04/02: "The Winds of War" - The War of Humiliation

The Flying Dutchman · Apr 1, 2007

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01/04: "The Winds of War" - Ahmadinejad, Bolton Both Rip Brits Over Standoff
http://www.timebomb2000.com/vb/showthread.php?t=235908

<center>The War of Humiliation 

April 02, 2007
Independent
Robert Fisk
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/fisk/article2412764.ece </center>
Our Marines are hostages. Two more were shown on Iranian TV. Petrol bombs burst behind the walls of the British embassy in Tehran. But it's definitely not the war on terror. It's the war of humiliation. The humiliation of Britain, the humiliation of Tony Blair, of the British military, of George Bush and the whole Iraqi shooting match. And the master of humiliation - even if Tony Blair doesn't realise it - is Iran, a nation which feels itself forever humiliated by the West. 

Oh how pleased the Iranians must have been to hear Messers Blair and Bush shout for the "immediate" release of the luckless 15 - this Blair-Bush insistence has assuredly locked them up for weeks - because it is a demand that can be so easily ignored. And will be.

"Inexcusable behaviour," roared Bush on Saturday - and the Iranians loved it. The Iranian Minister meanwhile waited for a change in Britain's "behaviour".

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the Holocaust-denying President from hell, calls Blair "arrogant and selfish" - and so say all of us, by the way - after refusing to play to the crowd at the United Nations. They'll release "serviceperson" Faye Turney. Then they won't release her.

Veiled Faye with her cigarette and her backcloth of cheaply flowered curtains, producing those preposterous letters of cloying friendship towards the "Iranian people" while abjectly apologising for the British snoop into Iranian waters - written, I strongly suspect, by the lads from the Ministry of Islamic Guidance - is the star of the Iranian show.

Back in 1980, when Tehran staged its much more ambitious takeover of the US embassy, the star was a blubbering marine - a certain Sergeant Ladell Maples - who was induced to express his appreciation for Ayatollah Khomeini's Islamic Revolution just before America's prime-time television news.

The Iranians, you see, understand the West. And they understand it much better than we understand - or bother to understand - Iran.

We have forgotten the years of Allied occupation in the Second World War, the deposition of the pro-German Shah and then, humiliation of humiliations, the overthrow of the democratic Prime Minister, Mohamed Mossadeq, engineered by the CIA's Allen Dulles and an eccentric British scholar of Greek, an ex-Special Operations Executive operative - "Monty" Woodhouse by name - with a few guns and a pile of dollars. And the Iranians remember well, how back came the Shah of Iran, our "policeman" in the Gulf, the King of Kings, Light of the Aryans, descendant of Cyrus the Great, to stretch out the young Iranian men and women of the resistance on the toasting racks of their Savak torturers.

Nor have the Iranians any real intention of putting Faye and her chums in front of any court. They'd far rather have the Brits chomping through their "nan" bread on Sky TV, courtesy, of course, of Tehran's Arabic "Al-Alam" channel. And did you notice that little "exclusive" label in the top left-hand corner of the screen when Rifleman Nathan Summers decided to go public?

How the Iranians love mimicking their oppressors. When the gold braid of the Ministry of Defence produce a complexity of maps to prove our boys were in Iraqi waters, the Iranians produce a humble coastguard with a Minotaur map to show that they were in the Iranian briney.

The Union Jack still flies on their rubber boat - but the Iranian banner floats above it. No one has yet explained, I notice, why our boys and girls in blue carry rifles on their sailing adventures if their duty is to hand them over when attacked. Are we actually trying to supply the Revolutionary Guards with more weapons?

But behind all this lie some dark questions - with, I fear, some still unknown but dark answers. The Iranian security services are convinced that the British security services are trying to provoke the Arabs of Iran's Khuzestan province to rise up against the Islamic Republic. Bombs have exploded there, one of them killing a truck-load of Revolutionary Guards, and Tehran blamed MI5. Outrageous, they said. Inexcusable.

The Brits made no comment, even when the Iranians hanged a man accused of the killings from a crane; he had, they said, been working for London.

Are the SAS in south-western Iran, just as the British claim the Iranians are in south-eastern Iraq, harassing the boys in Basra with new-fangled bombs? Will the Americans release the five Iranians issuing visas to Kurds in Arbil whom they locked up a couple of months ago. No, says Bush. Well, we shall see.

There is a lot we do not know - or care to know - about all this. In the meantime, however, it will be left to Blair, Bush and the merchants of the SKY-BBC-CNN-FOX-CBS-NBC-ABC axis of shlock-and-awe to play the Iranian game. Will they put Faye on trial? Will our boys be threatened with execution? Answer: no, but be sure we'll soon be told by the Iranians that they are all spies. A lie, needless to say. But Blair will fulminate and Bush will roar and the Iranians will sit back and enjoy every second of it.

The Iranians died in their tens of thousands to destroy Saddam's legions. And now they watch us wringing our hands over 15 lost souls. This is a big-time movie, the cinemascope of political humiliation. And the Iranians not only know how to stage the drama. They've even written Blair's script.

And he obligingly reads it to cue.

New TV footage shows captured servicemen

Footage of two of the 15 captured Royal Navy personnel was broadcast on Iranian state television last night.

The television station Al-Alam released footage of the captives standing in front of a map of the Persian Gulf where the sailors and marines were captured 10 days ago.

The captives' speech was not initially broadcast, but one of the station's newscasters said they had "confessed" to entering Iranian waters "illegally", according to translations.

The British government maintains that the vessel was in Iraqi waters. The footage was condemned by the Foreign Office last night as "unacceptable".

The two men were seen pointing to a picture of a boat, while the voiceover described how the servicemen had left HMS Cornwall on 23 March and arrived into Iranian waters in a small boat at 10am local time. The broadcaster said hostages were receiving "good and humanitarian treatment".

The same station last week released footage of Faye Turney, the only woman among the captives, and Nathan Thomas Summers, whose footage was released on Friday.

The Ministry of Defence said they would not be identifying the servicemen. The families of all the personnel are understood to have been contacted last night to alert them of Al-Alam's plan to release the footage.

Prior to the release of the footage, Foreign Office minister Des Browne had indicated that a diplomatic solution to the crisis could be sought when he said that "direct bilateral talks" with Iran over the capture were ongoing.

Helen McCormack

The Flying Dutchman · Apr 1, 2007

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<center>Britain Tries to Placate Tehran 

April 02, 2007
The Guardian
Richard Norton-Taylor, Robert Tait in Tehran, and Ewen Macaskill in Washington
http://www.iranvajahan.net/cgi-bin/news.pl?l=en&y=2007&m=04&d=02&a=3 </center>
Britain is ready to defuse the Iran hostage crisis by discussing its operations in the northern Gulf with Tehran and by stating that the Royal Navy would never enter Iranian waters without seeking permission, it emerged yesterday. The offer was described by senior defence officials as a "confidence-building" measure to reassure the Iranians, but would not involve an apology, nor acceptance of claims that the 15-strong British crew were in Iranian waters when they were captured by revolutionary guards on March 23. 

"We are anxious that this matter be resolved as quickly as possible, and that it be resolved by diplomatic means, and we are bending every single effort to that," the defence secretary, Des Browne, told BBC television. "It's not my intention to go through the detail of that blow by blow, and it wouldn't be appropriate to do that, but we are in direct bilateral communication with the Iranians."

But the bid comes at a time of hardening attitudes in Tehran, where hundreds of protesters yesterday abruptly ended a mood of Iranian public apathy towards the crisis by demonstrating outside the British embassy. Several among them, mostly volunteers and pro-government students, threw rocks and firecrackers before trying to storm the compound. Riot police fired tear gas to keep them back.

"If Britain had apologised initially it would have solved everything," said Saeed Abutaleb, a leading fundamentalist MP. "But now the matter has dragged on so long I don't think the Iranian government and nation will be satisfied with an apology, and [the sailors] might be put on trial. "Britain should pay attention to what happened to the American hostages, who were kept until Iran had achieved what it wanted," he told the Guardian. "We have the experience of that embassy siege and we are ready for it again."

The new British initiative follows a diplomatic note from Tehran on Friday which was unusual in not demanding an apology for any alleged incursion, and which sought instead a guarantee against future infringements of Iran's territory. The Foreign Office sent a reply the same day through the embassy in Tehran, but would not disclose the nature of the response.

Defence sources said yesterday there was "no question of negotiations" for the naval crew's release. Britain would instead simply explain how it conducts its naval operations in the region. The sources also played down newspaper reports on Sunday that a senior naval officer would fly to Tehran to explain the British position.

The "confidence-building" initiative would consist of an explanation to Tehran about the Royal Navy's mission in the northern Gulf and operating procedures when crew stop and board vessels suspected of smuggling weapons to insurgents or of planning attacks against Iraqi oil terminals, officials said. It would involve a discussion of the precautions taken to avoid straying into Iranian waters.

In its bid to resolve the crisis, Britain is receiving help from Syria, among other Arab states in the region, the Guardian has learned. Although bilateral relations have been poor in recent years, diplomatic sources said that the Damascus government appears to be trying to help. It is one of the closest in the region to Iran, with which it has signed a defensive pact.

The Qatari government is also seeking to play a mediating role, and British diplomats have claimed to be delighted with the level of support they won at the Arab League meeting in Riyadh last week.

Although Britain has asked the US to keep a low profile in the standoff, President George Bush on Saturday accused Iran of "inexcusable behaviour", though, in keeping with his promise to the British government, he did not raise the issue but was asked about it at the end of a press conference at his Camp David retreat.

