Israel is stationing a new Iron Dome missile interceptor at Ben Gurion International Airport in preparation for next week’s visit by President Obama as a defense mechanism against a potential attack by the very same terrorists Obama supports in Syria.
“The innovative counter-missile weapon is to be deployed there, not just as a spectacle to honor the US president for his contribution to its development, but out of necessity for his safety,” reports DebkaFile. “Air Force One might be seen as fair game for the ground-to-ground missiles wielded by Al Qaeda units fighting Assad in Syria and its affiliates in the Sinai Peninsula at the very moment that the US President steps down to the strains of the IDF welcoming band.”
The fear is that Al-Qaeda affiliated terrorists who have poured into Syria to lead rebels in the fight against Bashar Al-Assad over the last 12 months could target Air Force One using missiles loaded with poison chemicals.
The newly positioned Iron Dome will remain in place for three days while Obama visits Israel and Jordan. Existing missile defense systems positioned north and south of Tel Aviv were deemed insufficient to protect against the possibility of a rocket attack targeting Obama’s plane.
The spectacle of Israel having to put new security measures in place to protect Obama from the very same terrorists benefiting from his administration’s support of the insurgency in Syria is absurdly ironic.
Numerous reports confirm that Al Nusra is now the leading front line fighting force in Syria and is commanding other rebel groups.
Jabhat al-Nusra is an offshoot of Al-Qaeda in Iraq, another group responsible for killing US troops in Iraq, which recently claimed responsibility for the slaughter of 9 US-trained Iraqi soldiers along with 48 Syrian troops.
Recent reports confirm that US Special Forces and contractors are training Syrian rebels in Jordan, militants who will almost immediately fall under the command of Jabhat al-Nusra terrorists once they enter Syria. The US has also looked the other way when American citizens who fight alongside terrorists – people like and Eric Harroun and Matthew VanDyke - fly around the world and re-enter the United States.
The Obama administration’s prosecution of the war on terror has lost all credibility. After some of the same Libyan militants the US helped overthrow Gaddafi attacked the US consulate in Benghazi, Israel is now being forced to defend Obama against the same terrorists his administration has backed with hundreds of millions of dollars in Syria.
Following the highly scrutinized meeting between President Barack Obama and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu earlier this month in Washington, consensus held that Obama had managed to secure assurances from the war-hungry Netanyahu that Israel would delay a military strike against Iran till 2013. That is, till after the November U.S. presidential election.
According to the Israeli daily Maariv, this commitment of Israeli “restraint” had been bought with the sale of U.S. “advanced bunker-busting bombs and long-range refueling planes” to the Israeli Defense Forces, as al-Akhbar (3/8) reported. Needless to say, such advanced weaponry would be required in any Israeli attack on Iran.
“You shall still have your war,” Obama thus seemingly sought to convey to Netanyahu, “but only in due time.”
Since the Obama-Netanyahu summit, however, indications of such Israeli restraint have dissipated. The Israeli dogs of war are not so easily tamed. In fact, in his latest column for Bloomberg(3/19), the Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg reports that talk of striking Iran is once more convulsing through the Israeli political establishment. And according to Goldberg, all such discussions have assumed a rather optimistic bent.
“One conclusion key officials have reached,” Goldberg writes, “is that a strike on six or eight Iranian facilities will not lead, as is generally assumed, to all-out war.”
We learn further that Israeli officials interpret Obama’s claims of “having Israel’s back” as meaning that even in the event of an Israeli strike against Iran in the face of U.S. protest, “Obama would move immediately to help buttress Israel’s defenses against an Iranian counterstrike.”
All this leaves Goldberg to assess that Israel shall ultimately strike Iran. As he writes, “I’m highly confident that Netanyahu isn’t bluffing—that he is in fact counting down to the day when he will authorize a strike against a half-dozen or more Iranian nuclear sites.”
This unnerving assessment mirrors that held by another favored media conduit for Israeli propaganda, Ronen Bergman, who after similarly speaking with senior Israeli leaders earlier this year, concluded in the New York Times Magazine (1/25) that, “Israel will indeed strike Iran in 2012.”
