical support
experts are allegedly in control of several military operations rooms
recently set up by Hezbollah in the southern Lebanese town of Nabatiye
and the Bekaa Valley towns of Mashghara and Al Hirmil. Stratfor has
discussed before the Iranian intent to secure its grip over Hezbollah
ahead of any major confrontation with Israel.
Hezbollah, according to a Stratfor source, also is transporting a
large number of Zelzal missiles to the heights of the West Bekaa valley.
These unguided rockets are large and difficult to transport or hide. They
did not make an appearance in the 2006 conflict; however, if Hezbollah
has managed to acquire several Zelzals, these long-range rockets could
send a large warhead deep into Israeli territory. And Hezbollah is
digging out tunnels and underground shelters, reorganizing its command
structure in the western Bekaa Valley and training under Iranian military
commanders in Tehran. Moreover, Stratfor has received reports that
Hezbollah is installing explosive devices in Iranian-built Mohajer unmanned
aerial vehicles and has acquired new antitank guided missiles.
While Hezbollah appears to be digging in for a fight, Israel is
focusing on diminishing the threat it faces on the Palestinian front. Embedded
in a section on manpower requirements and reserve mobilization in the
final Winograd report on Israel's performance in the 2006 conflict,
several points were made on the difficulties Israel faced due to slow
decision-making in fighting Hezbollah in Lebanon while simultaneously
conducting operations against Hamas in the Gaza Strip. The difficulty during
that conflict was not in fighting the Palestinians per se, but in
having enough manpower to cover both fronts. If Israel can manage to
degrade a fair amount of Hamas' rocket-launching capability in Gaza ahead of
a military confrontation with Hezbollah, it can clear its plate a bit
and focus more intently on the issue of allocating enough forces to
impose a military defeat on Hezbollah.
Copyright 2008 Strategic Forecasting, Inc.
Last edited by Alpha on Sat Mar 08, 2008 9:20 am; edited 1 time in total | | | | Alpha | | Posted: Wed Mar 05, 2008 9:05 am Post subject: |
| -----Original Message-----
From: Stratfor
Sent: Friday, March 07, 2008 12:19 PM
Subject: Lebanon: Israel Sends a Signal to Hezbollah
Strategic Forecasting, Inc.
---------------------------
LEBANON: ISRAEL SENDS A SIGNAL TO HEZBOLLAH
Summary
Israeli warplanes flew over the Lebanese capital of Beirut on March 7, a
day after a Palestinian gunman attacked a yeshiva in Jerusalem, killing
eight students. While Israel has conducted several overflights into
southern Lebanon since the 2006 conflict with Hezbollah, it is unusual
for such flights to go as far north as Beirut. The March 7 overflight is
a warning to Hezbollah.
Analysis
Israel air force (IAF) warplanes flew over the Lebanese capital of
Beirut on March 7, a day after a Palestinian gunman attacked a yeshiva
in Jerusalem and killed eight students. Ever since the 2006 summer
conflict between Israel and Hezbollah, the IAF has conducted a number of
overflights into southern Lebanon. It is far more unusual, however, for
these overflights to extend as far north as Beirut.
This latest overflight represents a direct signal to Hezbollah. The
March 6 yeshiva shooting was claimed by a shadowy organization calling
itself the "Galilee Freedom Battalions--The Martyrs of Imad Mughniyah."
The claim of responsibility flashed across the screen on Hezbollah's Al
Manar television station shortly after the attack. A day later, a Hamas
official told Reuters it is taking "full responsibility for the
Jerusalem operation" and promised to release more details at a later
stage. The claim raises suspicions over why Hamas did not just go ahead
and take credit for the shooting when it issued a statement "blessing"
the shooting the day of the attack. Adding even more confusion to the
situation, Hamas retracted its claim of responsibility for the attack
shortly after the initial claim.
Though Israel has been bracing for a Hezbollah retaliatory attack after
the Feb. 12 assassination of the group's top commander Imad Mughniyah,
the March 6 yeshiva shooting appeared too amateurish to bear the
hallmarks of Hezbollah. That said, Hezbollah could be playing it safe as
it sees a military confrontation with Israel approaching. Hezbollah is
likely aware that Israel's performance in a war against Hezbollah this
time around would be far superior to what it was in 2006, making it
suicidal for the group to give Israel an excuse to wage war in Lebanon.
At the same time, Hezbollah still has a need to retaliate for the
Mughniyah assassination, and it would want to create as much obfuscation
as possible regarding the responsibility for and execution of the
attack. If there is indeed a Hezbollah link to the attack -- no matter
how murky -- a larger militant campaign against Jewish targets with the
potential to extend beyond Israel could be in store.
Regardless of whom the perpetrator of the yeshiva attack was, Israel
still has an excuse to link the shooting to Hezbollah and justify
military intervention in Lebanon against the group. The Israeli
government has been eerily calm following the attack, quickly announcing
that the shooting would not derail peace talks with the Palestinians.