Mr Bush signalled that there would be no swap of the Britons for the six Iranians arrested in Iraq in January. He said he supported Tony Blair "when he made it clear there were no quid pro quos. The Iranians must give back the hostages. They're innocent, they were doing nothing, and they were summarily plucked out of water."

The EU has threatened that "appropriate measures" will be taken if the British naval crew are not released, but has not provided any specifics. Segolene Royal, the Socialist candidate for the French presidency, called yesterday for sanctions. "There must be a decision on this question at the European level in the direction of sanctions," starting with economic sanctions, she told Canal+ television, calling for a "very, very" firm international stance to obtain the crew's release.

Reaction

With Iran on its new year holiday, reaction to the crisis was muted until yesterday's demonstrations. Even then, opinion on the streets was divided:

Maryam Ghazisaedy, 22, student

"I don't blame the 15 sailors but I blame the British government for entering our waters, not accepting Iran's legitimate rights and for asking things they have no right to demand"

Ali Razavi, 52

"The British are in Iraq illegally so they had no right to be in the Shatt al-Arab waterway"

Maryam Ebrahimi, 34, importer

"If they came into Iran's waters accidentally I would like them to be released because who knows, this could be used as an excuse to attack Iran"

Hamid, 34, businessman

"They should be released. The Iranian government is misusing it to deflect attention from other problems"

The Flying Dutchman · Apr 1, 2007

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<center>Iran Forces Israeli Rethink 

April 02, 2007
The Guardian
Simon Tisdall
http://www.guardian.co.uk/iran/story/0,,2048070,00.html </center>
Uzi Arad, former director of intelligence at Israel's spy agency, Mossad, has made a lifetime's study of revolutionary Iran. If international sanctions and diplomatic arm-twisting fail to halt its suspect nuclear activities, he is clear what the west must do: bomb Tehran. 

Israel's official policy, like Britain and the US, stresses peaceful pressure to secure Iran's compliance with its nuclear obligations. The so-called military option has been assiduously talked down ever since President George Bush appeared to talk it up in January. In any case, military experts say, air strikes would have limited success.

Mr Arad has no such inhibitions: "A military strike may be easier than you think. It wouldn't just be aimed at the nuclear sites. It would hit military and security targets, industrial and oil-related targets such as Kharg island [Iran's main oil export terminal in the Gulf], and regime targets ... Iran is much more vulnerable than people realise."
Like most Israeli politicians and planners, Mr Arad says maximising pressure on Iran by all non-military means is the current priority.

"Instead of threatening war, my preference would be for building an international coalition to end the [nuclear] crisis," said Israel's veteran vice-premier Shimon Peres. Yet Iran's behaviour following its seizure of the 15 British service personnel showed how difficult that would be. "They will use every trick," Mr Peres said. "They will try and string it out, try to exert maximum pressure. It's blackmail ... But they will pay the price in the end."

To say Iran has become an obsession for Israeli leaders is an understatement. Tehran's sinister hand is seen in all the key problems facing the country, including Hizbullah in Lebanon and Hamas in Palestine, and in the fostering of what Professor Amnon Rubinstein calls Israel's "sense of abandonment surrounded by a rising sea of Islamism".

What is termed the Ahmadinejad phenomenon, after Iran's anti-Zionist president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, represents by common agreement an existential threat. It is radically altering the way Israel views its neighbourhood.

One result has been the effective downgrading of the Palestinian issue. Officials welcome the latest US peacemaking efforts. But they say ongoing, low-level conflict can be "managed" almost indefinitely. Similarly, Israel's relations with Arab governments, including Saudi Arabia, have reached a sort of high in recent months, driven not by a developing affinity, but by shared fear of Iran.

But perhaps the most startling shift in Israel's outlook is its increased willingness to "internationalise" the search for solutions, whether in Lebanon, where it agreed to an enlarged peacekeeping presence after last summer's war, in Palestine, where it has sought EU and other help in isolating Hamas, and in terms of improving relations with the UN.

And as both Mr Arad and government ministers see it, facing down a potentially nuclear Iran is a global, not just an Israeli necessity - and will require a joint international effort. "We draw a parallel with the Third Reich," said a senior leader of the Likud opposition party. "They [Iran's leaders] are mad ... For Ahmadinejad, the cold war idea of mutual assured destruction is not a deterrent, it's an incentive."

The Flying Dutchman · Apr 1, 2007

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<center>Tehran spoiling for a fight

ANALYSIS
Bronwen Maddox
April 02, 2007
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,20867,21486432-2703,00.html </center>
THE most dangerous implication of the seizure of the 15 British sailors and marines - other than the direct threat to them - is that Iran is even more unpredictable and confrontational than it had seemed.

The second is that Russia, despite its own now-explicit unease about Iran's nuclear ambitions, is a serious obstacle to Britain's efforts to rally support.

When Iran seized the sailors, it was reasonable to hope this might be one of the impetuous accidents to which this complicated regime is prone, its factions often disorganised or contradictory. That hope determined Britain's initially low-key response - it was plausible that an over-enterprising group in the Islamic Revolutionary Guards might have decided to seize the sailors, leaving government officials, scrambling into their offices during Iran's New Year holiday, to fit a framework of policy on to some awkward freelancing.

That hope has gone. If officials found the original predicament embarrassing, they have chosen to escalate it, particularly with the letter from Leading Seaman Faye Turner calling on British Prime Minister Tony Blair to pull out of Iraq.

Why now? The clash over Iran's nuclear program is one reason. Britain, along with the US and France, has been pushing in the UN Security Council for tough sanctions against Tehran for its failure to reassure the world that its efforts to develop nuclear power do not conceal a weapons program. The recent imposition of some sanctions had already ratcheted up tension.

British officials have been encouraged that in the nuclear talks, even since the election of hardliner President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad two years ago, Iran has behaved like a "rational regime" that wants to avoid sanctions and calculates the penalties and rewards of its actions. It appeared shaken by the united front of the Security Council last year, while the US's financial sanctions appeared to have a real and rapid effect.

Most of all, Tehran has appeared perturbed by the sudden coolness of Russia, which has withheld shipments of fuel from Iran's first nuclear reactor because of concerns about the ultimate intentions.

Yet Russia's support for the Western position on the nuclear issue has not extended to the hostage crisis - Moscow forced the council to water down the tough condemnation that Britain originally wanted.

No Western diplomat can have taken comfort from Iran's escalation of the nuclear conflict. It has threatened to stop co-operating with the International Atomic Energy Agency. That co-operation is the basis for its claim to be behaving legally under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, and has given other countries their only windows on to Iran's nuclear sites.

Iraq is another probable cause of the seizure of the sailors. Iran has condemned the US surge of troops and the US seizure of Iranians claimed to be military agents. Still, the US is not Britain; it cannot have been lost on Tehran that Mr Blair has said he will soon withdraw about a third of the British forces in Iraq. To hold hostage the troops of a country that says it is heading for the exit counts as picking a fight.

A letter from Tehran, said to be asking for Britain's commitment never to enter Iranian waters again, might be the first sketch of an exit from the crisis that Tehran would consider face-saving. But now the stand-off has gone into its second week, one can only conclude that the regime in Iran, in its various conflicts with the West, is behaving in a more systematically confrontational way than those who negotiate with it had hoped.

The Times

The Flying Dutchman · Apr 1, 2007

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<center>April 2, 2007

Bush ‘will only make situation worse by meddling’

James Bone in New York
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article1600511.ece </center>
Iran reacted angrily to President Bush’s assertion yesterday that the detained British naval personnel were “hostages”.

A Foreign Ministry spokesman in Tehran said that President Bush’s personal intervention in the stand-off could only exacerbate the crisis. 

“Any kind of comment by the Americans in support of the British Government will make the situation worse,” said Mohammed Ali Hoseyni. “Hence, it would be best for the American president to refrain from making ill-judged, nontechnical and nonrational remarks.”

Fearing that American involvement could escalate the crisis, President Bush made no public comment for nine days. But he broke his silence at the weekend to denounce Iran’s “inexcusable behaviour” and describe the detained British sailors and Marines as “hostages”.

The US president’s apparently unscripted intervention came at a press conference with Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, the Brazilian President, at Camp David on Saturday.

Asked a question about the “Iranian hostage crisis”, Mr Bush began by addressing the “Iranian issue” before correcting himself to say: “The British hostages issue is a serious issue because the Iranians took these people out of Iraqi water. And it’s inexcusable behaviour.

“The Iranians must give back the hostages. They’re innocent, they were doing nothing, and they were summarily plucked out of the water.”

Mr Bush refused to say whether Britain would be within its rights to consider a military option or whether Washington would have considered the detention of US sailors to be an “act of war”. He also ruled out any possible exchange for five Iranians seized by US troops in the northern Iraqi city of Erbil.

“I strongly support the Blair Government’s attempts to resolve this peacefully. And I support the Prime Minister when he made it clear there were no quid pro quos,” he said.

Mr Bush repeated his concern about Iran’s suspected nuclear weapons programme. “We will continue to work with the international community to say that it is in the world’s interest that Iran not develop a weapon,” he said.

The Flying Dutchman · Apr 1, 2007

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<center>08:56, April 02, 2007

Israeli defense minister orders to resume pinpoint strikes in Gaza

http://english.peopledaily.com.cn/200704/02/eng20070402_362944.html </center>
Israeli Defense Minister Amir Peretz on Sunday evening ordered Israeli troops to resume pinpoint operations against terrorists in Gaza Strip, ending a months old cease-fire, Army Radio reported. 

Noting "Hamas is taking advantage of the calmness to strengthen itself," Peretz said the operation will aim at halting the Qassam rocket attacks from Gaza Strip.

