04/05: "The Winds of War" - Tehran's Victory

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04/04:"The Winds of War"- Iran Warns Russia Over Nuclear Fuel Deliveries
http://www.timebomb2000.com/vb/showthread.php?t=236319




<B><font size=+1 color=red><center>Tehran's Victory </font>

April 04, 2007
National Review Online
The Editors
http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=NTgwNzJkYzhjZTQ3MDc4N2UzMmMyNmI0NGQ5Yzg2NjA= </center>
By committing an act of war, Iran has simultaneously made itself look peaceful and made the West look impotent.

That paradox is the apparent outcome of the crisis that began when Iran kidnapped 15 British sailors and marines on March 23. Today, Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad announced that the 15 had been “pardoned” — their supposed offense having been to trespass on Iranian coastal waters — and would be sent home. We don’t know exactly what, if anything, Britain did to bring about the release. But, at least for now, the resolution looks like a victory for the Islamic Republic. </b>

According to eyewitness accounts and GPS data, the Britons were never in Iranian waters. Their treatment after being kidnapped was a violation of the Geneva Conventions: They were videotaped making confessions (almost certainly under duress) and otherwise humiliated. If Britain still acted like the great power it once was, it would have made clear on Day One that this was an act of war and would be viewed as such. That would not have required an immediate military response, or barred the possibility of negotiations with Iran. But it would have required telling Iran’s rulers that, unless they released the hostages immediately, they would pay an unbearable cost. The threat need not have been spelled out specifically, but could have included, among other things, an economic embargo, a naval blockade, or eventual military strikes. That message should have been delivered in public and in private. (If Britain did threaten Iran privately, it should tell the world so now.) With respect to Theodore Roosevelt, this occasion called for walking loudly and carrying a big stick.

Instead, at least in public, Britain has mumbled. Its reward is TV images of smiling captives shaking Ahmadinejad’s hand and thanking him for his “forgiveness.” Highlighting his government’s famous esteem for women, Ahmadinejad deplored the fact that one of the sailors was thousands of miles from her children. He also asked Great Britain not to try the 15 for trespassing after they returned home. Magnanimous, he.

The way the crisis played out will have serious consequences in the Middle East. Iran proved that it is the region’s dominant power. Could any other country have attempted this and gotten away with it? Syria? Saudi Arabia? Egypt? Surely not. Britain, meanwhile, reinforced Iran’s view of the West as a decadent society that does not respond effectively to provocations and need not be feared. Perceptions matter: Recall the conclusions Osama bin Laden drew after the American retreat from Somalia. What we can expect now is greater aggression, from both Iran in particular and Islamists in general.

That’s what we can expect, anyway, if Britain does nothing to salvage the situation. It should begin by making sure the captives repudiate their confessions and denounce their captors once they’re back home. We don’t need to hear how nice the food is in Tehran. Next, Britain should have the 15 demand compensation for their illegal capture and treatment. It must send an absolutely unambiguous message that its sailors and marines were never in Iranian waters, and that it has made no concessions concerning the location of the border. (Sending some patrol missions back to the area, backed up by overwhelming firepower, would punctuate the point nicely.) The U.S., for its part, must hold the five Iranian agents it captured in Iraq for a long time, lest it appear that there has been a swap.

If there is a glimmer of hope in this shameful denouement, it is the possibility that the sheer brazenness of the kidnappings will shatter some of the widespread naïveté — particularly in the British and American diplomatic corps — about the nature of the Iranian regime. It has never been reasonable to think that this regime, whose guiding purpose is to export its particular brand of Islamism, could be made to act in accordance with the West’s interests. Its latest exercise in hostage-taking-as-foreign-policy underscores the unreasonableness of that view.

It’s right to be glad that the young Britons are headed home. But into that humanitarian feeling irrupts the darker realization that their good fortune comes at an unacceptable price. Unless Britain and her allies act quickly and cleverly to show that they are, appearances notwithstanding, powers to be reckoned with, a great many lives will be at risk for a long time to come.

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<B><center>April 05, 2007
The Guardian
Abbas Edalat in Tehran
http://politics.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,,2050378,00.html

<font size=+1 color=brown>"The US Can Learn from this Example of Mutual Respect"! </font></center>

The outcome of the crisis between Iran and Britain provides a lesson on how to deal with the wider international standoff

The unexpectedly early resolution to the dispute between the UK and Iran over the detention of 15 sailors and marines in the Gulf is the direct result of Iran's goodwill and a U-turn by the British government. After initially using threatening language and seeking to add an unnecessary international dimension to the dispute, it eventually opted for direct negotiations with Iran based on mutual respect. This outcome offers a compelling lesson on how to deal with the wider international standoff between the US and Iran. </b>

President Ahmadinejad may have chided the British government at yesterday's press conference for not being brave enough to admit that it had made a mistake by crossing into Iranian waters, but his mood was generous. His "gift to the British people" was with immediate effect, and he asked for no apology or other concessions.

But what was the impediment to immediate recourse to bilateral diplomacy, which could have achieved an agreement soon after the arrest? In 2004, a similar incursion involving British service personnel in Iranian territorial waters was resolved in a matter of days, with guarantees that such incursion would not occur in future.

Tehran has certainly sought similar assurances over the past 13 days, which is reasonable given the long history of British imperial domination in Iran in the 19th century, the US/UK-incited coup of 1953 which overthrew the popular government of Dr Mosaddeq, and the UK's support for Saddam's regime in its eight-year war against Iran, including provision of chemical weapons. Against this background is the current wider context where, in violation of the UN charter, Iran is threatened by the US, UK and Israeli leaders, who regularly assert that "the military option" is on the table.

But Tony Blair effectively dismissed the possibility of a conventional approach by announcing that there would be no negotiations and suspending trade and diplomatic relations. Iran's offer to release Faye Turney was then sabotaged by the British government, which hastily involved the UN security council and the EU, unprecedented in a case which could and should be resolved bilaterally.