Notably, Goldberg’s Bloomberg piece appeared the very day the New York Times (3/19) reported on a secret U.S. war game held earlier this month. The war game reportedly simulated an Israeli strike on Iranian nuclear facilities. And as the Times reported, the exercise “forecasts that the strike would lead to a wider regional war, which could draw in the United States and leave hundreds of Americans dead.”
(The report did not specify to any detail on the expected regional war unleashed by an Israeli strike. Nor did the paper mention any projection of potential Iranian casualties. But why would they? After all, as U.S. Gen. Tommy Franks averred back in 2002: “We don’t do body counts.”)
And of course, where there is smoke, there is fire.
Indeed, for the Times ominously noted that a similar exercise took place back in December 2002—at the time simulating a potential invasion of Iraq. And mere months later, as Peter Symonds, writing at the World Socialist Web Site (3/21), reminds us, “US President George Bush unleashed the illegal US-led war of aggression that cost the lives of hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians and devastated much of the country.”
Hence amid its war gaming, the Pentagon continues to accelerate its naval build-up in the Persian Gulf, according to the Los Angeles Times (3/17) and other outlets. The Times writes:
The Navy will add four more mine-sweeping ships and four more CH-53 Sea Stallion helicopters with mine-detection capability. The Navy is also sending more underwater unmanned mine-neutralization units to the region.
The U.S. presently has three aircraft carriers (the USS Carl Vinson, the USS John Stennis, and the USS Abraham Lincoln) and their accompanying striker groups on patrol in the Persian Gulf. And lest one forgets, the U.S. Navy’s 5th Fleet remains stationed in Bahrain.
Coinciding with this massive accumulation of military hardware assembled at Iran’s door has been an escalation of U.S. threats of military assault. In fact, according to the Russian daily Kommersant, the U.S. has indirectly sent a warning to Tehran that the upcoming six-party talks on Iran’s nuclear program, to be held April 15 in Turkey, represent Tehran’s “last chance” to avoid a U.S. military strike. As the Christian Science Monitor (3/14) reports, “US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton asked Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov at a UN Security Council session on March 12 to deliver that tough missive to Tehran.”
President Obama personally conveyed much the same message in a joint press conference held with British Prime Minister David Cameron earlier this month. As the president stated, “the window for solving this issue [the Iranian nuclear crisis] diplomatically is shrinking.”
Such talk of a shrinking diplomatic window comes as it is confirmed–yet again–that Iran is not even pursuing nuclear weapons. “Despite saber-rattling from Jerusalem,” the Associated Press (3/18) reports, “Israeli officials now agree with the U.S. assessment that Tehran has not yet decided on the actual construction of a nuclear bomb.”
Likewise, Reuters states (3/23), “Current and former U.S. officials say they are confident that Iran has no secret uranium-enrichment site outside the purview of U.N. nuclear inspections.”
Meanwhile, the Iranian government has continued to declare its disdain for nuclear weapons. Speaking in late April, Ajatollah Ali Kahamenei reconfirmed his fatwa against nuclear weapons, declaring in part: “We believe that using nuclear weapons is haraam and prohibited and that it is everybody’s duty to make efforts to protect humanity against this great disaster.” And in an interview with German television earlier this month, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad similarly declared that nuclear weapons “belong to the past.”
That said, the French news agency AFP (3/20) reports that Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov has warned that if Iran were to be attacked, it would have no choice but to develop nuclear weapons. As Lavrov stated, “I am almost certain that such a decision will surely be taken after (any) strikes on Iran,”
But, as it ought to be abundantly clear, the present standoff with Iran is motivated not by its imagined nuclear weapons program. Rather, the menace of nuclear proliferation is but a veil used by the militarist regimes residing in the U.S. and Israel to obscure their insatiable appetites for war. And as history has proven, this appetite is unmoved by official state intelligence, let alone a regard for human life.
