Tag: iran

Another week goes by

Hizballah has got hold of chemical weapons

For the first time in many years, voices in the US administration were criticizing the Israeli defense forces for under-reacting and, in this case, also underestimating the chemical weapons threat emanating from Syria and neglecting to pursue counter-measures. This is what visiting Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak heard when he met US Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel at the Pentagon Tuesday, March 5, as the new defense secretary’s first foreign visitor.
DEBKAfile’s military and Washington sources disclose that Barak was berated for “inadequate and cursory” military preparations which failed to take into account that a chemical attack on Israel would make it necessary for the IDF to enter Syria – most likely for an offensive operation coordinated against the common threat with the Turkish and Jordanian armies.  The rest of the story here

 

Joint task force

A new US-led contingency headquarters for joint US, IsraelU, Jordanian and Turkish operations will go into action inside Syria if any or all these allies should come under chemical or biological attack. Agreement to establish this headquarters was finalized at the talks US Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel held with visiting Israeli defense Minister Ehud Barak at the Pentagon Tuesday, March 5.

DEBKAfile’s military sources report that Hagel spoke of a chemical war in Syria in terms of an imminent and realistic eventuality. Washington expected the Syrian rebels close to al Qaeda to initiate this type of warfare and the Syria army to fight back in kind. Such an exchange could quickly spill over the Syrian borders to its neighbors, it was likewise predicted. Rest of the story here.

 

Egypt

When visiting US Secretary of State John Kerry sat one-on-one with Egyptian President Morsi in Cairo, Sunday, March 3, he talked at length about Egypt’s calamitous economic straits, relations with Israel, democratization and essential reforms. He had hoped to find the Egyptian president amenable to getting to grips with his country’s fast approaching bankruptcy. In the event, Morsi nodded politely but, DEBKAfile’s Middle East sources report, he was far more preoccupied with pushing forward the three-point plan he and the Muslim Brotherhood’s supreme leader Mohammed Badie have begun implementing. Details here

 

Iran

The continuing saga of “I will huff and puff and blow your house down” is here. Meanwhile Iran continues to march closer and closer to their ultimate goal.

 

2 cents:

What does the above stories reflect? The absence of actual leadership as well as the protection of the USA and its allies.

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True colors

As I alluded to before in at least one post here and in many conversations with people on the subject matter of a nuclear Iran, it appears what I thought the CES would actually do is quite possibly going to become a reality.

Today’s article in DEBKA reveals that O’s administration is going to back Khamenei’s fatwa on nuclear weapons by bringing it to the UN. Impact? Exactly what I feared: Israel must come clean about its nuclear program and eventually rid themselves of unilateral ownership of such weapons. This then will shift the Iranian nuclear matter and spotlight onto pressure on the country of Israel. This of course will provide the valuable time needed for Iran to work on realizing its true nuclear aspirations. Why else work with North Korea on detonating nuclear weapons if your program’s aspirations are purely medicine and civil?

 

 

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Hillary Clinton in hospital amid speculation of plane accident in Iran

Something I just came across from Debka that I will be researching to see if I can find out if there is anything to the story.

I had noticed that she has been absent but I figured it was to avoid testimony and being put on the record about the 9/11/12 events.
Part of me actually suspects that she doesn’t want to cover O’s foreign policy bungling in the Middle East.

NOTE: NYT is reporting that the blood clot is actually in a vein between her skull and brain but that she is doing fine.

ADDITIONAL NOTE:  European Union Times report

Story:

US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s admittance to the New York-Presbyterian Hospital Monday, Dec, 31 – with a blood clot caused by concussion – gave wings to a cloud of rumor and conspiracy theories surrounding her state of health. The hospital, where Saudi King Abdullah was also treated two years ago, stated that the Secretary was receiving anti-coagulents and her condition would be assessed after 48 hours.

However, NBC television’s medical correspondent Robert Bazell was skeptical about the blood clot being caused by an earlier concussion because, he said, it if were, it would not be treated with anti-coagulents. “So either it’s not really related to the concussion and she’s got a blood clot in her leg or something, or there’s something else going on that we’re not being told.”

Speculation about her condition started flying about in early December, when she cancelled without notice, her participation in the Friends of Syrian forum in Marrakesh on Dec, 6. Not only was she one of the founders of this forum, but her presence was vitally needed at the time because NATO and Washington were picking up suspicious movements of the Syrian army’s chemical weapons, which marked a disastrous turn in the Syrian conflict.

She was first reported to have come down with flu and, three days later, on Dec, 9, with a stomach bug.
On Dec. 10, the day before she was due to testify before the Senate Intelligence Committee on the September 11 terrorist attack on the US Consulate in Benghazi – in which Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other US diplomats lost there lives –   the State Department which has been heavily under fire over the episode, announced that Clinton had sustained a concussion after fainting out from dehydration.
None of the details normally released in such cases, such as when exactly she fainted, the seriousness of the concussion she suffered or how she was being treated, was offered. A State Department source was only willing to say it was “not severe.”
According to another unofficial report, she was apparently working from home. No one in the office appeared to have been delegated her functions although the secretary herself has not been been absent for three weeks.
Then, Friday, Dec. 21, President Barack Obama announced the nomination of Massachusetts Senator John Kerry as next Secretary of State. Clinton had made it known for some time that she intended stepping down at the start of Obama’s second term of office. It was reported that she had talked to the president and Kerry, and commended the senator as having proven his mettle in a long and wide-ranging military, political and diplomatic career. Nothing was said on this occasion about her state of health.