The government's heavy-handed approach can only be explained in the context of the US drive for regime change in Iran, which Blair has supported for more than a year. The US and UK, prodded by Israel, have been systematically pursuing a multi-pronged strategy to demonise and isolate Iran, using unfounded allegations that Iran is intent on building nuclear weapons, is directly supporting Iraqi insurgents, and aims to "wipe Israel off the map". With two US aircraft carriers stationed in the area, and a third on its way, there is a sense of deja vu in relation to the period preceding the attack on Iraq, when "evidence", subsequently shown to be false, was used to provide a casus belli.

After over 2,200 hours of inspections, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has found absolutely no evidence of a nuclear weaponisation programme in Iran, where Ayatollah Khamenei, the supreme leader, has issued a fatwa against the production, stockpiling and use of nuclear weapons. Yet there are two security council resolutions calling on Iran to suspend its legal enrichment programme and imposing sanctions for its refusal to comply. Strikingly, there is now incontrovertible evidence, provided by Stephen Rademaker, the former US assistant secretary for non-proliferation and international security, that the US coerced the IAEA to vote against Iran in 2005 and, in 2006, to report its nuclear file to the security council.

On another propaganda front, Colonel Justin Masherevski, of the British forces in Basra, announced, on the same day as the sailors' detention, that local sources had told him Iranian agents were providing "sophisticated weaponry" to Iraqi insurgents. Such allegations have been levelled against Iran by the US and Britain since the summer of 2005, but have never been substantiated. Meanwhile, five Iranian diplomats have remained in US detention at an unknown location with no formal charges against them following a raid on their Irbil consulate in January, although Ahmadinejad yesterday denied any link between their plight and the release of the British sailors.

Finally, Ahmadinejad's own call for regime change in Israel - "the occupying Zionist regime of Jerusalem should cease to exist in the page of time" - has been mistranslated and distorted into the notorious phrase, "Israel should be wiped off the map" by the western media. What is never reported is that Ayatollah Khamenei stated unequivocally immediately afterwards that "the Islamic Republic has never threatened and will never threaten any country".

Ahmadinejad's decision to release the British detainees was a sign of strength, and he further stated that he would be willing to reconsider ties with Washington were President Bush to change his behaviour. But the dispute has also highlighted the real dangers of escalation, as happened in 1964 when the Gulf of Tonkin incident was manipulated by the US to justify war in Vietnam.

Yesterday's welcome outcome should show the international community that the solution to the standoff lies in its hands. The UK and other governments must pressure the US to drop its pre-condition of suspension of Iran's legal right to uranium enrichment, and enter into negotiations on all points of conflict.

· Abbas Edalat is professor of computer science and mathematics at Imperial College London, and the founder of the Campaign Against Sanctions and Military Intervention in Iran.

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<B><font size=+1 color=green><center>U.S. Lets Red Cross See Seized Iranians</font>

<i>Disclosure Follows Freeing of Diplomat Abducted by Uniformed Men in Baghdad</i>

<b>By Joshua Partlow
Washington Post Foreign Service
Thursday, April 5, 2007; Page A12
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dy...2007040402613.html?nav=rss_world/mideast/iraq </center>
BAGHDAD, April 4 -- The U.S. military has allowed the International Committee of the Red Cross to visit five Iranian officials who were detained in Iraq nearly three months ago on suspicion of plotting against American and Iraqi forces.

A Red Cross delegation that included one Iranian citizen visited the detainees, and a request for a formal consular visit with them is "being assessed at this time" by the U.S. military, said Maj. Gen. William B. Caldwell, the top U.S. military spokesman in Iraq.</b>
</b>
In a briefing for reporters Wednesday, Caldwell did not say when the visit took place or whether it was connected to the case of the 15 British sailors and marines detained by Iran on March 23; Iran subsequently announced that they would be released.

The Iraqi government has called for the release of the five Iranians, who were captured during a U.S. military raid in January on an office providing consular services in the Kurdish city of Irbil.

A spokeswoman for the ICRC, Dorothea Krimitsas, confirmed that her organization had visited the Iranian officials but declined to provide details. In general, she said, such inspections involve multiple visits, and information about the detainees' treatment is discussed privately with the "detaining authorities."

News of the visit came a day after the Iraqi government confirmed that an Iranian diplomat, Jalal Sharafi, who was abducted Feb. 4 in downtown Baghdad by people dressed in military uniforms, had been freed. The back-to-back developments raised questions about whether they were connected to the diplomatic crisis involving Britain and Iran. U.S. and Iraqi officials denied that Sharafi's release was related.

During an international conference held in Baghdad in March, Iranian representatives discussed the issue of the five detainees with Zalmay Khalilzad, then the U.S. ambassador, and "there were promises to solve it in a friendly way," Ali Dabbagh, an Iraqi government spokesman, told reporters Wednesday in Baghdad.

"We don't want these relations to affect the situation in Iraq," he said.

The Americans have accused the Iranians of being members of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard's al-Quds Force, which is said to be active in arming and training militant movements in the Middle East. At the time of their capture, the Iranians were without passports and attempting to flush documents down a toilet, U.S. officials have said.

In a separate development Wednesday, two members of radical Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr's bloc in the Iraqi parliament were said to be removed from the powerful political alliance because they held meetings with Americans, according to the head of Sadr's parliamentary bloc.

Nasar al-Rubaie, a leader of the 30-person alliance of Shiite lawmakers loyal to Sadr, said that the two legislators, Salam al-Maliki and Qusay Abdul Wahab, violated "clear instructions" by meeting with the unspecified Americans.

"If there is any kind of meeting between someone and the occupation, he will be rejected by Moqtada al-Sadr himself," Rubaie said.


But both Wahab and Maliki, a former transportation minister, emphatically denied that they had met with Americans or that they had been removed from the Sadr bloc. "This is a fabrication and completely untrue," Wahab said in an interview. "What was said by some of the powerful people in the Sadr trend isn't accurate and its aim is to split the lines of the Sadr trend through these rumors and accusations."

Some American officials contend that Sadr's organization has fractured, following speculation that the cleric retreated to Iran and left his followers without decisive leadership. The mayor of the Baghdad slum of Sadr City, Rahim al-Darraji, was attacked by gunmen last month after meeting with U.S. military officials.