"There are also both open and covert activities against the threat of tunnels," he added.

Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) Chief of General Staff Gabi Ashkenazi recently also said that the army should take actions against the strengthening of Hamas' military forces.

Last week, for the first time since the cease-fire went into effect, the IDF succeeded in intercepting an Islamic Jihad squad moments before it attempted to launch Qassam rockets from the northern Gaza Strip into Israel.

At the same time, the IDF completed its preparations for a possible major incursion into the Gaza Strip, including special training for most of the units that might be involved and an exercise at the command headquarters level.

But military sources told local daily Ha'aretz that the Israeli government prefers to avoid an escalation with the Palestinians.

Gaza ceasefire was announced last November after several bloody offensives against the Gaza Strip.

Source: Xinhua

happyretiree · Apr 1, 2007

No, no, no. Any (aggressiive or defensive) action in this area now will set this powder keg off. :shk:

The Flying Dutchman · Apr 1, 2007

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<center>Tehran sanctions boost risk of civil nuclear disaster, report says

By Harvey Morris
Published: April 2 2007 03:00
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/ff65e7d0-e0...age=fc3334c0-2f7a-11da-8b51-00000e2511c8.html </center>
International sanctions to starve Iran's nuclear programme have heightened the risk of a radiological disaster that could spread across the Gulf, according to a new British report.

John Large of Large and Associates, UK nuclear consultants, writes that once the Bushehr civilian reactor in southern Iran goes into operation this year, a safety failure - a radioactive leak - could threaten Gulf shipping lanes and Arab Gulf states.

"The United Nations Security Council sanctions are aimed at halting, or at least impeding, the transfer of knowledge, information and equipment relating to Iran's uranium enrichment and heavy water related undertakings," the report, commissioned by the United Arab Emirates' Centre for Strategic Studies and Research, states.

"The irony here is that perhaps the culture essential to maintaining nuclear safety for Iran's separate civil nuclear power programme will be left wanting."

The Bushehr civilian power plant, nearing start-up with Russian assistance, was excluded from United Nations sanctions imposed last December and strengthened this week in an attempt to halt a nuclear programme that experts believe is geared to producing a bomb.

Although Russia would be responsible for overseeing safety and taking charge of spent fuel at the Bushehr plant, Mr Large expressed concern that Iran's isolation from the international nuclear science community would compromise safety at it and other plants.

The report leaves little doubt that the Iran's overall programme would provide it with dual civilian-military capabilities.

The plant at Bushehr "would not, on its own, provide sufficient demand to commercially justify the sheer scale of Iran's ventures into the uranium enrichment and nuclear fuel manufacturing fields."

But Mr Large believes the Iranians have run into problems in perfecting centrifuge uranium enrichment technology at a plant at Natanz and have therefore boosted a heavy water project to produce plutonium at Arak in eastern Iran.

"Reading between the lines suggests that Iran has encountered considerable technical and logistical difficulties and setbacks in its endeavours to establish itself as a nuclear power in the region," the report says.

However, the Arak project "would enable Iran to venture along the route of acquiring a plutonium-cored nuclear weapons arsenal, like North Korea."

Assessing the radiological risks of accident or military strike against Iran's widely dispersed nuclear facilities, Mr Large says little or no contamination would spread from Arak until the plant was up and running.

The Arak facilities would be safe at least until the start-up of the plutonium breeding reactor. Damage to underground facilities at Natanz would pose a radiological threat but it would be confined to the workforce and local population.

However, "the radiological aftermath of an extreme radioactive release at Bushehr, either as a result of a military strike or a severely damaging accident . . . could require rapid implementation of population protection measures," Mr Large writes.

A radioactive plume would potentially contaminate the southern Gulf, including the territory of the UAE.

The report says a punitive strike on Bushehr would have little significance to an Iranian military programme. But after it went into operation, accidental or deliberate damage "might result in an untoward release of radioactivity accompanied by intolerable health and economic impacts across the region."

The Flying Dutchman · Apr 1, 2007

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<center>Iran Mends Fences with Arabs – Starting with Saudis

DEBKAfile Exclusive Report

April 1, 2007, 7:44 PM (GMT+02:00)
http://www.debka.com/article.php?aid=1263 </center> 
The live wire at last week’s Arab League summit in Riyadh was undoubtedly the non-Arab guest of honor, Iranian foreign minister Manouchehr Mottaki.

He breezed around the Arab delegations hard-selling the notion of a mutual defense treaty between Iran and the Arabs on the lines of the Tehran-Damascus pact. Mottaki argued that a treaty of this kind would allay Arab fears of an Iranian nuclear threat, put a stop to a Middle East nuclear arms race, provide the Arabs with a protective umbrella against Israeli aggression and set up an Arab-Islamic front against US and other foreign intervention in the region. 

The Iranian diplomat’s proposition fell on willing ears.

DEBKAfile’s Middle East sources report that he had a long conversation in Riyadh with Saudi foreign minister Prince Saudi al-Faisal, at which they looked the treaty plan in some detail and agreed that their defense ministries would assign special teams to explore it further. The Iranian minister argued that the joint effort of Riyadh and Tehran to pacify Lebanon and reconcile the internal differences among its rival factions could work as well for the Palestinian Authority. He said increasing Saudi-Iranian cooperation in joint diplomatic-strategic projects across the Middle East ought to extend to the military sphere.

Our source also reported exchanges between the Iranian and Egyptian delegations to the Arab summit last week on the resumption of diplomatic ties.

Saturday, March 31, Iran’s chief of staff Gen. Hassan Fayrouz Abadi, prodded the Arabs again; he urged them to hurry up and join Iran in a defense treaty because, he claimed, Israel threatened a war offensive in summer, two months hence. According to the Iranian general, Israel was bent on a “suicide assault” against a number of Arab states to save the Americans from having to pull their troops out of Iraq.

Before the conference ended, the Saudi foreign minister arranged a four-way meeting between King Abdullah, Mottaki, and the two Palestinian leaders, Mahmoud Abbas and Ismail Haniyeh of Hamas. Together they discussed how Iran and Saudi Arabia could work together to apply the Mecca reconciliation accords which established a unity government between Fatah and Hamas. This was taken by Iran as Riyadh’s approval of the military assistance Tehran gives the Palestinians and a formal, collective Arab endorsement.

DEBKAfile’s political analysts take this step as a mark of Saudi contempt for Israel, and further, the collapse of the Saudi initiative led by national security adviser Prince Bandar bin-Sultan for direct Saudi-Israeli talks. Instead, the Saudi-Iranian rapprochement led by Saudi al-Faisal has prevailed. The Israel-Palestinian issue has been shifted to the Saudi-Iranian ken by the Faisal faction which has attained ascendancy in Riyadh and argues that the time has come for the Arabs to take their fate in their own hands and drop their dependence on foreign powers, namely the Americans.

DEBKAfile’s sources have learned that talks for the resumption of Egyptian-Iranian diplomatic relations have already begun. Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak entertained for breakfast in Cairo last week Iranian ex-president Muhammad Hatami, who now heads the Institute for Dialogue among Cultures. Present too was Egyptian prime minister Ahmed Natif. Relations were broken off in 1979, the first year of the Islamic revolution, after Ayatollah Khomeini praised the murderers of President Anwar Sadat and a Tehran thoroughfares for one of the assassins, Muhammad Islambouly.

Hatami pressed his host to seriously consider resuming diplomatic relations, maintaining that the Muslim world is beset by a crisis caused by Western domination. Muslim powers must therefore work together to recover control of their own countries. He spoke highly of Egypt’s importance in the Arab and Muslim worlds. By working together, the two governments could make a difference, he said.

After the meal, Hatami and Natif put their heads together and agreed that a high-ranking Iranian delegation would visit Cairo in April to set up arrangements for the two embassies to re-open. The Iranian leader made a similar attempt to restore relations in 2001 when he was president. It broke down when Iranian extremists refused to take down Islambouli’s street name as demanded by Cairo.

skip1 · Apr 1, 2007

TWO CHOICES

happyretiree said:
No, no, no. Any (aggressiive or defensive) action in this area now will set this powder keg off.

So you answer is to surrender to Iran???? You have two choices: Fight Iran or surrender to Iran.

rodeorector · Apr 2, 2007

How about ignore Iran?

skip1 · Apr 2, 2007

Ignorance is Bliss

rodeorector said:
How about ignore Iran?

Ignore Iran???? Well I guess you can also ignore the Mullah's nuke going off over NYC as they stated through Al-Qaeda that they WANT TO DO in order to bring down our economy. Yup, after that you can ignore the fact that you have no income, no food, gas, heat, electricity & living in relocation camps.

workerbee · Apr 2, 2007

Got The Beach Boys singing in my head...................

BOMB BOMB BOMB
BOMB BOMB IRAN

BOMB BOMB BOMB
BOMB BOMB IRAN

BOMB BOMB BOMB
BOMB BOMB IRAN :whistle:

Kadee · Apr 2, 2007

http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/0,1518,474707,00.html

THE WORLD FROM BERLIN
'A Crisis Is Simmering With Iran'
Iran's intransigence over the 15 kidnapped British sailors has forced London to go on the offensive. Tony Blair has now called on the international community for its support. German commentators praise the British reserve in dealing with the crisis.

REUTERS
Tony Blair is looking for international support in its dispute with Iran over the capture of 15 British sailors.
The stand-off between Tehran and London over Iran's capture of 15 British sailors last Friday shows no sign of abating. On Wednesday the Iranians paraded the Britons on television and suggested the crisis could be resolved if Britain admitted the sailors were in Iranian waters when they were arrested. The British government reacted by releasing data which it says proves that the military personnel were in fact in Iraqi waters at the time of their capture -- and by freezing some bilateral relations with Tehran.