But actions can sometimes speak louder than words, and Israel's unusual
behavior could just be the calm before the storm. The IAF flight over
Beirut looks to be a warning to Hezbollah that trouble is coming its
way.
Copyright 2008 Strategic Forecasting, Inc.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Israeli forces cross boarder line in south Lebanon
http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2008-03/06/content_7733391.htm | | | | Alpha | | | | Alpha | | | | Alpha | | | | Alpha | | | | Alpha | | Posted: Sat Mar 08, 2008 10:58 am Post subject: |
| *India Under New Pressure on Iran*
**
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/030708R.shtml
By J. Sri Raman
t r u t h o u t | Report
Friday 07 March 2008
As the Iran issue threatens to turn critical, New Delhi is faced
with a serious challenge from its policy of promoting a "strategic
partnership" with Washington. Efforts are on to push Prime Minister
Manmohan Singh's government to play a significant support role in case
the Pentagon unleashes another "pre-emptive" war in the Middle East. | | | | Alpha | | Posted: Sun Mar 09, 2008 12:16 am Post subject: Crisis Over Teheran's Alleged Nuclear Plans Nearing Climax |
| Crisis Over Teheran's Alleged Nuclear Plans Nearing Climax
By BILL AND KATHY CHRISTISON
This article came out on CounterPunch this morning:
Reference: http://www.counterpunch.org/christison03082008.html
March 8-9, 2008
Time after time we have heard statements from Israeli officials, spokesmen of the Israel lobby in the U.S., and Israel’s supporters in Congress that Iran “must” never obtain nuclear weapons. On March 3, 2008, all five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council plus nine of the ten non-permanent members approved a new round of sanctions against Iran. Chalk up the final vote of 14-0 with one abstention (the Muslim nation of Indonesia) as another victory at the U.N. for the Israel-U.S. partnership.
The spectacle of the five “permanents” in the antiquated Security Council hierarchy -- all of whom refuse to eliminate their own nuclear weapons -- adopting a double standard with respect to Iran does not, of course, raise more than a peep in the mainstream media of the U.S. Iran, a nation of proud people in a neighborhood of proud peoples, sees only absurdity in the discrimination against it when the nearby nations of India, Pakistan, and Israel have all developed their own nuclear weapons without the U.S. stopping them. Israel’s nuclear weapons program particularly sticks in the Iranian craw, because Iranians know that Israel, an enemy but a far smaller country, acquired nuclear weapons over 40 years ago, considerably earlier than either India or Pakistan. Most Iranians also know that Israel accomplished this only with public and/or private aid from the U.S. It’s all seen as just one more example of the U.S. favoring Israel and picking on Iran.
The issue of the moment is not even actual production of nuclear weapons by Iran, but the “enrichment” of natural uranium so that it contains a higher percentage of one particular uranium isotope, U-235, than is found in nature when the ore called “uranium” is first mined. Such enrichment provides the single most-difficult-to-obtain product used in most nuclear weapons. (In the natural state, the raw ore contains other uranium isotopes as well, and usually has by volume less than one percent U-235. When concentrated to around three percent U-235, the product is widely used in common forms of nuclear power reactors. When concentrated to much higher levels -- 90 percent is the figure often cited -- the product becomes the “weapons-grade” material used in nuclear weapons. The equipment used in this “enrichment” process is not only complicated to build, manage and maintain; it also requires large amounts of electric power to operate. But all of this is within the capabilities of numerous nations and, probably increasingly, some subnational groups as well.)
Iran now possesses, has tested, and is using all the equipment required, and it has the necessary electric power, to produce enriched uranium. It claims it has already reached an enrichment level of around four percent U-235 in early tests. It also claims that it does not want nuclear weapons and will use the enriched uranium only to produce larger amounts of electric power for the nation in a series of nuclear power plants. But if one chooses to believe that Iran really wants nuclear weapons, another element comes into the equation: the ease with which an enrichment operation can be converted to produce weapons-grade uranium. Various Western experts commonly believe that if a nation or group is capable of going from less than one percent to a three or four percent enrichment level, then the technical difficulties of moving from three or four to 90 percent enrichment are not at all major.
The actual design and manufacture of the explosive device, and then of a deliverable weapon, would not be a simple task, but neither would it be terribly difficult. Precise estimates of the time the entire process might take are generally useless. There are too many variables. All such estimates depend heavily on the types of delivery systems available, the degree of targeting accuracy demanded, and the redundancy, or lack, of safety features assumed necessary to prevent unauthorized or accidental use. But for Iran, a simple guess of three or four years probably would be in the ball park.
While the U.S. and other nations demand that Iran cease all production of enriched uranium, the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT) that came into effect in 1970 does not prevent anyone from enriching uranium for peaceful purposes. Iran, as already noted, claims that is all it is presently doing, and there is no hard evidence to the contrary. The U.S., however, and most other signatories of the treaty who already possess nuclear weapons have made no serious efforts to work toward global nuclear and general disarmament as called for in the NPT. The treaty, of course, has no timetable or deadlines in it. But the fact that the major powers who signed the treaty have not even begun multilateral negotiations on nuclear disarmament in 38 years gives Iran a good excuse, if it needs one, to abrogate its participation in the treaty. Some day Iran may do just that. The fact that Israel, India, and Pakistan, who have refused to sign the treaty from the start, have now become known nuclear powers, gives leaders in Teheran yet another excuse to get out of the NPT if it wishes.