Sami al-Askari, a Shiite member of parliament who works closely with Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, said that the accusations against the two Sadr officials may be a convenient excuse to purge two members who have been at odds with others in the bloc. But he doubted Sadr was losing control.

"There are always differences between different factions but nevertheless Moqtada Sadr is the leader of this movement," he said.

Also Wednesday, the U.S. military said that an American soldier had been killed by small-arms fire in the southern outskirts of Baghdad while on a foot patrol Tuesday.

An engineer and four technicians working at the Mulla Abdullah power plant southwest of Kirkuk were killed when their car was struck by a roadside bomb, according to Maj. Abdul Jabbar al-Jubury of the Hawijah police station.

In southern Iraq, gunmen riding in pickup trucks kidnapped 22 shepherds in the Rufaiaa district near Karbala, an Interior Ministry official said. Meanwhile, 19 decapitated bodies arrived for burial in the southern city of Najaf, which is revered by Shiites. Religious officials in Najaf said the men were executed in a village in Diyala province because they were Shiites.

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<B><font size=+1 color=blue><center>Israel’s Protests Are Said to Stall Gulf Arms Sale </font>

By DAVID S. CLOUD and HELENE COOPER
Published: April 5, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/05/w...95e93ec7676afd&ei=5088&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss </center>
WASHINGTON, April 4 — A major arms-sale package that the Bush administration is planning to offer Saudi Arabia and other Persian Gulf allies to deter Iran has been delayed because of objections from Israel, which says that the advanced weaponry would erode its military advantage over its regional rivals, according to senior United States officials.</b>

Israeli officials, including the former defense minister, Shaul Mofaz, have come to Washington in recent months to argue against elements of the planned sales. In particular, the Israelis are concerned about the possible transfer of precision-guided weapons that would give Saudi warplanes much more accurate ability to strike targets, officials said.

The United States has made few, if any, sales of satellite-guided ordnance to gulf countries, several officials said. Israel has been supplied with such weapons since the 1990s and used them extensively in its war against Hezbollah last summer.

The American officials would not provide a dollar figure for the planned sales. But one American defense industry executive said that if all the equipment under discussion with the Saudis and other gulf countries was eventually sold — including tanks, warships and advanced air defense systems — the deal could run from $5 billion to $10 billion.

The Israeli complaints have introduced a new uncertainty into the administration’s plan to beef up Persian Gulf militaries as a bulwark against Iran and as a demonstration that, no matter what happens in Iraq, Washington remains committed to the Sunni Arab governments around the region.

Several officials in the State Department and the Pentagon said that plans to formally notify Congress about the potential weapons sales had been delayed at least until later this month. After notification, Congress has 30 days to decide whether to block the sales. Support for maintaining Israel’s military superiority remains strong on Capitol Hill, and administration officials are discussing how to allay the concerns, including the possibility of a separate arms package for Israel.

Some details of the planned sales to Persian Gulf countries had been reported, including in The Boston Globe last month, but Israel’s opposition to aspects of them had not been disclosed. David Siegel, a spokesman for the Israeli Embassy, declined to comment “due to sensitivities of issues such as this,” he said.

United States officials from multiple agencies, several foreign officials and arms-industry executives discussed details about the weapons package on condition of anonymity because, they said, they were not authorized to publicly discuss the details, some of which are classified.

Administration officials twice scheduled briefings for members of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee about the planned sales in the past month; both times, the briefings were canceled at the last minute because of the Israeli concerns, according to administration officials and Congressional staffers.

Israel has long warned about the growing power of Iran’s military, and several officials said that Israel’s concerns about the proposed American arms sales were focused primarily on precision-guided munitions and any other offensive weapons that would be provided to Saudi Arabia and other gulf countries. They said Israel did not seem intent on using its political clout in Congress to kill the entire planned sale.

“It’s not like the Israelis are going to end up with nothing,” said a senior administration official, adding “the Israelis understand that it’s in our interest and their interest” that the United States try to shore up military systems for Sunni Arab allies. But Israel is also concerned that the Bush administration’s ambitions for an American-Israeli-Sunni coalition allied against Iran may never materialize, or that there could be a revolution in Saudi Arabia that would leave the mostly American-made Saudi arsenal in the hands of militant Islamists.

“The Israelis believe the government of Saudi Arabia is under a great deal of pressure,” said David Schenker, a former Pentagon official who is now a senior fellow on Arab politics at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. “Osama bin Laden would like to change the Saudi government to what he considers a real Islamist government. So Israel doesn’t want them to have this heightened military capability.”

The United States has long committed to preserving what is known as Israel’s “qualitative military edge,” or Q.M.E. “Israel has expressed concern that this proposal could affect the Q.M.E.,” said a Defense Department official. “We don’t want to go to Congress until we’ve got everybody on board.” Israel and the United States have been in discussions over a new military aid package that could increase American support for Israel’s military to around $3 billion from $2.4 billion.


The Israeli reaction to the planned sales has been relatively muted so far, compared with previous fights over sales of weapons or technology to Arab governments. Israeli officials and their allies in Washington, led by the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, have long opposed American arms sales to Saudi Arabia and Arab states. The Reagan administration’s offer of Awacs early-warning radar planes to the Saudis in 1981 touched off a bruising battle between Congress and the White House, though the planes were eventually sold.

Bush administration officials began talks on ways of bolstering the gulf countries’ defenses last year. After Saudi Arabia, the biggest customer is likely to be the United Arab Emirates, which in 2000 bought 80 F-16 fighters in a deal worth over $8 billion. It could take several years before some of the major items under consideration in the latest sales are delivered, officials stressed.

There is less Israeli opposition to possible sales to gulf countries of several advanced weapons systems that are seen as more defensive in nature, including advanced Patriot antimissile batteries as well as new missile-armed coastal warships and a version of the sophisticated Aegis radar system, officials and defense industry executives said. One defense industry official said Saudi Arabia was considering buying as many as a dozen of the new ships.