In an exclusive report, Jerusalem-based DEBKAfile reports that both Israel and the United States are on the same page in regard to launching an attack on Iran.
“American and Israeli intelligence evaluations of the state of Iran’s program are in accord – contrary to the impression gained from Obama administration officials,” DEBKA-Net-Weekly reported on March 22. “Both are of one mind on the imperative to paralyze that program even by force if Iran refuses to give up its pursuit of a nuclear weapon.”
On Friday, it was reported that the United States, European allies and Israel agree that Iran does not have a nuclear weapons program. “Tehran does not have a bomb, has not decided to build one, and is probably years away from having a deliverable nuclear warhead,” the National Post reported. Despite this evidence, the Israeli government has decided to attack Iran.
According to DEBKAfile, Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak said in a radio interview on Thursday that if Israel is resolved to attack Iran, it will have to do so within three months. In February, it was reported that Israel would carry out an attack in June and would use Saudi Arabia as its base.
DEBKAfile claims Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu has convinced a majority of his Security and Diplomatic Cabinet of the urgency of an attack. “He is now backed by the two deputy prime ministers, the defense, foreign affairs, interior and finance ministers, while Intelligence Minister Dan Meridor and Minister without Portfolio Benny Begin are unconvinced. Netanyahu can therefore go ahead and safely put the military option to the vote in the cabinet for the first time,” DEBKAfile reports.
With this consensus, Barak sent IDF Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Benny Gantz to Washington to meet Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Gen. Martin E. Dempsey. Gantz told Dempsey Israel would “be happy if the US halts Iran’s nuclear program in its tracks, no matter whether this is done by economic sanctions, an oil embargo, negotiations between Tehran and the world powers, or secret US-Iranian diplomacy.” The effort, however, would need to fit within the three month timeline.
Israeli officials then met “discretely” with leading members of Congress and told them about the three month timeline.
DEBKAfile states, however, that Israel “may have to part ways with the United States on the Iranian issue the first time in its short history” and attack Iran “before it is too late.”
Israel is now committed to an attack on Iran that will occur during the height of campaigning for the 2012 U.S. presidential election. The Republican national convention will be held on August 27-30 in Tampa, Florida, and the Democrat convention will be held on September 3-6 in Charlotte, North Carolina. If Israel attacks Iran in June, it will undoubtedly be the dominant issue during the convention and the election in November.
Republican candidates Mitt Romney, Rick Santorum and Newt Gingrich have all expressed their support of an Israeli attack on Iran. Ron Paul is the only candidate who opposes an attack. A poll conducted earlier this month revealed that a majority of Republicans believe the U.S. will attack Iran this year.
Obama said on March 5 that the U.S. would always “have Israel’s back” but said there was still time for diplomacy.
Two mainstream media reporters have revealed that the TSA has “strongly cautioned” them not to cover the story of an engineer revealing major flaws in the agency’s $1 billion dollar body scanner program.
As we reported earlier this week, Engineer Jon Corbett of the popular blog TSA Out of Our Pants! posted a video that demonstrates how the TSA’s radiation firing scanners can easily be bypassed, when carrying metal objects.
Despite YouTube initially restricting the video for no discernable reason, the story went viral and the TSA was forced to respond, albeit in a way that only made the subject more pressing.
Now Corbett, who was the first person in the country to sue the TSA over the body scanners, says that two mainstream media journalists have contacted him to make it known that the TSA warned them off the story.
“I’ve been on the phone all day for the last 2 days with reporters and journalists of all kinds,” writes Corbett.
“One South Florida reporter told me that he had been “strongly cautioned” by the TSA not to cover this story. Absolutely unbelievable”
Corbett later updated his post to say that another reporter had also been “strongly cautioned” not to cover the story.
The reporters cite a TSA spokeswoman called Sari Koshetz as the person attempting to intimidate them out of covering the issue. They say that Koshetz described Corbett as someone who “clearly has an agenda” that “should not be aided by the mainstream media”.