After initially attempting the softly-softly approach, the UK is now calling in the big guns in the international community. The United Nations Security Council is expected to discuss the issue later today. And UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon met with the Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki earlier on Thursday in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, where both men were attending the Arab Summit.

The German papers Thursday praised the British response to the crisis, with some newspapers calling for international solidarity in dealing with Tehran.

The center-left Süddeutsche Zeitung writes:

"No one can accuse the British government of not trying to resolve the conflict over the capture of its sailors without making a big fuss. In the light of the gravity of Iran's act of piracy, London displayed the patience of a saint in trying to build bridges with Tehran ... But, for some reason that cannot be explained rationally, Tehran has ignored these bridges. This at least makes it obvious which side is seeking escalation: Iran.

"Now Britain's sharper tone seems to be showing results: for the first time since the beginning of the crisis, the Iranian foreign ministry is making conciliatory noises ... At this point, an amicable agreement still seems possible. That is heartening news, and also contains a lesson for the future. In dealing with regimes like the one in Tehran, unity and strength is more likely to bring success than hasty conciliation and compromise."

The conservative Die Welt writes:

"In Tehran we are dealing with a 'rogue regime' that seems to be set on torpedoing every chance for peace in the Gulf and the wider Middle East ... The fact that (Ahmadinejad) is now adding a hefty portion of stupidity to his usual practice of playing with fire is a new development.

"Iran is acting so aggressively in the certainty that no British or any other type of armada is going to set out to reprimand it. That doesn't make the situation any less dangerous. A crisis is simmering with Iran, one that can only be quelled with solidarity. To allow this to fail, just because the Germans differed with Washington and London on Iraq, would also be stupid."

The center-right Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung writes:

"The latest conflict between Great Britain and the Islamic Republic of Iran is potentially explosive ... It cannot be separated from the deterioration of the situation in the region. Iran feels itself exposed to growing pressure because of its nuclear plans and is defiant in the face of tougher sanctions by the international community.

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"London has to deal with an Iran that is not far off from being the dominant power in the Persian Gulf. The conflict over the captured soldiers has to be solved with the help of international diplomacy before it leads to complications that no one wants.

"Despite the current antagonism, Germany has traditionally maintained good relations with Tehran, and so could perhaps give political support."

The Financial Times Deutschland writes:

"The manner in which the British have acted in the crisis so far has been correct and clever. At first Tony Blair's government tried to answer Iran's obvious provocation with quiet diplomacy. It was only after Iran proved itself to be stubborn that London upped the ante ... With the freezing of diplomatic relations, Great Britain has shown that it is not avoiding a confrontation.

"At first glance Iran has the upper hand, as the breaking off of diplomatic ties will not free the British soldiers. But nevertheless the British reaction makes it clear to Tehran that the capture has a price ... There is evidence that Iran has grasped this fact."

-- Siobhán Dowling, 3:15 p.m. CET

MichaelUK · Apr 2, 2007

I feel it is going to come to war with Iran but i would not like that because Russia and China are both going to side with Iran and then it will be WWIII and that aint going to be fun.

skip1 · Apr 2, 2007

workerbee said:
Got The Beach Boys singing in my head...................

BOMB BOMB BOMB
BOMB BOMB IRAN

BOMB BOMB BOMB
BOMB BOMB IRAN

BOMB BOMB BOMB
BOMB BOMB IRAN

Not just bomb but INVADE IRAN & TOPPLE MULLAHS

skip1 · Apr 2, 2007

MichaelUK said:
I feel it is going to come to war with Iran but i would not like that because Russia and China are both going to side with Iran and then it will be WWIII and that aint going to be fun.

No they are not. If they still get their oil & natural gas & some other payoffs they will stay out of by meaning of sending troops.

The Flying Dutchman · Apr 2, 2007

=

<center>Iran Could Wait for Blair To Go, America Fears

April 02, 2007
New York Sun
Eli Lake
http://www.nysun.com/article/51606 </center>
WASHINGTON -- American officials, hoping for a tougher line from Europe and Britain, fear the Iranian government will hold hostage the 15 royal marines seized on March 23 until Prime Minister Blair is out of office this summer.

That was a concern this week as Iran hardened its line in negotiations, demanding an official apology from London and airing an alleged apology from one of the seamen captured last month, the second such televised confession of a British captive.

Yesterday, an American intelligence official said the combination of the provocative aired confessions and changing demands made in diplomatic channels has led the Pentagon and military to conclude that the Iranians intend to drag out any negotiations for the release of the hostages until Mr. Blair is out of office, a move in line with the negotiation tack favored by the mullahs in the hostage crisis with the Carter administration. The Iranians waited until after the 1980 election to release the diplomats they had held for 444 days.

While Mr. Blair has not yet announced when he will step down as prime minister, the British press wrote in September that he is preparing to step down as the head of the Labor Party on May 31 and will leave 10 Downing Street on July 26. If the Iranians hold onto the hostages until Mr. Blair is out of office, it would also be a blow to American prestige, as Mr. Blair was the most vocal ally of America's war to topple Saddam Hussein.

The concern that the mullahs are playing for time was influenced in part by promises by the Iranian foreign ministry to begin a show trial of the 15 sailors in the coming weeks. Through diplomatic channels, the Iranians have demanded the release of five members of their Quds Force taken hostage. That could set the stage for a swap. But the demand for a hostage exchange has also varied widely depending on the diplomatic channel.

"There is no hard intelligence right now on the motivations behind this," the intelligence official told the New York Sun yesterday. "It is an informed analysis that circulated in the intelligence community. It is one of the explanations thrown out to explain what they are doing right now."

Other possibilities discussed in the analysis include a response to the vote in Congress to set a date for withdrawal from Iraq and a warning to other great powers that have recently cooperated with the United Kingdom and America diplomatically and financially on sanctioning the Islamic Republic for its defiance of the International Atomic Energy Agency. This source yesterday said, "No conclusions have been made on this."

The British defense minister, on a trip in Afghanistan, which borders Iran, said that his country was taking the diplomatic route for now. In an interview yesterday with the BBC, Des Browne said, "There is no reason to continue to keep them there. We are anxious that this matter be resolved as quickly as possible and that it be resolved by diplomatic means and we are bending every single effort to that."

One such effort was scuttled on Friday when Germany, the European country that does the most trade with Iran, refused a British request to suspend trade with the Islamic Republic. Mr. Blair over the weekend condemned the airing of the public confessions of the sailors. President Bush demanded Saturday from Camp David that the Iranians release the hostages, calling the seizure "inexcusable."

The British people appear to favor a diplomatic route for winning the release of the hostages. A poll published Sunday by the Sunday Telegraph found only 7% of Britons favored military action today. Of those polled, 44% favored military action as a last resort, while 48% opposed military action as a last resort.

In Tehran yesterday, local press reports said 200 people protested outside the British embassy chanting "death to Britain," and "death to America." The regime has cracked down on almost all protests against it, and the protests yesterday are likely to have been coordinated in part with the state and its allied militia known as the Basij.

The Flying Dutchman · Apr 2, 2007

=

<center>Ahmadinejad Endorses Detention of British Marines

April 01, 2007
Fars News Agency
english.farsnews.net
http://english.farsnews.net/newstext.php?nn=8601120106 </center>
TEHRAN -- Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad Sunday said that his country's border guards have shown ultimate courage, vigilance and fairness in arresting the British marines who had trespassed on Iran's territorial waters.

"Military troops of the occupiers have entered our territorial waters very evidently and our brave border guards have arrested them with ultimate courage, vigilance and fairness, but the arrogant powers, instead of extending their apology, have started crying and acting as if this were us who owed an apology to the other side," Ahmadinejad said.

"This is the same spirit which will set the world on fire and the spirit of those who took African families slave," he continued.

The president mentioned that arrogant powers believe that they are superior to others, adding, "Following the World War II, these arrogant powers created international rules and bodies to reign other countries, but you can see that today they are trampling on the same rules and laws to loot the cultures and wealth of other nations."

The Flying Dutchman · Apr 2, 2007

=

<center>How to Fight Tehran 

April 02, 2007
Frontpagemag.com
David Frum
http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=27654 </center>
The Iranian seizure of 15 British naval personnel is an outrage--and an opportunity. Iran invaded Iraqi territorial waters, attacked British naval personnel enforcing resolutions of the UN Security Council and committed an act of piracy and kidnapping.

Iran then displayed its captives on national television and compelled them to read coerced political statements. It forced the captured female sailor to wear the Islamic hijab, a violation of her Geneva Convention right to practice her own religion. 

These violent and lawless actions have shocked British and European public opinion. But they should not have surprised anyone.

Iran has routinely used kidnapping as a tool of state. It kidnapped eight British sailors in 2004, and 52 American diplomats in 1979-81. Iran's Hezbollah surrogates kidnapped Americans, Britons and others in Lebanon in the 1980s. They kidnapped Israeli soldiers in 2000 and again this past summer, triggering a war.

Iran has committed graver crimes too. Iranian agents have committed murder on the soil of the United States, France and Germany--and carried out mass-casualty terror attacks in Saudi Arabia and Argentina.

Today, Iran is racing to build a nuclear bomb, violating its commitments under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. And too many in Europe shrug their shoulders.

This latest crisis, however, opens a chance to mobilize European opinion to action.

One of their own has been attacked and threatened with the prolonged abuse of its military personnel. The story will appear on television night after night after night. The longer it continues, the more British people and other Europeans will wonder: Is there anything we can do? And the good news is: Yes, there is.