While the effort is publicly focused on countering Iran, American officials concede that one goal of the effort is also simply to demonstrate that the United States has no intention of turning away from the gulf region, even if it is forced to withdraw from Iraq without bringing stability there.

Aside from the Israeli objections to part of the arms package, Bush administration officials have had difficulty getting some gulf countries to commit to arms purchases, according to Kenneth Katzman, a Middle East analyst with the Congressional Research Service. Saudi Arabia and other Gulf countries “are not sure what the long-term U.S. commitment is, and they don’t want to be seen as ganging up on Iran in case we leave,” Mr. Katzman said.

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<B><font size=+1 color=purple><center>Iran's ploy buys time for weapons programme</font>

By Tim Butcher, Middle East Correspondent
Last Updated: 2:05am BST 05/04/2007
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2007/04/05/wiran805.xml </center>
Iran's volte-face over the 15 sailors and Royal Marines may be a public relations ploy to buy time for its nuclear programme.

Ever since Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was elected president of Iran in the summer of 2005, his image overseas has grown steadily more negative. In the post-Saddam world, he has become for many western leaders "public enemy number one".

Defying the West over his country's nuclear programme, he has used numerous public speeches to call for Israel to be "wiped off the map".</b>

advertisementAnd in one particularly portentous outbreak a year ago this week, he seemed to be referring to a nuclear attack on the Jewish state when he said Israel was "a rotten, dried tree that will be eliminated by one storm".

It is hard to reconcile such an uncompromising image with the joshing figure broadcast on Iranian state television yesterday, looking more a benign godfather than sinister tyrant as he met the Britons.

Smiling and joking, President Ahmadinejad was 180 degrees different from the leader who stirred mobs, brandishing posters calling for the naval personnel to be executed, to attack the British embassy in Teheran just a few days earlier. The transformation was so glaring that it suggests he was involved more in a cynical ploy than a genuine change of heart.

The most likely explanation was that he deliberately sought to give the image of giving into British diplomatic pressure not just to improve his standing internationally but also to undercut the United States. Washington is known to be increasingly frustrated with Iran over its nuclear programme and its support of insurgents in Iraq which has had deadly consequences for some US personnel.

This was behind America's deliberate show of force last month in the Gulf when it staged the largest naval manoeuvres since the 2003 ousting of Saddam.

With President George W Bush in the White House a military strike against Iran cannot be ruled out.

But Teheran will know that having lost so much international standing in 2003 by ignoring the advice, mainly from Europe, about not attacking Iraq, Washington is unlikely to want to go it alone.

So anything that encourages nations to think diplomacy will work against Iran could be to Teheran's advantage by protecting it from a US-led attack.

By apparently giving in to diplomatic pressure yesterday, Teheran has given encouragement to those mainly European nations who prefer jaw-jaw to war-war.

The unexpected move also placed immediate pressure on America which was forced to dilute its normally critical posture.

But while President Bush welcomed the release of the Britons, vice-president Dick Cheney was critical of the thinking behind the abduction. "Once people start taking hostages or kidnapping folks on the high seas and then are rewarded for it by getting some kind of political concession or some other thing of value, that would be unfortunate," Mr Cheney said.

And if Teheran was hoping for an immediate change in the American attitude to its nuclear programme, it was disappointed. Condoleezza Rice, the secretary of state, reiterated America's position that it would be willing to meet bilaterally with Iran only if Teheran ceased all uranium enrichment activities.

Germany, however, was quick last night to express optimism that diplomacy alone will rein in Iran's nuclear ambitions.

Frank-Walter Steinmeier, the foreign minister, said he hoped Teheran's decision to free the 15 Britons was a signal Iran was ready to compromise on issues such as its nuclear programme.

The UN Security Council voted unanimously last month to impose new sanctions on Iran over its refusal to heed demands from major powers to halt uranium enrichment.

Throughout his country's nuclear stand-off with the West, President Ahmadinejad has consistently surprised observers with his apparent obstinacy and refusal to give in to external pressure.

It might just be that the saga of the British captives has allowed him to show more subtle powers of manipulation.


<B><center>--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The missiles</b></center>

In November 2006 Iran successfully test-fired its long-range missile, the Shahab 3. Teheran claims it has a range of around 1,400 miles - enough to reach targets in Cyprus. More significantly, it puts Israel and numerous US military bases in the Middle East within range.

It also has a large stock of Shahab 2 missiles with a range of about 800 miles - which could also reach Israel. In addition, it possesses a number of other guided missiles with shorter ranges including examples of the Zalzal, Scud B and Zolfaghar 73.

Iranian technicians are known to have adapted the Shahab 2 to carry cluster munitions - small bomblets that can be programmed to detonate some time after delivery - as well as standard high-explosive payloads.


<B><center>--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The programme</b></center>

In spite of years of lying to international inspectors, Iran is known to have been working on a nuclear programme since the early 1980s.

After being forced to admit its existence, Teheran insisted that the programme had no military component, although Britain, America and the wider international community do not believe this.

It is known that Iran has started enriching uranium, a key element in the process of producing nuclear weapons. However, so far they have only been able to produce minute amounts of enriched uranium because of problems with the centrifuges used.This has not deterred Iran from building thousands of centrifuges to speed up production.

Western assessments vary as to when Iran will produce its first nuclear weapon. Optimists say it will take up to five years while pessimists forecast that it could be within two years.

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<B><center>09:43, April 05, 2007

<font size=+1 color=brown>U.S. says Iran must give up enrichment before bilateral talks</font>

http://english.peopledaily.com.cn/200704/05/eng20070405_363933.html </center>
The United States reiterated on Wednesday that it will not deal directly with Iran unless it gives up sensitive uranium enrichment work.

"Iran can have a full set of discussions with the United States on any subject it wishes if it complies with the basic requirements of UN Security Council resolutions," State Department deputy spokesman Tom Casey told reporters.
</b>
In response to Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's remarks that Tehran could reconsider its relations with Washington if the Bush Administration changes its policy against Iran, Casey said "The behavior that needs to change is the Iranians, not the United States."