“The TSA is clearly no fan of the 4th Amendment, nor of 5th Amendment due process rights, and now this blatant attempt to manipulate the free press with “strong caution” hits at Amendment the First.” writes Corbett on his blog.
“Why strong caution? Are there repercussions for journalists that fail to heed this “advice?” he asks.
“If you’re a journalist who has received any kind of similar warning, please contact me.” Corbett continues. “Everyone else, please take a moment to contact your local mainstream media outlets (Fox, ABC, NBC, CNN, etc.) to request that they cover the original story.”
Corbett praised the alternative media for diligently covering the story:
“The Internet has been absolutely amazing as have large alternative programs (Alex Jones, for example) and I do believe that we have successfully spread the word. But, if the TSA doesn’t want the MSM to cover it, there’s probably a reason, so let’s take the battle there!”
Events over the last several days reveal that the United States and Israel plan to conduct a false flag terror event to be blamed on Iran. The event will likely occur within the next six months and will result in an attack on Iran prior to the November election.
Obama’s intelligence chief, James Clapper (center), warned of Iranian terror attacks inside the United States.
Intelligence in U.S. and Israel Warn of Domestic Terror Attack
Officialdom in the United States and Israel have issued a warning about an Iranian “threat stream” against Israeli “soft targets” in America.
The warning arrives several days after Obama’s intelligence boss James Clapper said Iran may strike inside the United States,
“We predict that the threat on our sites around the world will increase… on both our guarded sites and ‘soft’ sites,” states a letter sent out by the head of security for the Israeli Consul General for the Mid-Atlantic States.
Guarded sites are Israeli government facilities like embassies while soft sites are Jewish synagogues, schools, and community centers.
Yoram Cohen, the head of Israel’s security service Shin Bet, said recently that Iran’s Revolutionary Guard will attack Israeli and Jewish targets abroad in response to the assassination of Iranian nuclear scientists.
In January it was reported Mossad was behind the assassination of Iranian nuclear scientist Mostafa Ahmadi-Roshan.
“The thwarted assassination plot of a Saudi official in Washington, D.C., a couple of months ago was an important data point,” a nameless official told ABC News, “in that it showed at least parts of the Iranian establishment were aware of the intended event and were not concerned about inevitable collateral damage to U.S. citizens had they carried out an assassination plot on American soil.”
Cohen linked the alleged threat to the discredited plot to assassinate the Saudi ambassador in October. A court document in the case revealed that the FBI and the DEA concocted the plot as a sting operation and used failed used car salesman and alcoholic Mansour Arbabsiar as a patsy. Arbabsiar, who is from Iran, thought he was participating in a drug deal.
Despite the fallacious nature of the plot, intelligence officials used it to hype the specter of Iranian terrorism that will likely result in a false flag operation used as a pretext to invade Iran.
“In the past few weeks, there has been an escalation in threats against Israeli and Jewish targets around the world,” an intelligence document cited by ABC News states. It warns that demonstrations against Israel “could potentially turn violent at local synagogues, restaurants, the Israeli Embassy and other Israeli sites.”
The Israeli bulletin also provides an excuse for the TSA to step-up intrusive pat-downs and demand travelers be subjected to dangerous naked body scanners at airports across the United States.
“According to our evaluation there is a possibility that the forged passports will be used in order to pass as Israeli citizens at the security checks in Israel and around the world. Israeli security authorities may consider an Israeli citizenship as a [criterion] to proceed with a more lenient security check in secure sites such as airports, etc.,” the bulletin explains.
The latest warning arrives two weeks after the Turkish newspaper Zaman reported that a cell of the Quds Unit of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard planned to attack U.S. embassy in Ankara and other targets across Turkey.
Fast Moving Timeline for War
The latest development follows a number of events over the past few weeks that point toward a concerted attack by Israel and then the United States on Iran:
• DEBKAfile reported earlier in the week that the United States will have 100,000 troops in the region by March. “Pentagon has been quietly massing troops and armaments on two islands located just south of the Strait of Hormuz, and within easy striking distance of Iran,” Mac Slavo wrote on January 31.