The bullying, blustering bravado of the Iranians should not conceal the truth that Iran is massively vulnerable to international pressure. For example:

Iran's decrepit refineries cannot produce enough gasoline for Iranian drivers. So, although Iran is a major oil exporter, it must import 40 percent of its gasoline. An international embargo on gasoline sales to Iran would inflict severe distress. Earlier this month, Iran raised the (deeply subsidized) price of gasoline from 34 cents a gallon to 50 cents. Some in the regime are considering imposing rationing--a move that would badly damage what remains of the mullahs' popularity.

Iran's rusting industries, many of them state owned, depend heavily on parts and equipment imported from Germany. Two-thirds of these sales benefit from export credit guarantees from the German government. As of 2005, Germany had extended some US$6.2-billion worth of credit to Iran. That number has been cut in recent months. But if Germany were to follow Japan's lead and cut its credits to zero, Iranian companies would have to pay more for parts--and some would be forced out of business altogether. The Central Bank of Iran estimates unemployment at more than 12 percent. Many private economists think the real figure closer to 20 percent--and higher still for young Iranians.

The United States has maintained sanctions against Iranian oil and natural gas since 1979. The European Union, however, has continued to invest in Iran. The U.S. Department of Energy estimates that foreign companies, mostly European, have invested US$30-billion in Iran since 1996. Without this investment, Iran's oil and gas output would have faltered long ago. It's time now for Europeans to join the American ban on investment in Iran's energy sector. Such a ban would deal a painful blow to Iran's economy, which has little to sell beside oil and gas. Iran suffers an inflation rate over 20 percent, suggesting that the Iranian government is already overspending its oil and gas revenues. Squeeze those revenues, and you squeeze the regime.

Not all firms investing in Iran are European. Malaysia's Petronas and Russia's Gazprom both play major roles. Till now, firms doing business in Iran have been allowed to do business not only in the EU but also in the United States. It's time now to impose a secondary boycott, and to force firms like Petronas to decide: Either you do business with Iran or you do business with the rest of the planet. You choose.

Since 9/11, Europeans have pleaded with the U.S. to rely on sanctions and diplomacy rather than force. Fine. Let's see some sanctions then--real sanctions, not the wrist-slaps imposed till now.

Iran has been waging war on the world; it's time the world organized in countervailing self-defense. And if anything is needed to stiffen our collective will, let's broadcast one more time that image of Faye Turney, cloaked against her will in that black headscarf of subordination and humiliation.

The Flying Dutchman · Apr 2, 2007

=

<center>Iran Appears Dug in for Lengthy Standoff 

April 02, 2007
The Associated Press
Nasser Karimi and Benjamin Harvey
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/04/02/AR2007040200116.html </center>
TEHRAN, Iran -- The standoff over 15 captured British sailors shows no signs of abating, and analysts say that Iran's tough stance is a demonstration of the power of hardliners unafraid to confront the West.

Events on Sunday only further polarized the situation: Two of the sailors appeared on state TV, acknowledging they trespassed into Iranian waters, and about 200 angry Iranian youths threw rocks and firecrackers at the British Embassy and unsuccessfully tried to rush its grounds. 

Iranian students from several universities shouted "Death to Britain!" and "Death to America!" and demanded the government shut down the "den of spies" _ echoes of slogans from a crisis of a generation ago, when American captives were held hostage by Tehran for 444 days.

Demonstrations in Iran must receive approval from the Interior Ministry.

The 15 Britons were detained by Iranian naval units on March 23 while patrolling for smugglers as part of a U.N.-mandated force monitoring the Persian Gulf. They were seized by Iranian naval units near the mouth of the Shatt al-Arab, a waterway that has long been a disputed dividing line between Iraq and Iran. Iran insists the sailors illegally entered its waters, but Britain says the team was in Iraqi waters at the time of their capture.

Iran has brushed aside diplomatic overtures from the European Union, Japan and Turkey in recent days. And hardline President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has taken a higher-profile role, declaring in his most extensive comments on the crisis that Britain and its allies were "arrogant and selfish" for not apologizing over what he called the Britons' incursion into Iranian waters.

Before the new video was released, Britain appeared to be holding out hope for a diplomatic resolution, saying it was in direct contact with Iran and examining options for new dialogue.

Britain's Foreign Office denounced the video, saying it was "completely unacceptable for these pictures to be shown on TV."

Many observers were already pessimistic.

"This is going to be a prolonged problem," said Dr. Abdulkhaleq Abdulla, a political scientist at the United Arab Emirates University in Dubai. "There are parties in Iran who would like to turn this into another test of strong will, and to show that Iran is capable of making the West meet its demands."

It had appeared earlier in the week that the Iranians were looking for a way to end the standoff quickly. Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki said Wednesday that the only woman captive, Faye Turney, would be released soon.

Within hours, however, the Iranians were rolling back on that timetable, saying that Britain's "bad behavior" had prompted them to delay her release.

Hardliners within the Iranian leadership may have overruled the release, believing that Iran needed to assert itself at a time when it feels under threat from the West, some analysts said.

"They are saying they are a power to be reckoned with in the region," said Joost Hiltermann, a Middle East expert from the International Crisis Group, a think tank. "It's a very dangerous game. Anything can go wrong at any moment."

British officials have ruled out Iran's demand that they apologize for the alleged "illegal entry" of the sailors and marines into Iranian territory. Prime Minister Tony Blair insists the seizure occurred well inside Iraqi waters.

But with the stakes high and options few, Britain has sounded willing in recent days to explore ways of seeking a dialogue with Iran _ no matter how long it takes.

"The responsible way forward is to continue the often unglamorous, but important and quiet diplomatic work to get our personnel home," Transport Minister Douglas Alexander told the British Broadcasting Corp.

National pride has always been strong in Iran and hardliners have often successfully used it to rally domestic support, analysts note.

"For years, Britain has been doing whatever it could against Iran in various fields, such as the nuclear issue. They have to learn that it costs something," said Mahmoud Jafari, a 37-year-old teacher.

Public support for the government could prove a turnaround in Iran, where even conservative backers of Ahmadinejad had been criticizing him for focusing too heavily on confrontation with the West while ignoring domestic problems like high unemployment.

___

Karimi reported from Tehran, Iran, and Harvey from Cairo, Egypt.

The Flying Dutchman · Apr 2, 2007

=

<center>Russian expert says Iran can make nuclear weapons

Mon Apr 2, 2007 12:14PM EDT
By Guy Faulconbridge
http://www.reuters.com/article/worldNews/idUSL0241192520070402 </center>
MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russia's leading nuclear scientist said on Monday that it was just a question of time before Iran developed a nuclear weapon and it should be stopped.

The Islamic republic, facing a showdown with the United States over its nuclear ambitions, clearly has the know-how to make atomic weapons, said Yevgeny Velikhov, a leading physicist and close associate of Russian President Vladimir Putin.

"From a scientific point of view of course they could create nuclear weapons," Velikhov, president of Russia's Kurchatov Institute, told reporters. "When they could do it is a more difficult question."

"If you remember, U.S. scientists expected the Soviet Union would only be able to create a nuclear bomb by around 1954 at the earliest," he said.

"They were rather surprised when we created one in 1949," he said with a chuckle. Velikhov trained under Igor Kurchatov, the leader of the Soviet atomic bomb project.

The United States and European Union powers suspect Iran wants to build nuclear arms while Tehran says its nuclear fuel program is meant only for civilian power generation.

"If they have decided to create nuclear weapons, then they could create them," said Velikhov, who was part of Putin's 2004 re-election campaign team.

"It is important that Iran does not get nuclear weapons. If Iran gets nuclear weapons it will be very negative for the security of the whole world."

ENRICHING URANIUM

Western powers persuaded the U.N. Security Council to impose sanctions on Iran over its refusal to stop enriching uranium in centrifuge machines. The program remains at the research stage but Iran aims to ramp it up to "industrial-scale" enrichment later this year.

Russian officials have said it would take Iran years to assemble nuclear warheads and that Tehran has a right to develop civilian nuclear power.

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But analysts say Moscow has toughened its policy toward Iran -- including a delay to the Bushehr nuclear power station which Russia is helping build -- over concerns about Tehran's nuclear program and worries about a war in the Gulf.

Most diplomats and nuclear experts believe Iran remains a few years away from bomb capacity as it has yet to overcome technical problems such as older centrifuges prone to cracking and overheating, and impurities in uranium feedstock.

They cannot rule out Iran might have made more progress at secret military facilities, but there is no intelligence pointing to clandestine activity at this time.

A Vienna-based diplomat familiar with International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) monitoring said Iran had already grasped enrichment technology so Western powers should focus on trying to limit the program rather than shut it down.

In fact, however, they already have enrichment technology. To continue to insist on zero centrifuges is doomed to failure and bound to drive Iran to further reduce the IAEA's access."

Velikhov, who devoted his life to nuclear technology, said the world's nuclear powers should reject nuclear weapons.

"I consider biological, chemical and nuclear arms should be forbidden and that the holding and development of nuclear weapons should be considered a crime against humanity.

"I think all states should reject nuclear weapons, including the U.S. and Russia," he said.

The Flying Dutchman · Apr 2, 2007

=

<center>April 02, 2007

CRISIS OVER BRITISH PRISONERS

A Dangerous Game of Power and Propaganda

By Dieter Bednarz, Hans Hoyng, Georg Mascolo and Bernhard Zand
http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,475229,00.html </center>
Is it a local border conflict or the beginning of a dangerous confrontation? In the drama surrounding the 15 captured British sailors, Tehran is resorting to propaganda while London is relying on the West for support. Iran has a long history of using hostages as diplomatic pawns.

