Iran Air Strikes Growing in Probability

So I was right. That wasn't a nuclear explosion, it was just a Kim Jong Il kimchi and Dom Perignon fueled fart.

Iran's rich architecture and rare treasures threatened by possible US strikes

Unfortunately, I think, such will happen, happens and has happened in any war/attack.



photos from the print edition (page 3)

Iran's involvement with nuclear technology goes back to the time of the Shah. Thus they have built up a considerable nuclear infrastructure and expertise. It will be difficult if not impossible for the Americans to destroy it. Iran has said many times it is not persuing nuclear weapons, but there is little doubt they could build them. An attack on Irans nuclear industry could well provide the impetus for them to do so.

George Bush's disastrous war in Iraq has brought about the one thing American foreign policy sought to avoid, ie. a regional superpower in the middle east, Iran, with effective control over that region's petroleum resources.

America and Israel will just have to live with a nuclear armed Iran, and adjust their policies accordingly.

http://news.independent.co.uk/world/politics/article2344833.ece

This could be the device the Bush administration and/or Israel use to rationalize military action or to forward a narrative of ties between 'bad guys'. We'll have no way of knowing whether any of it is true, of course.

Apr. 1, 2007 1:00 | Updated Apr. 1, 2007 3:29
'US ready to strike Iran on Good Friday'
By JERUSALEM POST STAFF AND AP



The United States will be ready to launch a missile attack on Iran's nuclear facilities as soon as early this month, perhaps "from 4 a.m. until 4 p.m. on April 6," according to reports in the Russian media on Saturday.

According to Russian intelligence sources, the reports said, the US has devised a plan to attack several targets in Iran, and an assault could be carried out by launching missiles from fighter jets and warships stationed in the Persian Gulf.

Russian news agency RIA Novosti quoted a security official as saying, "Russian intelligence has information that the US Armed Forces stationed in the Persian Gulf have nearly completed preparations for a missile strike against Iranian territory."

The Russian Defense Ministry rejected the claims of an imminent attack as "myths." There was no immediate response from Washington.

The reports come as the Iranian chief of staff, Hassan Fayrouz Abadi, was quoted on Saturday by Iran's Fars news agency warning leaders of Arab countries that Israel plans to open a "suicidal attack" on its neighbors this summer, to "prevent the withdrawal of the US troops from Iraq and the area."

"I warn the dear leaders and Muslim brothers in the neighboring countries of the occupied territories that this suicidal attack of the Zionists is threatening them," he said.

The countries in danger, he said, were "Lebanon and Syria, and later Egypt, Jordan and Saudi Arabia."

Also on Saturday, Russia urged Britain and Teheran to resolve the dispute over 15 British sailors and marines captured by Iran last week, a local news agency reported.

Russian Foreign Ministry spokesman Mikhail Kamynin urged the two sides to provide the United Nations with their own assessments as to what happened and where exactly the detention occurred so that the body could conduct an independent probe.

"We hope these actions will provide a foundation for the soonest possible resolution of the crisis," Kamynin was quoted as saying by the Interfax news agency.

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad insisted that the captured British sailors and marines trespassed in Iranian waters and called world powers "arrogant" for failing to apologize, the country's official news agency reported.

"The British occupier forces did trespass our waters. Our border guards detained them with skill and bravery. But arrogant powers, because of their arrogant and selfish spirit, are claiming otherwise," IRNA quoted Ahmadinejad as saying during a speech in the southeastern city of Andinmeshk.

The European Union grappled with a double bind over Iran Saturday - the country's nuclear program and its seizure of the British troops - and reported no progress on either issue.

A debate about Iran's nuclear ambitions had been scheduled as a key agenda item but "was overshadowed to a certain extent by the issue of the sailors and marines," German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier said after hosting a two-day EU foreign ministers meeting in Bremen, Germany.

The Foreign Ministry in Iran dismissed the EU's "biased and meddlesome" comments on the captured troops, saying the dispute solely involved the governments of Iran and Britain.

Speaking to reporters in Bremen, British Foreign Secretary Margaret Beckett urged Iran to resolve the crisis over the military personnel peacefully, saying London remains open to dialogue.

"We encourage Iran to peacefully resolve this issue," she said.