• On Friday, the establishment media reported that Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said “there is a strong likelihood that Israel will strike Iran in April, May or June,” according to the Washington Post. The timeline is predicated on Iran entering an Israeli contrived “zone of immunity” in its unsubstantiated effort to build a nuclear bomb.
• Iran has issued a number of threats in response to punitive oil and economic sanctions devised by the United States and Europe. On Friday, Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said in a nationally televised speech that his country will retaliate if Western nations impose crippling oil sanctions. In January, in response to European Union foreign ministers deciding to impose an oil embargo on the country, Iran vowed to shut down the Strait of Hormuz.
• Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman General Martin Dempsey admitted on January 9 that Iran has the ability to close off the strategic shipping lane linking the Gulf of Oman with the Persian Gulf. He said doing so would constitute a “red line.”
• In December, in response to Sec. Def. Panetta’s not ruling out an attack, Iran announced it would hold a military exercise in the Persian Gulf. The 10 day exercise, dubbed “Velayat-e 90,” demonstrated that Iran has the ability to shut down the Strait of Hormuz. The U.S. further exacerbated the situation by sending the aircraft carrier USS John C. Stennis through the Strait of Hormuz while Iran was conducting its war game.
• Russia and China have indicated that an attack on Iran would constitute an attack on their national security. “Iran is our close neighbor, just south of the Caucasus. Should anything happen to Iran, should Iran get drawn into any political or military hardships, this will be a direct threat to our national security,” said Dmitry Rogozin, Russia’s deputy prime minister and former envoy to NATO, in mid-January.
War President: Re-electing Obama
In November, DEBKAfile said Obama will use war as a re-election tool. “President Barack Obama went on line to America’s senior allies, Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Israel and Saudi Arabia, with notice of his plan to attack Iran no later than September-October 2012 – unless Tehran halted its nuclear weaponization programs,” the neocon-connected subscriber-only publication predicted.
“Obama’s announcement was not perceived as a general directive to US allies, but a guideline to blow the dust off the contingency plans for a strike against Iran’s nuclear facilities which stayed locked in bottom drawers for three years,” states the report, adding that “Obama’s announcement spurred Germany, France, Britain, Italy and Israel into girding their navies, air forces, ballistic units and anti-missile defense systems for the challenges ahead.”
Britain’s foreign secretary William Hague said in January his country has not ruled out military action against Iran. Britain had dispatched its “most formidable warship HMS Daring” to the Persian Gulf region prior to Hague’s remarks.
In 2010, as Obama’s job rating began its descent into the abyss, former Clintonite and Democrat operative Mark Penn said Obama needs a domestic terror attack to regain his popularity. In July of that year, another former Clintonite, Robert Shapiro, said the only thing can preserve the Obama presidency is war.
“The bottom line here is that Americans don’t believe in President Obama’s leadership,” said Shapiro, writing for the Financial Times. “He has to find some way between now and November of demonstrating that he is a leader who can command confidence and, short of a 9/11 event or an Oklahoma City bombing, I can’t think of how he could do that.”
The late Washington Post columnist David Broder was more succinct. “With strong Republican support in Congress for challenging Iran’s ambition to become a nuclear power, he can spend much of 2011 and 2012 orchestrating a showdown with the mullahs. This will help him politically because the opposition party will be urging him on. And as tensions rise and we accelerate preparations for war, the economy will improve,” he wrote in late 2010.
Tensions will undoubtedly rise if there is a terror attack inside the United States, either against an Israeli target or American one.
It would provide an airtight excuse to unleash the awesome power of the U.S. military against Iran and cast Obama in the adulatory light all “war presidents” receive as the masses fall in line and wave their flags and cheer on “our boys” as they decimate another country and engage in yet another bloody massacre of innocents.
DUBAI: Iran has not converted the low-grade uranium that it has produced into weapon-grade uranium, inspectors belonging to the International Atomic Energy Agency have said.