REUTERS
Members of the group of 15 detained British sailors are shown on Iranian television after media report that the whole group admitted to entering Iranian waters illegally. 

Rarely is an Arab League summit more than a collection of 22 men on somewhat frosty terms issuing meaningless statements.

But that wasn't the case last week in Riyadh, where what Saudi Arabian King Abdullah had to say to his "honorable brothers" sounded more like a lecture to the entire Middle East. "In wounded Palestine, the mighty people suffer from oppression and occupation," the monarch said. "In beloved Iraq, blood is flowing between brothers, in the shadow of an illegitimate foreign occupation, and abhorrent sectarianism threatens a civil war. Lebanon is virtually paralyzed. In Sudan the weakness of the Arabs has led to foreign intervention, and in Somalia one civil war is ending, but only so that the next one can begin."

Lebanese Prime Minister Fuad Siniora began to nod, and Iraqi President Jalal Talabani stopped eating chocolates. Even Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak's rigid pharaoh-like face suddenly perked up.

DER SPIEGEL
Who pulls the strings in Iran
Here was an old man talking about war and peace, about the crises of a part of the world that has come unhinged. And although he did not go easy on his brothers, assigning much of the blame to the Arab world's leaders, they supported him and revived the Beirut Declaration, the most comprehensive Arab proposal to date for peace in the Middle East.

But hardly anyone outside Riyadh was paying attention to the summit, overshadowed as it was by yet another crisis in the Gulf, when Iranian Revolutionary Guards detained 15 British sailors in the waters off the mouth of the Shat al-Arab River. According to the Iranians, the troops of the British Crown, who had been deployed to protect Iraq's terminals, were apprehended in Iraqi waters.

Gradual escalation

Like the screenplay of some political thriller, the conflict gradually escalated. On Wednesday Iran aired images of the British sailors eating a meal, with female sailor Faye Turney in the foreground. On Thursday London appealed to the U.N. Security Council. Instead, it expressed "grave concern." British Prime Minister Tony Blair was quick to register his "disgust" with the Iranians' parading of his country's sailors on television. He had frozen his government's relations with Tehran the day before.

On Sunday about 200 Iranian students threw firecrackers and bricks into the British embassy compound. On Monday Iranian television showed fresh footage of the naval personnel, saying they had all admitted to entering Iran illegally. But Tehran's tone appeared to soften as Iranian television said it had detected a shift in British policy that chould help resolve the crisis.

Ali Larijani, the Iranian national security advisor, criticized London's alarmism and called it "stupid and misplaced" -- as if hostage taking hasn't already been a hallmark of Tehran's foreign policy for decades. President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad demanded an "apology." London, for its part, threatened Iran with more than just diplomatic action if it did not promptly release the British hostages. The markets, the most important seismograph when it comes to earthquakes on the international political front, reacted immediately, and the oil price began creeping back up to the $70 level.

In the past this would have been enough to start a war, with one power provoking and another being forced to take action -- if only to avoid losing face. In the last century, the game the Iranians were playing with the British at the mouth of the Shat al-Arab would have been a classic maneuver designed to produce one outcome: war.

But things are different today, and now the question is whether the case of the 15 British sailors can be negotiated away as a border dispute between two medium-sized powers.

Or has the underlying conflict -- the West's fear of Iran's nuclear program -- already gone too far for moderates on both sides to be able to prevent escalation?

The diplomatic struggle began at the Riyadh summit. In addition to the 22 Arab heads of state, King Abdullah had invited four other prominent statesmen to Riyadh: Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki, Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan and UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon.

Mottaki in particular was urged to ease the situation. Erdogan asked him to at least allow the Turks consular access to the captured sailors. Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari insisted that the British patrol boats had never left Iraqi waters. The Saudis and Ban Ki-Moon also tried to change Mottaki's mind, but their efforts have been unsuccessful so far.

"Ominous confrontation" taking shape

"The Middle East," Ban Ki-Moon told the Arab leaders, "is more complex, more fragile and more dangerous than it has been for a very long time." Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf warned: "tensions in the Gulf region are shaping an ominous confrontation that could have incalculable consequences globally, regionally and among the Muslim Umma (faithful)."

The impasse comes at a time when it seemed that the adversaries in the region were on the verge of giving diplomacy a chance. The United States and Iran had declared their willingness to join other neighbors in an effort to negotiate a solution to the mess in Iraq. A preparatory meeting of ambassadors in Baghdad in early March is to be followed by a mid-April conference at the ministerial level in either Istanbul or Kuwait. That meeting could signal the beginning of a negotiating marathon that could end -- as it did in the cases of Libya and North Korea -- in a major settlement.

REUTERS
Anti-riot police sit under the score board during a soccer match between Esteghlal and Perspolisat at the Azadi stadium in Tehran March 30, 2007.
But things are clearly different in the case of Iran. The abduction of Britain's sailors could well have been the Iranians' way of responding to threats from the United States, Blair's closest ally.

The White House has been deliberately sending out targeted pinpricks designed to unsettle the leadership in Tehran. "The Iranians have a belligerent, loud and dangerous government that is seeking confrontation with the rest of the world," US President George W. Bush said in February, commenting on the men working for his adversary, Ahmadinejad. "Our goal is to keep up the pressure so that reasonable people can come to the fore." The threats were followed by a military buildup in the Gulf and US troops taking aggressive action against Iranians in Iraq.

US Special Forces units hunted down Iranian Revolutionary Guards who had infiltrated Iraq. The Americans believe that these units are in Iraq for the sole purpose of training Shiite death squads. Dozens of Iranians were arrested, and five are still in detention today.

Some of the Iranians arrested in the northern Iraqi city of Arbil are said to be high-ranking members of the Revolutionary Guards, including General Mohammad Djafari Sahraroudi, a man who is wanted by Interpol for his role in the murder of Iranian Kurd dissidents in Vienna in 1989.

Spy games

Tehran also feels threatened by the disappearance of Ali Reza Asgari, a former deputy defense minister and general in the Revolutionary Guards. The Iranian leadership claims that Asgari, who was last seen in Istanbul in December, was kidnapped, and it suspects the United States. There are persistent rumors that he is in US custody, where he is being interrogated. Robert Baer, a former CIA agent, speculates that Asgari could be helping the Americans develop proof of the Revolutionary Guards' involvement in terrorist activities, proof, says Baer, "that could be used to justify a war with Iran."

The Iranians are fighting back with barbs of their own, also intended to unsettle their adversaries, from Iran's reported efforts to capture American and Israeli spies to the Tehran government's claims that the Americans and British are behind attacks in southern Iran.

Despite CIA Director Michael Hayden's early warnings to the White House about the possibility of a dangerous escalation of the US's conflict with Iran, Bush opted for intimidation tactics. According to Vali Nasr, an Iranian-born political science professor and one of the foremost experts on Iran in the United States, the CIA believed it was winning the intimidation game, "but now the Iranians have shown that they can play the same game."

After the arrests in Arbil, Tehran's leadership used the Revolutionary Guards' weekly newspaper, Subhi Sadek, to threaten countermeasures. In retaliation, the paper wrote, the Revolutionary Guards, or Pasdaran, could "capture a nice bunch of blue-eyed blond-haired officers and feed them to our fighting cocks." Those officers, as it has now turned out, are British.

Powerful Pasdaran

Tehran's Supreme Defense Council met in mid-March, apparently in response to pressure from the Pasdaran. The commander of the group's elite force, the Al-Quds Brigade, is said to have insisted that the Iranian leadership not take the Arbil arrests lying down. Given the Pasdaran's importance within the Tehran power structure, it was a demand the regime could not simply ignore.

Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the man behind the revolution that led to the Shah's ouster, established the Pasdaran because he distrusted the police and the regular army. The members of the Pasdaran were loyal followers of Khomeini, legendary for their fanaticism and willingness to make sacrifices.

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, a former member the Al-Quds Brigade, has since made a career for himself in politics. Since the former Revolutionary Guard became president, the Pasdaran's force of 125,000 is widely seen as the fanatical leader's private army.

The Revolutionary Guards are said to have established their own shadow realm in the Shat al-Arab region. Disappointed over the poor salaries they continue to earn despite their contributions to the revolution, while the Tehran mullahs have enriched themselves, many Pasdaran are said to have entered the smuggling business to bolster their incomes. In their eyes, the abduction of the British sailors is fair retribution for tightened ship inspections on the Shat al-Arab that get in the way of the Pasdaran's profitable black-market trade in automobiles destined for Iraq.

The link between foreign policy and criminal acts such as kidnapping and blackmail is well established in Iran. It was most clearly demonstrated in the Iran hostage crisis, in which 52 American citizens were held hostage for 444 days after the storming of the US Embassy in Tehran on Nov. 4, 1979.

In that crisis, the Iranians paraded their bound and blindfolded prisoners before the world press to humiliate the United States, which they dubbed the "Great Satan," and demanded billions in US dollars in return for the release of the hostages.

In the end US President Jimmy Carter, humiliated and eventually voted out of office, had to pay a steep political and financial price for the release of the hostages: more than $10 billion from frozen Iranian bank accounts. But Carter was no longer president by the time the hostages were finally released. Only after his successor, Ronald Reagan, had taken the oath of office on Jan. 20, 1981 did Algerian aircraft take off from Tehran's Mehrabad Airport with the American hostages on board.

German victims

The case of German citizen and Hamburg native Helmut Hofer, now 65, was less spectacular. Hofer, a businessman, had been a dealer in rare auto parts, pistachios and leather goods in Iran until he was arrested by the regime's henchmen in September 1997, allegedly for having sexual relations with a 27-year-old female Iranian student.