On Monday, U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said she would not rule out possibility to have bilateral meeting with Iran if Tehran agrees to suspend enrichment of uranium.

In late February, Rice said she was prepared to meet her counterpart or an Iranian representative at any time if Iran would suspend its enrichment and reprocessing activities.

Previously, Rice has said she would meet with Iran only in a multilateral context, along with other nations dealing with Iran over its nuclear ambitions.

The United States has been accusing Iran of trying to develop nuclear weapons under the cover of a civilian program. Iran always denies the charges.

Source: Xinhua

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<B><font size=+1 color=green><center>US to attack Iran by end of April, says Arab paper</font>

Thursday April 5 2007 03:57 IST
Xinhua
http://www.newindpress.com/NewsItems.asp?ID=IEH20070404173616&Page=H&Title=Top+Stories&Topic=0& </center>
KUWAIT CITY: The US is planning to attack Iran's nuclear reactors and other nuclear facilities by the end of this month, the Kuwait-based Arab Times newspaper reported on Wednesday.</b>

Citing anonymous sources in Washington, it said that various White House departments had started preparing the political speech to be delivered by the US President later this month, announcing the military attack on Iran.

The speech will provide the "evidence" and the "justification" for the US to resort to the military option after failing to persuade Tehran to give up its nuclear ambitions, said the report.

According to the Times, one of the justifications expected in the speech is Iran's alleged role in the killing of American soldiers in Iraq by supporting various militias with money and arms.

<b>The US President's speech will also point to Iran's political interference in Iraq, obviously in cooperation with Syria. The sources were quoted as saying that US will not resort to a ground attack in order to avoid human losses.</b>

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<i>My apologies to all the members who read these daily threads I was apparently more tired then I thought last night *I closed this thread* - thinking that it was a dupe of another thread (Gary North's article). I had posted..

Just "shows to go ya" the asine things a person will do - when they are tired ~ Dutchman</i>




<B><center>Cold War II

<font size=+1 color=red>The Next Cold War</font>

April 04, 2007
The Wall Street Journal
David Hazony
http://www.opinionjournal.com/federation/feature/?id=110009893 </center>
A new Cold War is upon us. Though there is no Soviet Union today, the enemies of Western democracy, supported by a conglomerate of Islamic states, terror groups and insurgents, have begun to work together with a unity of purpose reminiscent of the Soviet menace: not only in funding, training and arming those who seek democracy's demise; not only in mounting attacks against Israel, America and their allies around the world; not only in seeking technological advances that will enable them to threaten the life of every Western citizen; but also in advancing a clear vision of a permanent, intractable and ultimately victorious struggle against the West--an idea they convey articulately, consistently and with brutal efficiency. </b>

It is this conceptual strategic clarity that gives the West's enemies a leg up, even if they are far inferior in number, wealth, and weaponry. From Tehran to Tyre, from Chechnya to the Philippines, from southern Iraq to the Afghan mountains to the madrassas of London and Paris and Cairo, these forces are unified in their aim to defeat the West, its way of life, its political forms and its cause of freedom. And every day, because of this clarity, their power and resources grow, as they attract allies outside the Islamic world: In Venezuela, in South Africa, in North Korea.

At the center of all this, of course, is Iran. A once-friendly state has embarked on an unflinching campaign, at considerable cost to its own economy, to attain the status of a global power: through the massive infusion of money, matériel, training and personnel to the anti-Western forces in Lebanon (Hezbollah), the Palestinian Authority (Hamas and Islamic Jihad), and the Sunni and Shi'ite insurgencies of Iraq; through its relentless pursuit of nuclear arms, long-range missiles and a space program; through its outsized armed forces and huge stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons; through its diplomatic initiatives around the world; and through its ideological battle against democracy, Zionism and the memory of the Holocaust. For the forces of Islamic extremism and political jihad, Iran has become the cutting edge of clarity.

The West, on the other hand, enjoys no such clarity. In America, Iraq has become the overriding concern, widely seen as a Vietnam-style "quagmire" claiming thousands of American lives with no clear way either to win or to lose. (As the bells of the 2006 congressional elections continue tolling in American ears, it is hard to hear the muezzins of the Middle East calling upon the faithful to capitalize on Western malaise.) Europeans continue to seek "diplomatic solutions" even as they contend with powerful and well-funded Islamists in their midst and their friends among the media and intellectual elites--forces that stir public opinion not against Iran and Syria, who seek their destruction, but against their natural allies, America and Israel.

Throughout the West we now hear increasingly that a nuclear Iran is something one has to "learn to live with," that Iraq needs an "exit strategy," and that the real key to peace lies not in victory but in brokering agreements between Israel and the Palestinians and "engaging" Syria and Iran. The Israelis, too, suffer from a lack of clarity: By separating the Palestinian question from the struggle with Hezbollah and Iran, and by shifting the debate back to territorial concession and prisoner exchange, Israelis incentivize aggression and terror, ignore the role Hamas plays in the broader conflict, and send conciliatory signals to the Syrians. Like the Americans with Iraq, Israelis have allowed themselves to lose sight of who their enemies are, how determined they are, and what will be required to defeat them.

The greatest dangers to the West and Israel, therefore, lie not in armaments or battle plans, but in our thinking. Like World War II and the Cold War, this conflict cannot be won without first achieving clarity of purpose. Even the most urgently needed actions, such as stopping the Iranian nuclear effort, require leaders who understand the nature of the threat and have sufficient public support to enable them to act decisively. To achieve this, however, requires a major, immediate investment in the realm of ideas--a battle for understanding that must be won before the battle for freedom can be effectively engaged.

Israel, in particular, has a pivotal role to play. As the frontline state in the conflict, and the lightning rod of Islamist aggression, it is to Israel that the world looks to see how it will respond. From its birth, Israel has served as a model to the West: in deepening its democratic character while fighting a series of wars; in fighting terror effectively, from the defeat of the PLO in the early 1970s in Gaza, to the Entebbe raid in 1976, through Operation Defensive Shield in 2002; and striking pre-emptively against enemies who combined genocidal rhetoric with the acquisition of sophisticated weapons, as with Egypt and Syria in 1967, and Iraq in 1981.