The Austrian Press Agency quoted an IAEA expert as saying that the uranium substances that Iran has produced at its Natanz enrichment facility have been carefully recorded and remote cameras have been installed to supervise part of the stockpile.
“If the Iranians intend to transport these uranium substances to a secret location for further processing, agency’s inspectors will find out,” he said.
The expert added that “so far, Iran has carried out good cooperation with us in relevant verifications”.
IAEA head Mohamed ElBaradei has said that Iran has slowed down its uranium enrichment programme. He made this observation while submitting a report to the U.N. Security Council on Thursday. Iran has reportedly added only 164 centrifuges (which are used for enrichment) since December last, a comparatively slower rate than in the past.
The IAEA report said that Iran had so far produced around 1,000 kg. of low-enriched uranium.
Iran has denied accusations by the United States and its allies that it has been engaged in a clandestine nuclear weapons programme.
The United Nation’s International Atomic Energy Agency is preparing to release a document that will link Iran’s nuclear program to weapons development, according the French newspaper Le Figaro (English translation here). The report will be released next month.
IAEA boss Yukiya Amano.
The newspaper characterizes the release as a “race against time” to head off Iran’s nuclear weapons program. The move would ensure an Israeli attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities, Isabelle Lasserre writes.
IAEA boss Yukiya Amano said last month the agency would release more information on Iran’s program. At that time, Amano said Iran had demonstrated "greater transparency" than usual when it allowed a senior IAEA official to tour previously restricted nuclear sites in August.
In February, 2010, the agency said Iran was working to develop a nuclear-armed missile. “In unusually blunt language, an International Atomic Energy Agency report for the first time suggested Iran was actively pursuing nuclear weapons capability, throwing independent weight behind similar Western suspicions,” Reuters reported.
According to Wikileaks documents, Amano has described himself as being in line with the United States and Israel on key strategic issues. Israel assumes that Iran will develop a nuclear weapon that represents an “existential threat” to the Jewish nation. It has threatened to take out Iran’s nuclear facilities on a number of occasions.
IAEA “inspectors have expressed frustration with Iran’s level of cooperation, but have been unable to find any evidence suggesting that enriched uranium has been diverted to an illicit weapons program,” Seymour Hersh wrote in June.
“There’s a large body of evidence, however, including some of America’s most highly classified intelligence assessments, suggesting that the U.S. could be in danger of repeating a mistake similar to the one made with Saddam Hussein’s Iraq eight years ago — allowing anxieties about the policies of a tyrannical regime to distort our estimates of the state’s military capacities and intentions,” he continues. “The two most recent National Intelligence Estimates (N.I.E.s) on Iranian nuclear progress have stated that there is no conclusive evidence that Iran has made any effort to build the bomb since 2003.”
The highly dubious Iran terror plot now gaining momentum, despite a growing number of skeptics, appears to be pushing the United States into backing either an Israeli strike on Iran or providing a pretext for an outright attack by the United States.
The IAEA report either coincides with the move in the direction of war or was designed to appear at precisely the right time as the U.S. repeats the same “mistake” it made when it attacked Iraq in March of 2003.
Iran says the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) can completely supervise Tehran’s nuclear activities for five years if the sanctions imposed against the Islamic Republic are lifted.
In an interview with ISNA on Monday, Head of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran (AEOI) Fereydoun Abbasi said he had made the offer to Director-General of the IAEA Yukia Amano.
“By lifting the sanctions and meeting mutual obligations, the agency can completely supervise Iran’s nuclear activities without broaching [such topics as] military aspects and alleged studies,” Abbasi further elaborated.
Referring to the recent visit of Deputy Head of the IAEA Safeguards Department Herman Nackaerts to Iran, Abbasi said Tehran’s objectives of taking such measures are to prove that the country has no problem with the agency.
Nackaerts earlier visited Iran’s Bushehr nuclear power plant, the enrichment facilities in Natanz and Fordo, the nuclear fuel rods production factory in Isfahan, as well as the heavy water research reactor in Arak and the city’s heavy water production plant.