But around Tehran and the Gulf Emirates, DEBKAfile was already picking up insistent rumors claiming that Clinton was seriously injured while on a secret mission in the region in the first week of December. Some claimed that in the same incident, Americans in her party – advisers and security personnel – were either injured or killed. Those rumors did not say what her secret mission was.  However, the episode described occurred shortly after Dec. 1, when, asDEBKAfile reported at the time, Obama administration officials and senior representatives of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei launched secret talks on Iran’s nuclear program.

Although our sources have not identified the negotiators on either side of the table, one of the theories floating around certain capitals claimed that Hillary Clinton three weeks ago was on her way to a secret meeting with President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in regard to those negotiations. The plane carrying her from Bahrain logged its destination as Baghdad, but  is described as having changed direction in midair and headed for Ahvaz, capital of the south Iranian province of Khuzestan. There, it was said, the Iranian president was awaiting her arrival. But then the plane ran into technical trouble and made an emergency landing and that was when she was injured, according to this theory.

The unexplained death of Commander Job Price, 42, SEALs commander in Afghanistan is tied by some of the speculation to that incident. At the time, the Pentagon reported that his sudden death on Dec. 22, in Uruzgan, Afghanistan, was under investigation. It is now suggested that Commander Price was head of the security detail attached to Clinton for her Iran mission and he was one of the casualties of the accident.

In the nature of things, the impact these kinds of rumors have lingers even when they are officially denied – especially given Secretary Clinton’s unusually long absence from the public eye. The medical report promised Wednesday after she is monitored at the hospital for 48 hours to assess her condition, “including other issues associated with her concussion,” is tensely awaited.  After that, said the hospital announcement, “her doctors will determine if any further action is required.”

Clinton, known as the most traveled Secretary of State in US diplomatic history, has been in the international spotlight since 1992 when her husband Bill Clinton was elected president and she became first lady. She then served in the US Senate and later ran for the presidency against Barack Obama.

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Hamas aims Grad at Dimona reactor

From Debka this morning:

Less than 24 hours after Sudanese President Omar Bashir pledged “decisive steps against Israeli interests which are now legitimate targets,” for the destruction of the Iranian missile plant in Khartoum, Palestinian rocket teams early Sunday, Oct. 28, fired Grad missiles as target finders against Israel’s nuclear reactor in Dimona. This is reported exclusively by DEBKAfile. They exploded on open ground in the Ramat Negev district southwest of the town of Dimona.  
The nuclear plant is only 42.5 kilometers as the crow flies from the southern Gaza Strip.  Saturday night, the Israeli Air Force struck a Palestinian rocket team in the southern Gaza town of Khan Younes, killing one Hamas operative and injuring a second critically.
The Palestinian Hamas has evidently launched a new and expanded targeting-policy marking two developments of grave import: One: Its rulers have submitted the Gaza Strip to Tehran for use as its southern operational arm against Israel, complementing Hizballah’s pivotal role to the north of Israel; and two, having acquired improved surface missiles, Hamas is setting its sights firmly on the most sensitive locations within their reach, e.g., Israel’s nuclear reactor and air force bases and the American X-band radar station in the Negev.
The Islamist rulers of Gaza are expected to keep on trying to perfect their aim.
Israel’s defense ministry and high IDF command sounded at sea Sunday over this dangerous new departure. The IDF spokesperson started out by disclosing that one Grad rocket from Gaza had been aimed at the city of Beersheba, later raising the number to two, both of which exploded outside the city.
But the Grad launched against the nuclear reactor at 07:44 was followed by hours of official silence. Even then, the army spokesperson reported a missile fired against Ramat Hanegev in general terms, without mentioning the reactor’s location in that district at its northernmost point.
It was the second time in three weeks that Tehran was seen to be focusing on Israel’s nuclear plant, DEBKAfile’s military sources note. On Oct. 6, an Iranian stealth drone which flew over Israel managed to photograph the reactor building and its air defense system’s radar. The data gathered was given to Hamas to help guide its first rocket attack on Dimona.

2 cents: Israel will now have to decide how to best react to these new attacks that are attempting to harm the nuclear plant in Dimona. Iran is foolishly helping the re-election of Netanyahu by the continuous attacks on the small nation. Of course being the Islamists that they are they have cornered themselves into never using compromise in order to have peace. Peace with Israel is impossible for an Islamist and don’t let the MB fool you. With the new targets determined in Israel, the actions should also force some reaction by the US, especially if the American X-band radar station in the Negev is attacked. It will be interesting to see just how much change will occur if their is a change in US leadership.

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Politicizing Iran nuclear aspirations

New York Times

Debka

Jerusalem Post

With Monday’s final debate scheduled on the subject of foreign policy it is little surprise that conflicting messages are coming out of the WH. (The 3 sites give 3 different messages.)

Late last night I received the news alert email that the NYT is reporting the WH and Iran has agreed to 1:1 discussions following the election. I rolled my eyes and went to bed.

This morning the WH is denying that this is true. Israel is on record as saying “news to us”. Of course the attempt is to pose O as on the cusp of a vital diplomatic coup JUST BEFORE THE ELECTION. Coincidence? Why of course (eyes rolling again). Mind you that the talks won’t occur until AFTER the election  because Iran wants to know which administration it will actually be dealing with (wink, wink). We are suppose to then reasonably excuse another month of Iranian progress on nuclear technology based on this promise of talks in general. I can  see the posturing on Monday by the CES as he firmly explains Romney is a detriment to the peace process and he would most likely send our young men and women to another war. And with that comment the shenanigans of the leaked story (wink, wink) will be realized.

Question: Do we really see the Iranian regime sitting down with the “Great Satan” to discuss their nation’s programs and plans ethically? Do we see a nation that will cooperate fully “in deed” to inspections and controls by IAEA to ensure solely civil work and use of nuclear technology?

icubudLeave a comment