Israel can again serve as a model of a state proud of its heritage, a democracy that knows how to fight against its tyrannical foes without sacrificing its own character. But to do this will require that Israel, too, disperse the conceptual fog in which it has been operating, recognize the strategic costs of ambiguous outcomes such as with the Lebanon war last summer, and adopt a clear and coherent vision and plan of action. If the West is to act decisively and with clarity, it may need Israel to show the way.

What would such a struggle look like? We should not fear to call this conflict by its name: It is the Second Cold War, with Iran as the approximate counterpart of the Soviet Union. Like the U.S.S.R., Iran is an enemy that even the mighty United States will probably never meet in full force on the battlefield and instead must fight via its proxies, wherever they are found.

Like the Soviet Union, the ayatollahs' regime is based on an ideological revolution that repudiates human liberty and subjects its political opponents to imprisonment and death, a regime which, in order to maintain its popular support, must continue to foment similar revolutions everywhere it can, to show that it is on the winning side of history. And like the Soviet Union in the 1980s, the Iranian regime today has two clear weaknesses, which could ultimately spell its downfall: economic stagnation and ideological disaffection.

With unemployment and inflation both deep in double digits, an increasing structural dependence on oil revenue, a negligible amount of direct foreign investment, and a stock market that has declined over 30% since the election of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Iran's heavy investment in other people's wars and its own weapons and terrorist groups must in the end exact a price in terms of support for the regime. Today, moreover, the great majority of Iranians do not identify with the government's Islamist ideology, and among young people the regime is widely derided.

Is it possible to bring about the fall of revolutionary Iran? Despite the obvious differences, there is a great deal the West can learn from the way victory was found in the first Cold War. Led by the United States, Western countries in the 1980s mounted a campaign on a wide range of fronts--military, technological, diplomatic, public relations and covert operations--to convince the Soviet elites that their regime was failing at every turn, and was headed for collapse.

By deliberately escalating the arms race and through trade sanctions on the Soviets, America increased the pressure on the Soviet economy. By supporting dissident groups, sending radio transmissions into the Soviet Empire, and making dramatic pronouncements such as Ronald Reagan's famous Berlin Wall speech in 1987, the West emboldened the regime's internal opponents. And by supporting anticommunist forces around the world, from Latin America to Africa to Western Europe to Afghanistan, the West halted the expansion of the communist bloc and even began to roll it back. In all cases the goal was the same: to make it clear to the ranks of Soviet elites, upon whom the regime's legitimacy continued to depend, that they were on the wrong side of history.

When taken in combination with the Soviet Union's failing economy and widespread ideological disaffection among the populace--much as we see in Iran today--it was possible for the West's multifront strategy to bring about the downfall of what was, during the time of Jimmy Carter, believed to be an unstoppable, expanding historical juggernaut for whom the best the West could hope was "containment" and "détente."

Its vast nuclear arsenals, its pretensions to global dominance, its coherent world-historical ideology--none of these could protect it against the determined, united efforts of the free world. But it required, above all, a spiritual shift of momentum which began at home: A belief that victory was possible, that the Soviet Union was impermanent, and that concerted effort could change history. It required a new clarity of purpose.

By most measures, Iran is an easier mark than the Soviet Union. It does not yet have nuclear weapons or ICBMs; its Islamist ideology has less of a universal appeal; its tools of thought control are vastly inferior to the gulag and the KGB; and its revolution is not old enough to have obliterated the memory of better days for much of its population.

In theory at least, it should be much easier for the West to mount a similar campaign of relentless pressure on the regime--from fomenting dissent online, to destabilizing the regime through insurgent groups inside Iran, to destroying the Iranian nuclear project, to ever-deeper economic sanctions, to fighting and winning the proxy wars that Iran has continued to wage--in order to effect the kind of change of momentum needed to enable the Iranian people to bring their own regime down the way the peoples under communism did in the 1980s and 1990s.

Yet it is precisely because of the ayatollahs' apparent frailty that the West has failed to notice the similarities between this menace and the Soviet one a generation ago. For despite their weakness on paper, the forces of jihad are arrayed in full battle armor, and are prepared to fight to the end. What they lack in technological and industrial sophistication, they more than make up for in charisma, public-relations acumen, determination, ideological coherence and suicidal spirit. Above all, they possess a certainty, a clarity and a will to sacrifice that will greatly increase their chances of victory, and of continued expansion, until they are met with an equally determined enemy.

The fall of the Iranian regime will not end the global jihad. Beyond the messianic Shiite movement, there is still a world of Sunni and Wahhabi revolutionaries, from al Qaeda to Hamas, determined to make war on the West even without Iran's help--just as anti-American communism did not end with the fall of the Soviet Union. Yet there can be no question that today, it is Iran that has earned the greatest admiration, given the global jihad its greatest source of hope and funds, and racked up the most impressive victories, taking on the West and its allies throughout the Middle East--and especially in Iraq, where its proxy insurgencies have frustrated American efforts and even brought about a shift in the internal politics of the United States. Iran is not the only foe, but it is the leader among them. It is only through Iran's defeat that the tide of the Second Cold War will be turned.

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<B><font size=+1 color=brown><center>Iran's Calculated End to Hostages Drama</font>

April 05, 2007
The Financial Times
In Debth
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/a4c2ad1e-e3...uid=be75219e-940a-11da-82ea-0000779e2340.html </center>
It was a weirdly effective performance. Invoking the "anniversary of the death of Jesus Christ" and the spirit of forgiveness, Mahmoud Ahmadi-Nejad, Iran's mercurial president, ended a characteristically prolix press conference yesterday with a coup de theatre: freeing the 15 British sailors and marines seized by Revolutionary Guards in the northern Gulf 13 days ago. This "gift" to the British people has damped down a highly combustible situation - and Iran will be looking to claim as much of the credit as it can. </b>

Britain will be mightily relieved at the return of the servicemen (and one woman). But the government will face some hard questioning: about how this incident could be allowed to happen, with pitifully armed patrols operating in indefensible dinghies in arguably the most dangerous waters in the world; about the circumstances in which the sailors confessed on Iranian television that they had indeed violated Iran's territorial waters; about the humiliating propaganda of Mr Ahmadi-Nejad's long goodbye, televised to the world, to the freed and, on the face of it, effusively grateful servicemen.