"We continue to express our willingness to engage in dialogue and discussions with Iran," she added. "That is very much in the best interest of our people and that is our foremost concern."

"I think everyone regrets that this position has arisen," she said. "What we want is a way out of it."

AP contributed to this report.

So, since 2005 we have been encouraging Jundullah to conduct raids in Iran. Yet we're angry because they're helping Shiite militias and conservative war nuts suggest we should attack them for doing so.



http://blogs.abcnews.com/theblotter/2007/04/abc_news_exclus.html

Please Bomb me

By Victor Davis Hanson
April 7, 2007



It's probably a good rule to do the opposite of anything the Iranian theocracy wants. Apparently, this government is now doing its darnedest to be bombed. So, for the time being, we should not grant them this wish.
In the last three years, the ranting adolescent theocrats in Tehran have alienated the United Nations' Security Council to the point of earning trade sanctions. That's a hard thing to do, given the U.N. bias toward the former Third World and how China and Russia value petroleum and trade above all else.
Prior to capturing last month the 15 British Navy personnel it has since released, Iran had for years misled and embarrassed Britain, Germany and France, who all tried to negotiate a peaceful end to Iranian nuclear proliferation. As a rule, these are European nations that will suffer almost any indignity to talk a problem away.
It is also nearly impossible to offend the Russian government on any matter of law -- except not by paying debts. Still, Iran even achieved that. Moscow is withdrawing its nuclear technicians, who are critical to Iran's efforts to obtain the bomb.
There is no need to mention Israel, which top Iranians have promised to wipe off the map -- though Israel is a nuclear power with a long record of military prowess. The Iranian leadership's efforts to promote a radical Persian Shi'ite Islam have terrified nearby Sunni Jordan, Egypt and the Gulf monarchies that now detest Iran as much as they do Israel.
Our beef with Iran, of course, goes back well before George W. Bush's presidency. "The Great Satan" as a slur for America was coined when Jimmy Carter was president. In 1979, student gangsters stormed the U.S. Embassy in Tehran and took hostages. Prior to September 11, 2001, the Iranian-backed Hezbollah had killed more Americans than any other terrorist organization.
And by kidnapping last month the British sailors and marines, Iran de facto involved the European Union -- Iran's largest trading partner. The country's leadership apparently worried little about retaliations from NATO, since their officers, according to one former top-ranking military official with whom I spoke, had been orchestrating the killing of Americans inside Iraq since well before Iranian vessels intercepted a British boat they claimed was in Iranian waters.
Those "realists," like former Secretary of State James Baker, who insisted we talk to Iran are now silent. Iran's serial provocations seem to have finally turned off even those in the West who were always willing to give it a second and third chance.
What should we make of the Iranians' behavior? The country's leadership is in deep political trouble. The Iranian government is desperate to provoke the West to win back friends in the Islamic world, and to quell growing unrest at home. Subsidizing food and gas, providing billions for terrorists and building nukes all cost money at a time when the state-run Iranian economy is in shambles.
Because of incompetence in their oil industry, the Iranian mullahs have achieved the impossible: Despite having among the world's largest petroleum reserves, their production is shrinking and they have managed to earn ever less even as the world price has soared.
While the Iranian theocrats understand the entire world, including many of their own citizens, is turning against them, they also know this could change if a Western nation would just attack them. Their strategy seems to be to find a way to provoke someone to drop a few bombs on them, on the naive assumption such an assault would be of limited duration and damage. Such an attack, they may figure, would earn them sympathy in much of the world.
It is undeniable that the U.S., without either invading or suffering many casualties, could use its air power to send the Iranian economy and military back to the mullahs' cherished seventh century. But there is no need to do so



Instead, if the EU would cease all its trade with Iran, and if the West would divest entirely from the country -- that is, boycott all companies that do any business with Tehran -- the theocracy would face bankruptcy within months.
Even if further escalation were warranted, we could at some future date enforce a naval blockade of the Iranian coast that alone would determine what goods would be allowed into this outlaw regime. But bomb Iran?
For now, we should try as hard to avoid it as these desperate clerics seem to want it.

Victor Davis Hanson is a nationally syndicated columnist, a classicist and historian at Stanford University's Hoover Institution and author of "A War Like No Other: How the Athenians and Spartans Fought the Peloponnesian War."

For gods sake, au. Reading Hansen and Krauthammer is not making you a more rational person.