While some U.S. empire builders talk about the need to change the global system, the world today is still composed of legally independent states where nationalism is the dominant force underlying relationships among states. In such a world, it is logical to assume that Iranian leaders either already secretly want nuclear weapons or will soon come to want them. They will not indefinitely accept that the smaller state of Israel has any greater right to nuclear weapons than they have. Nor will they even accept that the much larger U.S. has a greater right to such weapons. Short of being forced abjectly to surrender to the U.S.-Israeli partnership, no Iranian government leaders could accept such views.
The possibility of negotiating a nuclear-free zone in the Middle East (including Israel), or even, conceivably, a nuclear-free world, is often suggested as the only true final solution to the Middle East’s or the entire globe’s nuclear dilemma. And the people who make such suggestions can often cite polls or surveys showing that a majority of people everywhere support these ideas. The tragedy is that at the moment there is simply not enough trust among the governments of the globe, or even within one region thereof. Take the United States alone, or the U.S.-Israel partnership. It is inconceivable that the present government of either partner would be able even to begin negotiations on eliminating its nuclear weapons, no matter what the possible benefits might be. The same would apply to China, Russia, Britain, France, India, and Pakistan to greater or lesser degrees.
Even in this time of distrust, however, the U.N. should set up a permanent conference of ambassador-level experts on Disarmament and Global Crises. Once it is up and running, spokespeople for this conference should direct public attention on a daily basis to the relationship between arms spending and the three major crises facing the globe -- the energy, climate, and water crises that will make it increasingly necessary for the peoples of the world to work together in overcoming the crises and drastically cutting back the outrageous and wasteful military expenditures of too many nations. The immediate task of the conference should be to define areas of agreement and disagreement on disarmament and on the other three issues in different regions of the world. The chairperson should be a very senior U.N. official, and the unusual feature of the conference -- its permanence -- should receive great emphasis on every public occasion.
It is likely that before long new and unforeseen developments will occur in one or more of the three crises that will intensify thinking among at least some people about the wastefulness of present military spending. Costly new difficulties in any of the three areas might even lead in fairly short order to a rolling snowball of global opposition and disgust over new nuclear spending. No one can foresee how great will be the changes in daily life caused by the three crises but we should, as best we can, work to make the changes add to rather than detract from harmony among the world’s peoples. We should all specifically try to use these crises to encourage everyone to think first as citizens of the world, only second as citizens of a particular nation or region.
But none of this deals with the present -- or with the remaining months of Bush’s presidency. Since the present group of Republicans and copycat Democrats in Congress refuses to impeach Bush and Cheney, the danger of a war against Iran instigated by the U.S. and Israel remains real. The overextended state of U.S. ground forces, and Bush’s probable willingness to treat at least small nuclear weapons as ordinary weapons, mean that a war would possibly not be a ground war at all, but would begin with large air attacks and early use of nuclear weapons. While the longer term results of using nuclear weapons would be utterly disastrous, both for the world and for the U.S., the immediate results might be seen as a quick and cheap victory for the U.S. If the apparent military victory occurred before the November 2008 U.S. election, it would probably guarantee a Republican electoral victory. Given Bush’s interest in his own place in history, such a scenario could easily appeal to his gambling instincts.
Noise, and lots of it, seems to be the only weapon we have to make it less likely that such a scenario actually happens. Let’s make that noise, do it globally, and do it every day. Pound out the message through every medium we can access, including music and literature, that ordinary people around the world DO NOT WANT THE U.S. AND ISRAEL TO KILL A SINGLE PERSON IN IRAN, regardless of the status of Iran’s nuclear weapons program.
Bill Christison was a senior official of the CIA. He served as a National Intelligence officer and as director of the CIA's Office of Regional and Political Analysis.
Kathleen Christison is a former CIA political analyst and has worked on Middle East issues for 35 years. She is the author of Perceptions of Palestine and The Wound of Dispossession.
They can both be reached at kathy.bill.christison@comcast.net.
----------------------------------------------------------
Fallon 'may lose job over Iran war'
http://www.warwithoutend.co.uk/wake-up-america-your-government-is-hijacked-by-zionism/2008/03/08/fallon-resigns-as-mideast-military-chief.php
Rep. Ron Paul Stands Alone (defying AIPAC) in Voting Against Gaza Bill:
http://www.warwithoutend.co.uk/wake-up-america-your-government-is-hijacked-by-zionism/2008/03/07/rep-ron-paul-stands-alone-defying-aipac-in-voting-against.php | | | | Alpha | | | | | ©2002-2009 WarWithoutEnd.co.uk |