Britain's tactics were not, initially, joined up. It was particularly foolish to pretend that the Royal Navy was on the right, Iraqi side of a maritime boundary that does not formally exist, rather than insist it was operating under and enforcing United Nations Security Council resolutions.

Iran, by contrast, will be feeling a good deal less cornered than it did two weeks ago, on the eve of a UN Security Council vote expanding sanctions because of Tehran's refusal to cease enriching uranium. An unpopular regime rallied the nation, sensitised by a century of illicit Anglo-American intervention in Iran's affairs. Tehran's robust style has impressed Arabs and Muslims who see their leaders as corrupt lackeys of the west. And Iran has shown it will push back against the provocative build-up of Anglo-American forces in the Gulf. It has succeeded in highlighting that danger, and suggesting that the spike in the oil price caused by the crisis is but a foretaste of what would happen if Iran is attacked.

That the release of the servicemen was preceded by the release of an Iranian diplomat abducted in Baghdad in February, and the promise of consular access to five other Iranian officials seized by US forces in Iraqi Kurdistan in January, gives rise to suspicions this was, in the end, a classic Middle Eastern exchange of hostages. That would be unfortunate - and dangerous. Few now remember that the "western" hostages crisis in the Lebanese civil war in the 1980s began with the seizure of four Iranian diplomats.

The best lesson to take away from this affair was how rapidly it was resolved once empowered officials on both sides talked directly. The US and its allies should confront Iran's nuclear and regional ambitions the same way. If it does not work, nothing will be lost.

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<B><font size=+1 color=green><center>Why Iran Released the Hostages</font>

April 05, 2007
FrontPageMagazine.com
Kenneth R. Timmerman
http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=27721 </center>
The latest looney-tune story from the left was spun by Patrick Cockburn, an intrepid reporter for London’s Independent newspaper. According to this Iranian-sponsored fairy tale, it’s all Bush’s fault.

That’s right. The fact that the Iranian Revolutionary Guards navy seized 15 British sailors and marines and took them hostage in Iraqi waters never would have happened if George W. Bush hadn’t ordered U.S. troops in Iraq to capture Gen. Minojahar Firouzandeh, a top Rev. Guards intelligence officer on Jan. 10, 2007.
</b>
It appears that Gen. Firouzandeh was paying a courtesy call to an Iranian “consulate” in Irbil, Iraq, when U.S. and Iraqi troops decided to raid the place. Luckily for Firouzandeh, he and another high-level visitor – said to be Mohammed Jaafari, the deputy chairman of the Supreme Council on National Security –had been tipped off by Iraqi Kurdish friendsand high-tailed it out of dodge, just in time.

Instead of Firouzandeh and Jaafari, coalition troops arrested six other Iranians, including three top officers of the Quds Force, the overseas terrorist arm of the Iranian Rev. Guards. One Iranian, who was operating under diplomatic cover, was subsequently released. The other five were caught in the act of trying to eat their passports or otherwise destroy their identity papers and are still in U.S. custody.

Because of America’s audacity in arresting Iranian intelligence officers using a visa office in northern Iraq as a staging area to funnel support to Iraqi insurgents, Iran was compelled to take hostage a team of British sailors who were operating in Iraqi waters at the opposite end of the country. Got that?

According to this version of events, if the United States and Britain would just allow Iran to run roughshod over Iraq, supply terrorists with fresh weapons and suitcases of cash, everything would be just fine.

Cockburn was right about one thing, however. He called the U.S. arrests “a significant escalation in the confrontation between the U.S. and Iran.”

As I revealed on this pagenot long after the Jan. 10 raid, Iran’s leaders panicked when they heard the news. For only the second time in the 28 years the Iranian mullahs had been jerking the American chain, the Americans finally reacted with something akin to force. (The other time was during a one day battle in the Persian Gulf on April 18, 1988, during which the U.S. navy sunk one-third of the Iranian navy.)

Iran’s leaders respect and fear U.S. military force. Clearly, they neither respect nor fear the Royal Navy. That’s why they chose to take British sailors hostage, not attack a U.S. boarding party or a U.S. ship, although some in the Iranian government were indeed advocating such action.

The decision to release the fifteen British hostages, announced by Ahmadinejad on Wednesday, came after an intense and often bitter internal debate, sources in Tehran told me.

If the capture of the British naval inspection team was clearly a coordinated effort by the Iranian government aimed at demonstrating Iran’s ability to confront the U.S.-led multinational forces in Iraq and to divert international attention from the nuclear showdown, the decision to release the hostages showed the limits of Iran’s power and the fears of some leaders that too much provocation could backfire.

Within four days of their capture on March 23, the fifteen Britons were split up into smaller groups and held in different areas, Iranian sources told me. This was a lesson learned from the 1979-1981 hostage crisis, when all 55 U.S. hostages were initially kept in one place, prompting the failed U.S. effort to rescue them.

Early during the current hostage crisis, the British team was split up into five groups of three, to prevent any rescue attempt, with each group kept at a different military base. The Iranians would then bring several groups together and film them, to give the impression they were being held together.

The order to capture the British sailors and marines was given by Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei himself, my sources tell me.

Khamenei’s top advisors argued that by striking out against a U.S. ally in Iraq, they would be sending a message to other European nations to step back from supporting the U.S. strategy of increasing pressure on Iran over its nuclear program. They saw the move as a clear test of Western resolve.

And for awhile, this Iranian strategy appeared to be working.

Britain’s European partners quickly forgot their treaty obligations and determined that the British sailors and marines were not really Europeans, thus obviating the need for a collective response from all members of the European Union.

Although they might carry European Union passports when traveling to Italy or Greece, when British subjects got in trouble in Iran they were Britons first and last.