The US and its allies accuse Iran of pursuing a military nuclear program, and used this pretext to pressure the UN Security Council into imposing a fourth round of sanctions against Iran.
Iran, a signatory to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and a member of the IAEA, insists on its legal right to use nuclear energy for peaceful purposes.
The U.N. nuclear watchdog on Tuesday rejected Western suggestions it is being soft on Iran, denying that its chief was declaring questions about Tehran’s atomic work resolved despite doubts of his inspectors.
A senior official close to International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) director Mohamed ElBaradei accused unnamed Western powers of using the same “hype” tactics employed against Iraq before the 2003 U.S.-led invasion to justify imposing further sanctions on Iran over its nuclear program.
The IAEA is due to issue a report next week before world powers meet to finalize a U.N. Security Council resolution on more sanctions. The West accuses Iran of secretly seeking the means to make nuclear bombs, a charge Tehran denies.Ahead of the IAEA report, some Western diplomats said the agency’s inspectors were unhappy with top level decisions to declare issues clarified without what they deemed to be sufficiently credible explanations from Iran.
A French media report said on Monday differences between ElBaradei and technical staff could delay the latest report on whether Iran illicitly tried to enrich uranium for arms, not just electricity as it maintains.
Departing from normal IAEA silence ahead of its politically sensitive reports, a senior agency official telephoned Reuters on Tuesday to deny reports of internal dissent. “Reports about disagreements within the agency over the forthcoming Iran report are nonsense,” said the official, who asked not to be further identified. “Work on the first draft of the report has not even started.”
“Some people do not want to see the Iran issue resolved because that would contradict their hidden agendas, he said, adding that “people should have learned from their mistakes in the past, when all the hype over alleged weapons of mass destruction (WMD) in Iraq turned out to be just that — hype”.
Iran agreed in January to answer remaining questions about its past covert nuclear activities within a month. Major progress has been made since and the inquiry is now in its final stages, IAEA sources say.
BIGGEST ISSUE STILL OUTSTANDING
The senior official said Iran had still not clarified the final and most important question on a list delving into its covert nuclear history — suspected attempts under military supervision to “weaponize” nuclear materials. “Our inspectors are still working on clarifying the facts about the alleged weaponization activities in Iran,” he said.
The official said that the Vienna-based IAEA’s central role was to collect information impartially and place it before the agency’s 35-nation board of governors. “If the facts are at odds with the policy objectives of some people who are keen to impose further sanctions on Iran, that’s too bad,” the official added.
Before it invaded Iraq to topple Saddam Hussein in 2003, the United States disregarded IAEA testimony to the Security Council that there was no proof Iraq was still seeking nuclear bombs. No such evidence to back a major U.S. justification for what turned into a chaotic occupation of Iraq has surfaced since.
“Not a single question has ever been raised by member states about the objectivity and professionalism of our reports,” the IAEA official said. “This next one will be no different.” He criticized what he called similar hype about an ongoing nuclear arms drive in Iran until Washington’s own intelligence agencies said in December that this had been shelved in 2003.
ElBaradei has said Iran’s enrichment program poses no imminent threat to international peace. But he has urged Iran to lift restrictions on inspector movements and comply with suspension demands to defuse mistrust in its intentions.
Russia’s foreign minister warned on Monday that any military strike against Iran would be a grave mistake with unpredictable consequences, ahead of a report expected to be released this week by the United Nations’ nuclear watchdog agency showing that Tehran has mastered the critical steps needed to build a nuclear weapon.
According to intelligence provided to the United Nations’ nuclear watchdog agency, the IAEA, Iran appears to have received crucial technical assistance from foreign experts, the Washington Post reported, citing Western diplomats and nuclear experts briefed on the findings by the IAEA.
The Israeli media has been rife with speculation that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is working to secure cabinet consensus for an attack on Iranian nuclear installations.
Fabricated terror plot provides pretext for intervention following Panetta’s October 3 Tel Aviv visit
Paul Joseph Watson
Infowars.com
Wednesday, October 13, 2011
The Obama administration’s fabricated terror plot blamed on Iran represents the green light for an Israeli attack on Iran set to take place within the next two weeks, according to confidential military sources who spoke with Alex Jones.