It was a classic intelligence operation. To this day Hofer is not the only one who is convinced that revolutionary zealots from the judicial and intelligence community used him as a bargaining chip to apply pressure to the German government in the so-called "Mykonos" affair.

The Tehran regime had come under fire internationally for its alleged involvement in the assassination of four Iranian Kurdish dissidents at the Greek restaurant "Mykonos" in Berlin in 1992. In the ensuing court case, German prosecutors accused the mullahs of terrorism and provided proof of ties between the attackers and senior government officials in Tehran.

Hofer was arrested in Tehran nine months later, a move German intelligence officials now believe was an act of revenge. It took 18 months before an Iranian appeals court overturned the death sentence against the German businessman -- probably in return for Germany's agreement to revive trade relations with Tehran.

Another German went through a similar ordeal recently. Like the 15 British sailors, Donald Klein, a 53-year-old stonemason and amateur fisherman from central western Germany, ventured too close to Iranian waters in late 2005. The Pasdaran arrested Klein and his French skipper, who were only interested in fishing. Klein was not released until more than a year later.

Klein, like Hofer, also became a pawn in a political game. The intelligence community in Tehran wanted to tie his case to the fate of Iranian Kazem Darabi, who is serving a life sentence in Germany for the attack on the Mykonos restaurant in Berlin.

Tehran's hostage bazaar

It is difficult to tell who pulls the strings, who provides the goods and who sets the prices in Tehran's hostage bazaar. There are many competing groups in Tehran, from the secular to the religious, from pragmatists to hardliners. Whether cases like Hofer's or Klein's -- and the current hostage crisis between London and Tehran -- can be brought to a speedy end or will lead to a months-long tug-of-war depends on who ultimately prevails in the theocracy's opaque power structure.

British Prime Minister Tony Blair ought to have no trouble gaining allies against a country under as much international pressure as Iran and securing the prompt release of the prisoners. But this isn't the case, because the simple question the British face from enemies and, indirectly, from friends is this: Why exactly are you in the Gulf region in the first place?

Like an evil curse, the war George W. Bush and Blair launched against Iraq is heightening tensions throughout the region with each month that passes. Knowing that most countries question the legitimacy of the Western presence, Ahmadinejad can take full advantage of the crisis. That starts with no longer having to pay serious attention to threats from Bush or Blair, leaders generally regarded as too weak to engage in another showdown.

Under these circumstances, it was to be expected that Blair and Foreign Secretary Margaret Beckett believed, in the first days after the kidnapping incident, that bilateral contacts would be the best way to gain the prisoners' release. "Softly, softly" was Whitehall's initial approach to the matter.

But by Tuesday, the fifth day of the hostage crisis, the climate at home in Britain had changed. The London Times clamored over the "pusillanimous timidity of British officials and politicians, who have failed disgracefully to confront Iran with the ultimatum this flagrant aggression demands."

Pressure on Blair

Blair was in a tight spot. He had warned the Iranians against parading their hostages on TV, as they had done in a comparable case in 2004, but his warning merely encourage the Iranians to do just that. They released a video of the hostages eating and published a letter written by one of the sailors, Faye Turney, who admitted -- voluntarily or not -- that she and her fellow sailors had "apparently gone into Iranian waters."

On Friday footage of another sailor, Nathan Thomas Summers, was aired in which he said he wanted to "apologize" to the Iranian people. In a second letter, this one addressed to the British people, Turney purportedly wrote -- reflecting the style of Tehran's propaganda -- that she had been sacrificed due to the intervening policies of the Bush and Blair governments."

By then the time to err on the side of caution had ended, at least for the British. London asked its European friends for their support, asked its Middle Eastern partners to mediate and even appealed to pro-Iranian groups Hezbollah and Hamas for their help. When the British asked the UN Security Council to condemn the kidnappings they were dealt their first painful defeat in the current crisis. Instead of complying with the British request, the Security Council merely voiced its "deep concern" over the affair. Russia, a veto power, suggested that the two parties to the conflict return to bilateral negotiations.

Nevertheless, at a meeting last Friday in Bremen, which had actually been convened to discuss tentative signs of improvement in the Middle East conflict, the EU foreign ministers lent their support to London and asked their chief diplomat Javier Solana to appeal to the Iranian president. However, no one in Bremen mentioned anything about other EU countries following in Britain's footsteps and putting their relations with Iran on ice until the prisoners are released.

Translated from the German by Christopher Sultan

Perpetuity · Apr 2, 2007

Just found this to add, as well. Think we're sending a "message"?

http://news.monstersandcritics.com/roundups/article_1286025.php/News_Roundup
U.S. Accused of Violating Iran Air Space

TEHRAN, Iran, April 2 (UPI) -- U.S. bombers allegedly violated Iranian air space this past weekend by flying over Khuzestan while Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was visiting the province.

A spokesman for Iran`s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps said on the Arab-language Al-Alam news channel in Tehran that two U.S. Air Force aircraft were spotted crossing the Iranian-Iraqi border Saturday near Abadan, Russia`s RIA Novosti reported Monday.

The spokesman said it was not the first time U.S. military aircraft have violated Iran`s air space.

Tensions between the United States and Iran have heightened in recent months and days. The United States is trying to get Iran to abandon its nuclear aspirations and also alleges it is contributing to the internal strife in Iraq. Iran`s refusal to turn over 15 British naval personnel captured in the Gulf of Persia has added to the volatile mix.

A Russian security official said last week that his country`s intelligence network had learned that the U.S. military had nearly finished plans for a possible strike against Iran as early as this month, RIA Novosti said.

Dozdoats · Apr 2, 2007

British Ministry Of Defense Backtracks On Boundary Claims

http://www.craigmurray.co.uk/

April 2, 2007
Possible problems with Position of Indian Ship?

Let me start by saying that I am not querying the coordinates (29 degrees 50.36 minutes North 048 degrees 43.08 minutes East) for the Indian merchant vessel given by the UK MOD. In the British version the incident took place at that vessel. They said that the Indian vessel was anchored at these coordinates for two days.

By contrast the Iranian government has given four different coordinates, allegedly referring not to a single incident but to the course of the Royal Naval vessels.

My point has been all along that the precise coordinates are a red herring, because the maritime boundary has never been agreed. There is therefore no clear "line" you can be one side or the other of.

But I have been contacted now by three independent people - two claiming experience as mariners - to make the following point. To the best of my ability I have checked it out, but I am not a qualified navigator. I am not claiming that the following is correct - it is put forward as a problem, not a solution. I am appealing for assistance from those technically equipped to throw any light on this problem.

The MOD claimed that the Indian merchant vessel was anchored "in the channel". But these coordinates are over a nautical mile further West (ie towards Iraq) than the channel. That bit I am quite certain of.

The mystery is this. On British nautical maps, 29 degrees 50.36 minutes North 048 degrees 43.08 minutes East is 100 yards above the low water line. That is to say it dries out at low tide. The vessel pictured by the MOD is a substantial merchant vessel. No captain of such a vessel would knowingly take his vessel to such a position, let alone anchor it there for two days.
In fact legally those coordinates are on land.

As always, it is a bit more complex than that. British charts use the Lowest Astronomical Tide - that is the furthest the tide normally goes out in a year. So on British charts the vessel is 100 yards above the low water mark when the tide is at its lowest. US charts, which show a more normal low tide, show it as being just below the low water line. But that still puts it in very shallow water indeed.

Consider this. There is very little tide in the Gulf. The highest tidal range there is a vertical fall of only nine feet, and that is closer to the Arabian sea. Perhaps someone can find the draught of the Indian vessel when it left port (Lloyds List should have this). But it was laden with cars. I cannot conceive of it having a draught of less than twelve feet, possibly a good lot more.

In short, unless I am missing something very important, it looks like it would be very hard to get that Indian vessel to those coordinates at high tide, and it would certainly ground at low tide, pretty well at any time of year.

Before we leap to any conclusions, I can see at least three other possible explanations:

The mud and sands have shifted substantially since the charts were made, or it has been radically dredged

Sea levels in the Gulf at the time in question were, for some reason, unusually high; perhaps with some very local effect from very high outflow from the rivers

Neither the people who contacted me nor I can read a chart properly

What I am looking for are technical contributions to explain the alleged problem. Until we have clarified that, I would be grateful if the political pundits could hold fire. I am not saying that the coordinates were wrong, or that the ship could not be in that position.

Posted by craig on 12:59 PM 02/04/07 under | Comments (9)

April 1, 2007
German Armed Forces University: British Boundary Map "Fictitious"

Translated from the German:

In today's printed version of the Sueddeutsche Zeitung, Prof Khan of the University for the Federal Armed Forces in Munich confirms Craig Murrays statement:

"In their presentation, the British have effectively drawn a fictitious line in their attempt to prove where exactly the soldiers were when taken captive instead of showing a clear border. They couldn't have done the latter in any case as the border between Iran and Iraq around Shatt el-Arab is not clearly identifiable."

Posted by craig on 10:00 PM 01/04/07 under War and Iran? | Comments (1)

First step towards a realistic approach?

Firstly, many thanks to the Mail on Sunday for being the first bit of the mainstream media ready to give a fair hearing to what I have been saying, and to try and understand the situation rather than just belt out propaganda.

At a working level, Whitehall is trying to get reality back into the British position, though this may get stomped on again by the spin doctors. One of my many friends within the FCO has seen minutes between officials discussing "Craig Murray's points" on the border question and whether admitting the border is unclear could be a path to getting our people back (Freedom of Information request for that minuting, anyone?).