Have you decided you'd like to bomb Iran after all? I thought you favored the "wait for the implosion" strategy. Twould beat the snot out of any military solution, wouldn't it? I vote we funnel a few billion to Maryam Rajavi!

AFGHAN FIGHTING has taken its worst toll on NATO since 2005. link

There is a wide range of rational voices arguing that an air attack by the US (or Israel) on Iran would be counter productive in the extreme. Hansen does not represent one of those rational voices regardless of what he might conclude.

Were there any elements in Hansen's argument in the article pasted above, with which you disagreed?

Russian General Says U.S. Continues Preparations for Iran St
at least the Russians aren't debating on it

Russian General Says U.S. Continues Preparations for Iran Strike[/url]

09.04.2007
http://www.mosnews.com/news//2007/04/09/iranaction.shtml


Photo: AFP


The release of the 15 British sailors and marines captured by Iran has robbed the U.S. of a pretext to attack Iran, but the U.S. has not given up plans to attack Iran militarily, president of the Academy for Geopolitical Problems Colonel General Leonid Ivashov was quoted as saying by the Interfax news agency.

"Preparations to strike Iran's strategic facilities continue. Three major groups of U.S. forces are still in the Arabian Sea and the Persian Gulf. Altogether, they have up to 450 cruise missiles on alert," the general said.

"Military operations against Tehran will begin with the launch of at least two unexpected strikes using Tomahawk cruise missiles and air power in order to disable Iran's air defense capabilities," he said.

"According to our data, up to 150 aircraft are to be involved in each strike on Iran. Land-based air defense systems will be disabled in the first place, then mobile short-range systems, which Tehran has (including some 30 new systems)," he said.

Primary targets will include command centers, air defense installations, the navy, airfields, ports and docking facilities, the general said.

"Nuclear facilities may be secondary targets. According to expert assessments, at least 20 such facilities need to be destroyed in order to stop Iran's nuclear program," Ivashov said.

Ivashov did not rule out that nuclear weapons may be used against Iran.

"Combat nuclear weapons may be used for bombing. This will result in radioactive contamination of the Iranian territory, which could possibly spread to neighboring countries," he said.

"If Iran strikes back at Israel with missiles, Tel-Aviv is likely to use nuclear weapons on Iran," Ivashov said, adding that such a "development of the situation would undermine stability not only in the Middle East, but also in the entire world."

Copyright © 2004 MOSNEWS.COM

Sentence two...

I find Hansen undifferentiatable from the people he speaks of.

And yet you agree with him on the point he made.

Spend more time agreeing with such "ranting adolescent theocrats" and you could harm your image here.

There was an unfortunate young man I met years ago in a youth hostel in Barcelona. He advised that it wasn't safe to visit a particular part of town at night. Locals told me later that it was a particularly unsafe neighborhood. The thing was, this first fellow warned me against it because "there are clouds that you won't see and they'll wrap around your head from behind and you'll forget who you are." Perhaps it was Hansen...age is about right.

Was the place the neighborhood on the left (South) side of the Ramblas as you walked away from the Plaza Colon? I remember it well.

It looks very different now.

Golly. Don't remember now. I was only there for four or five days and for two of those, one of the previously mentioned clouds had me.

I took this from a blog.

We Are Going To Hit Iran. Bigtime"
by Maccabee
Sat Sep 01, 2007 at 03:50:24 PM PDT
I have a friend who is an LSO on a carrier attack group that is planning and staging a strike group deployment into the Gulf of Hormuz. (LSO: Landing Signal Officer- she directs carrier aircraft while landing) She told me we are going to attack Iran. She said that all the Air Operation Planning and Asset Tasking are finished. That means that all the targets have been chosen, prioritized, and tasked to specific aircraft, bases, carriers, missile cruisers and so forth.

I asked her why she is telling me this.

Her answer was really amazing.

Maccabee's diary :: ::
She started in the Marines and after 8 years her term was up. She had served on a smaller Marine carrier, and found out through a friend knew there was an opening for a junior grade LSO in a training position on a supercarrier. She used the reference and the information and applied for a transfer to the United States Navy. Since she had experience landing F-18Cs and Cobra Gunships, and an unblemished combat record, she was ratcheted into the job, successfully changing from the Marines to the Navy. Her role is still aligned with the Marines since she generally is assigned to liason with the Marine units deploying off her carrier group.