Israel is concerned that major powers like Germany are moving closer to smoothing relations with Iran and allowing Iran to continue its nuclear enrichment program unimpeded. A two month window has been allocated during which Israel has the opportunity to launch a military assault, waiting until winter when the attack will be more difficult to pull off is not an option.
US Defense Secretary Leon Panetta’s October 3 Tel Aviv visit was used by Israeli hawks to convince the United States that it should green light the attack. Less than 10 days later, a fanciful terror plot involving a used car salesman was invented to implicate Iran and create the pretext for a military assault.
“In recent weeks, intense discussions have taken place in Israeli military and intelligence circles about whether or not to launch a military strike against Iran’s nuclear facilities. Apparently, the key question in the debate was how to ensure that the United States took part in the attack or, at the very least, intervened on Israel’s side if the initial strike triggered a wider war,” writes Patrick Seale of Gulf News.
That intervention has now been mandated by the announcement of the fabricated terror plot, which was actually concocted last month but only made public now.
While U.S. intelligence officials prepare to release claims about a “chain” of plots that will be blamed on Iran, Time Magazine reports that the Obama administration is preparing to use the accusations to take action beyond mere isolation tactics.
“If the Administration fails to win support for a significant escalation of sanctions or other forms of punishment for the Tehran regime after presenting evidence of the latest allegations of Iranian malfeasance, the ball will land back in Obama’s court,” writes Tony Karon. “Having made the case that Iran has crossed a red line, he will be under growing pressure to act — or risk entering a highly polarized election season haunted by a “soft on Iran” charge.”
With neo-cons rushing to support aggressive measures against Iran, Obama will now be given right cover to pursue yet another act of regime change. As we postulated back in February last year, Obama is being blackmailed into supporting an attack on Iran as the only way to save his presidency. We also speculated that an assassination attempt would be used as the pretext to implicate Iran.
Geopolitical experts have been consistent in their warnings that Israel was preparing to strike Iran this fall.
Back in July, 21-year CIA veteran Robert Baer told KPFK Los Angeles that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was planning an attack on Iran in September to coincide with the Palestine bid for UN membership.
Speaking with the Alex Jones Show today, former State Department official Steve Pieczenik, who has numerous inside intelligence sources having worked in several sensitive positions during the course of his career, also indicated that the terror plot was completely fabricated and that it would be used a pretext to justify a military strike against Iran.
Pieczenik also pointed out that Israel had recently taken delivery of a large amount of bunker buster missiles.
As we have documented, the alleged assassination plot against Saudi Ambassador Adel al-Jubeir, which is now being cited by everyone from John Kerry to John McCain as a justification for a potential military strike, is a complete fantasy.
Retired U.S. Army Lieutenant Colonel Anthony Shaffer has revealed that an FBI insider with a high security clearance told him no records whatsoever detailing the plot existed within DOJ channels, clearly indicating the whole episode was manufactured.
It has also now emerged that the alleged “mastermind” behind the plot was a drunk pothead who liked to frequent with prostitutes and was described by those who know him as a “joke”.
Jag undrar när nyheten om Mubaraks stroke når Sverige...
Pengarna som Mubarak "äger" har han stulit från Egyptens folk. Jag har sett några artiklar om detta på vk(nästan).
Men mubarak har tydligen flytt till israel om jag mins rätt och där haft en stroke.
Jag tror han blev "mördad" av israel/USA eftersom att han inte spelade boll med USA med kriget i iraq.
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“American and Israeli intelligence evaluations of the state of Iran’s program are in accord – contrary to the impression gained from Obama administration officials,” DEBKA-Net-Weekly reported on March 22. “Both are of one mind on the imperative to paralyze that program even by force if Iran refuses to give up its pursuit of a nuclear weapon.”
Obama’s intelligence chief, James Clapper (center), warned of 
IAEA boss Yukiya Amano.
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