The Observer today gives the first hint that the MOD may be looking to backtrack on its unsustainable border claims:

"But the Ministry of Defence hinted for the first time it may have made mistakes surrounding the incident. An inquiry has been commissioned to explore 'navigational' issues around the kidnapping and aspects of maritime law."

dcamp2002 · Apr 2, 2007

http://www.spiegel.de/international/...474707,00.html

THE WORLD FROM BERLIN
'A Crisis Is Simmering With Iran'

Great article! Worth the long read!

David

MaureenO · Apr 2, 2007

The Flying Dutchman said:
=

01/04: "The Winds of War" - Ahmadinejad, Bolton Both Rip Brits Over Standoff
http://www.timebomb2000.com/vb/showthread.php?t=235908

<center>The War of Humiliation 

April 02, 2007
Independent
Robert Fisk
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/fisk/article2412764.ece </center>
Our Marines are hostages. Two more were shown on Iranian TV. Petrol bombs burst behind the walls of the British embassy in Tehran. But it's definitely not the war on terror. It's the war of humiliation. The humiliation of Britain, the humiliation of Tony Blair, of the British military, of George Bush and the whole Iraqi shooting match. And the master of humiliation - even if Tony Blair doesn't realise it - is Iran, a nation which feels itself forever humiliated by the West.

Yup. Iran has yet been held to answer for their other "humiliations" against the West. As long as they continue to get away with it, the longer thay will do it.

We've heard hues and cries for "nuking Iran" and the whole sandbox, but IMO, that would usher in Armageddon faster than anything else since there would not be ONE moderate muslim left standing. A common enemy would have been created--for ALL muslims.

I don't have any answers as to the best way to hold Iran accountable, but I know that further economic sanctions wouldn't hurt, and neither would a parade of islamic scholars shaming the hell out of them.

Mo

Housecarl · Apr 2, 2007

http://www.stratfor.com/products/premium/read_article.php?id=286693

The Signs of Jihadist Sights on Morocco
April 02, 2007 19 07 GMT

Moroccan officials investigating the March 10 bombing at an Internet cafe in Casablanca believe they have uncovered evidence that the bomber was connected to a wide-scale plot to attack tourism targets throughout the country. This plot, along with the recent uptick in jihadist activity in the North Africa, bodes ill for the security situation in Morocco.

Authorities said the blast occurred after a man, identified as Abdelfattah Randi, entered the Internet cafe in Casablanca's Sidi Moumen neighborhood with an explosive device strapped to his body. Randi and a companion reportedly visited the cafe with a plan to look up jihadist Web sites. Instead, the two were stopped by the cafe's owner, and Randi detonated the device after a scuffle broke out between himself and the owner's son. The blast killed Randi and injured four people, including Randi's companion, who attempted to flee the scene.

At first glance, it appeared as though the bombing was only an accident or the result of amateurish tactics on Randi's part. However, Moroccan officials said March 22 that intelligence and evidence gained in the investigation and the subsequent arrests of more than two dozen people led to the discovery of the larger plot to attack multiple targets in the country's tourist industry -- specifically resorts and cruise ships.

The Interior Ministry has said the plot involved attacks against resorts in Agadir, Marrakech and Essaouira, as well as against cruise ships docking in Casablanca -- and these indeed all have merit as potential jihadist targets. As one of Morocco's most popular tourist destinations, Marrakech is loaded with establishments that cater to foreigners. Agadir, which is included in many European package tours, is a coastal resort town known for its beach and Western-style nightlife, while Essaouira also is a popular destination for tourists from both Western and Eastern Europe. Also, more than a dozen U.S. and European cruise lines have port calls in Casablanca.

An attack against a resort or cruise ship would be consistent with the recent militant trend of attempting to hurt a target country economically by focusing on soft targets within the tourism sector, as has been seen in Turkey and in Egypt's Sinai Peninsula. Attacks against tourist targets could be especially devastating to Morocco, where tourism is the third-highest revenue generator, making up 10 percent of the country's gross national product.

Morocco is vulnerable to attacks because Western, Jewish and jihadist interests intersect there, especially in Casablanca. Furthermore, in militant circles, Moroccans such as Abdel Karim al-Majati have shown themselves to be effective operatives. Also, large numbers of Moroccans have been found to be part of al Qaeda in Iraq, have been midlevel managers and commanders in al Qaeda and have been active in Western Europe. Moroccan militants were linked to the 2004 train bombings in Madrid, Spain, and the assassination of Dutch filmmaker Theo van Gogh later that year.

Moroccan jihadists carried out their most devastating operation in 2003, when suicide bombers struck at multiple targets in Casablanca, including hotels, Jewish- and foreign-owned restaurants and the Belgian Consulate. Among the 14 suicide bombers deployed in the attack, only two devices failed to function properly. When compared with the cell that staged the October 2005 attack against hotels in Amman, Jordan -- where only half of the suicide bombers were able to complete their mission -- this shows that the Moroccan jihadist community not only has significant technical capability, but also that it can count on many disciplined and dedicated operatives. The threat against tourist targets would also be consistent with the soft targets chosen for the 2003 bombings

The jihadist activity in Morocco coincides with an increase in such activity in the Maghreb. In 2006, al Qaeda and the Algerian militant group Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat reportedly joined with Morocco's Islamic Combatant Group, Libya's Islamic Fighting Group and several Tunisian groups to form The Union of the Arab Maghreb umbrella group.

Since the 2003 attack, the Moroccan authorities have stayed ahead of the jihadists operating in their country, though discovery of this latest plot could have been the result of a lucky break -- the unplanned blast at the Internet cafe.

JohnGaltfla · Apr 2, 2007

Iran ups the ante

Iran ups the ante

By Kenneth R. Timmerman
Published April 2, 2007
Advertisement
Iran's leaders upped the ante in their face-off with the West when they took 15 British sailors and marines hostage on March 23.
There can be no doubt Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and his supporters had been planning this sort of thing for some time. One week before the kidnappings, Sobh-e Sadeq weekly noted that the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGG) has "the ability to capture a nice bunch of blue-eyed blond-haired officers and feed them to our fighting cocks."
At the time, the Revolutionary Guards were seeking to "retaliate" for moves by multinational forces to crack down on Iranian intelligence networks in Iraq, including the capture of five Iranian intelligence operatives in Irbil on the night of Jan. 10-11.
Sources in Iran tell me the IRGC leadership realized going after U.S. forces would be too difficult, given stepped-up protection measures the Americans put in place recently. So they sought British targets as a substitute. "I wouldn't be surprised if they captured American businessmen and tourists visiting Iran, claiming they are spies" said opposition activist Sardar Haddad. "They've done that before, and could do it again. When the mullahs are in doubt, they take hostages."
Iran's actions are likely to stiffen Western resolve, not weaken it. Calls to Britain on March 29 to withdraw troops from Iraq in exchange for the kidnapped sailors and marines appear to have backfired. Prime Minister Tony Blair announced he will not bow to pressure. Has the Iranian leadership miscalculated, as some analysts believe?
The short answer is: No. Mr. Ahmadinejad and his supporters don't think as Westerners think. They aren't analyzing costs vs. benefits or looking at their "bottom line." For them, the only bottom line is perpetuating their regime.
They believe attacking Britain and America will encourage their supporters, rally the faithful beyond Iran and launch their worldwide jihad to "destroy America" and "wipe Israel of the face of the Earth" -- two goals Mr. Ahmadinejad set for his presidency.
In the forthcoming issue of Newsmax magazine, which will be on newsstands in early April, I run through a detailed, blow-by-blow scenario of what a six-day military confrontation with Iran could look like.
The spark that could ignite such a confrontation could come from a number of different sources. It could be a kidnapping such as this one. It could be an attack on a U.S. warship by Iran, using its Russian and Chinese-supplied bottom-tethered sea mines. Or it could be something completely different.
What's clear is that Mr. Ahmadinejad and his faction want war. They believe war with the West is their ticket to victory. And given that Democrats in Congress are intent on limiting the president's ability to launch any kind of pre-emptive attack on Iran, Mr. Ahmadinejad and his supporters will decide how and when this war begins.
Even if they lose large portions of their country, or if their nuclear sites are destroyed, they believe they will emerge victorious. Because in their eyes, this type of war with the West will hasten the return of the Imam Mahdi, the savior figure of the radical hojjatieh sect of Shia Islam in which the Ahmadinejad faction believes.
But we mustn't make the mistake of some in placing all our bets on Mr. Ahmadinejad. If somehow the U.S. were able to wave a magic wand and get rid of him overnight, we would still face a security and political establishment in Iran devoted to confrontation with the West and destruction of Israel.
After all, it was Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, the Islamic Republic's "moderate" former president, who first evoked publicly a possible nuclear weapons exchange with Israel. "The use of an atomic bomb against Israel would destroy Israel completely, while [the same][ against [Iran] would only cause damages. Such a scenario is not inconceivable," Mr. Rafsanjani said in a sermon at Tehran University on Dec. 14, 2001. Decoded, that message is chilling.
Iran has no fear of an Israeli nuclear attack, because Iran is vast, with deep underground bunkers for its leadership and clandestine nuclear sites most likely not on anyone's target list. Were the Israelis to attack, or to respond to an Iranian nuclear attack, Iran will suffer great losses. But Israel will cease to exist.
So these are stakes. A seemingly simple hostage-taking could be how this begins. A series of mushroom clouds could be how it ends.

Kenneth R. Timmerman is president of the Middle East Data Project Inc. and author of "Countdown to Crisis: The Coming Nuclear Showdown with Iran." He also is executive director of the Foundation for Democracy in Iran and was nominated for the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize along with John Bolton for his work on Iran.

04/02: "The Winds of War" - The War of Humiliation

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