Like most Marines and former Marines, she is largely apolitical. The fact is, most Marines are trigger pullers and most trigger pullers could care less who the President is. They simply want to be the tip of the sword when it comes to defending the country. She voted once in her life and otherwise was always in some forward post on the water during election season.

Something is wrong with the Navy and the Marines in her view. Always ready to go in harms way, Marines rarely ever question unless it's a matter of tactics or honor. But something seems awry. Junior and senior officers are starting to grumble, roll their eyes in the hallways. The strain of deployments is beginning to hit every jot and tittle of the Marines and it's beginning to seep into the daily conversation of Marines and Naval officers in command decision.

"I know this will sound crazy coming from a Naval officer", she said. "But we're all just waiting for this administration to end. Things that happen at the senior officer level seem more and more to happen outside of the purview of XOs and other officers who typically have a say-so in daily combat and flight operations. Today, orders just come down from the mountaintop and there's no questioning. In fact, there is no discussing it. I have seen more than one senior commander disappear and then three weeks later we find out that he has been replaced. That's really weird. It's also really weird because everyone who has disappeared has questioned whether or not we should be staging a massive attack on Iran."

"We're not stupid. Most of the members of the fleet read well enough to know what is going on world-wise. We also realize that anyone who has any doubts is in danger of having a long military career yanked out from under them. Keep in mind that most of the people I serve with are happy to be a part of the global war on terror. It's just that the touch points are what we see since we are the ones out here who are supposedly implementing this grand strategy. But when you liason with administration officials who don't know that Iranians don't speak Arabic and have no idea what Iranians live like, then you start having second thoughts about whether these Administration officials are even competent."

I asked her about the attack, how limited and so forth.

"I don't think it's limited at all. We are shipping in and assigning every damn Tomahawk we have in inventory. I think this is going to be massive and sudden, like thousands of targets. I believe that no American will know when it happens until after it happens. And whatever the consequences, whatever the consequences, they will have to be lived with. I am sure if my father knew I was telling someone in a news organization that we were about to launch a supposedly secret attack that it would be treason. But something inside me tells me to tell it anyway."

I asked her why she was suddenly so cynical.

"I have become cynical only recently. I also don't believe anyone will be able to stop this. Bush has become something of an Emperor. He will give the command, and cruise missiles will fly and aircraft will fly and people will die, and yet few of us here are really able to cobble together a great explanation of why this is a good idea. Of course many of us can give you the 4H Club lecture on democracy in the Mid East. But if you asked any of the flight officers whether they have a clear idea of what the goal of this strike is, your answer would sound like something out of a think tank policy paper. But it's not like Kosovo or when we relieved the tsunami victims. There everyone could tell you in a sentence what we were here doing."

"That's what's missing. A real sense of purpose. What's missing is the answer to what the hell are we doing out here threatening this country with all this power? Last night in the galley, an ensign asked what right do we have to tell a sovereign nation that they can't build a nuke. I mean the table got EF Hutton quiet. Not so much because the man was asking a question that was off culture. But that he was asking a good question. In fact, the discussion actually followed afterwards topside where someone in our group had to smoke a cigarette. The discussion was intelligent but also in lowered voices. It's like we aren't allowed to ask the questions that we always ask before combat. It's almost as if the average seaman or soldier is doing all the policy work."

She had to hang up. She left by telling me that she believes the attack is a done deal. "It's only a matter of time before their orders come and they will be sent to station and told to go to Red Alert. She said they were already practicing traps, FARP and FAST." (Trapping is the act of catching the tension wires when landing on the carrier, FARP is Fleet Air Combat Maneuvering Readiness Program- practice dogfighting- and FAST is Fleet Air Superiority Training).

She seemed lost. The first time in my life I have ever heard her sound off rhythm, or unsure of why she is doing something. She knows that there is something rotten in the Naval Command and she, like many of her associates are just hoping that the election brings in someone new, some new situation, or something.

"Yes. We're gong to hit Iran, bigtime. Whatever political discussion that are going in is window dressing and perhaps even a red herring. I see what's going on below deck here in the hangars and weapons bays. And I have a sick feeling about how it's all going to turn out."

Damn.