“C’est vraiment une affaire qui ne passe pas outre-Manche,” the French center-left daily Le Monde commented on Tuesday.Translated into plain English, the French observed (accurately) that nobody on the correct side of the English Channel could give a rat’s behind about the fate of the British hostages. They had too much (commercially) at stake.

Tony Blair’s efforts to get his European partners to consider scaling back export credits to Iran fell on deaf ears. Let’s hope his successors remember that heart-warming European response when the French and the Germans roll-out their next version of a collectivist constitution for the EU’s 25-member states.

British companies, however, rallied to the call and backed off their planned participation in a oil trade show planned in Tehran from April 18-22.

Just before the hostage crisis began, the Iranians boasted that 1,300 international companies had expressed interest in attending the show. On March 30, a British trade representative told me that only 13 UK companies had signed up for the trip. Since then, Iran appears to have pushed the show back by at least a week.

As Britain refused to apologize for the behavior of its boarding party, continuing to insist that they were operating in Iraqi waters – not inside Iran’s territorial waters, as Tehran alleged – some of Khamenei’s advisors began to have second thoughts.

Adding to those doubts were whispered reports that the USS Nimitz was steaming toward the Persian Gulf– making it the third Carrier Strike Group in the area.

The Nimitz is expected to join the USS Dwight D. Eisenhower and the USS John C. Stennis, both currently in the Persian Gulf, in the coming weeks. It left its home port of San Diego on April 2, but the Iranians apparently had advance warning of the Nimitz’s plans (hello?)

On Friday, March 30, Khamenei’s top advisors met in an emergency session of the Supreme Council on National Security, chaired by Ali Larijani.

Larijani is the regime’s top nuclear negotiator, and is a confidant of the Supreme Leader, while maintaining close ties to President Ahmadinejad.

At that meeting, Revolutionary Guards commander Maj. Gen. Rahim Safavi reported that the deployment of the Nimitz suggested that a U.S. military invasion of Iran was being prepared for early May. He urged the Council to order the release of the British hostages as a gesture to defuse the tension in the region.

The next day, however, the head of the Political and Cultural bureau of the Revolutionary Guards, Dr. Yadollah Javani, called Safavi a “traitor” for proposing the release of the hostages.

While this internal dispute raged, Revolutionary Guards intelligence officers in charge of guarding the hostages continued intense debriefings, aimed at eliciting “confessions” from the British captives that were aired on Iranian television.

The first inkling that the faction urging release of the hostages was winning appeared on Tuesday evening, when the influential Baztab website, run by former Revolutionary Guards commander Gen. Mohsen Rezai, reported that the British captives would soon be released.

“It can now be said that the politicians who are for continuing relations with London have got the upper hand,” Baztab reported.

So for now, Tehran’s leaders have backed down. Why?

For one, they scored some domestic political points. Britain is not terribly popular in Iran, and is always suspected of some conspiratorial plot aimed at destroying Iran’s territorial integrity or national sovereignty. So any blow against Britain is a sure win for Iranian jingoists.

Second, I am told that the U.S. agreed to an Iranian demand to allow an international Red Crescent team interview the five Iranian officials in U.S. custody after the Jan. 10 raid in Irbil. This is a serious but understandable U.S. concession.

Among the Red Crescent team is an Iranian national, and the chances that he reports directly to the Iranian government are very high. “He will tell the captives to shut up, hang tight, and soon they’ll be free,” my Iranian sources tell me.

But my bets are still on the Nimitz – and on the proximity of the anniversary of Operation Praying Mantis, when the Iranians tasted the steel and cordite of a determined U.S. navy.

Unless Iran already has nuclear warheads, a direct military confrontation with the United States would most likely provoke a popular uprising against the regime. And retaining power is the one thing that Ayatollah Khamenei and his clerical cohorts actually care about.

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<i>Oft times - it is these "tiny" news articles (which contain a few words) which tend to tell us a lot more information about a subject(s). ~ Dutch</i>



<B><font size=+1 color=blue><center>Iran to mark ‘National Nuclear Day’</font>

Published: 04.05.07, 17:06 / Israel News
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3385104,00.html </center>
Iran will mark “National Nuclear Day” on April 9</b> in a ceremony at the uranium enrichment plant in Natanz, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) said.

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who is scheduled to take part in the event, said Iran will issue an important statement on its nuclear program next week. (AFP)

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It appears that "Amajin-da-butthead" has won a political/diplomatic coup! From the way this author is "Kissing Up" to him ~ Dutchman</i>





<B><font size=+1 color=purple><center>Analysis: The axis of not-so-evil</font>

By CLAUDE SALHANI
UPI International Editor
http://www.upi.com/InternationalIntelligence/view.php?StoryID=20070405-123011-7029r </center>
WASHINGTON, April 5 (UPI) -- Within the past 24 hours, two of the three countries President George W. Bush labeled "the axis of evil" -- Iran and North Korea -- have offered an ever-so-slightly gentler face to the rest of the world. And so has Syria, which, since Iraq no longer qualifies as part of the evil axis, has in the eyes of the Bush administration earned honorary membership to the group of "rogue states." </b>

Iran, where during the past two weeks it appeared at times the country was about to go to war with the West over the fate of 15 British sailors and marines, suddenly and unexpectedly offered the 15 captives amnesty and freedom.

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who just a few weeks ago spoke of "wiping Israel off the face of the map," said the Islamic republic was releasing the British service personnel as a good gesture at this time of holydays: the feast of the prophet, Easter and the Jewish Passover.

Ahmadinejad basked in theatrics as television cameras beamed images of his news conference around the world, then remained focused on him as the 14 men and one woman queued up to personally thank him for his kind intervention in bringing about their release.

Just to show you what kind of zany day it was, the only logical response to this Felliniesque drama came from Vice President Dick Cheney, who said that the Brits should not have been detained in the first place.

Indeed, the entire episode was a cluster-muddle from the very start. For the better part of 13 days, the British and Iranians argued over the location of where the 15 were at the time of their detention by Iranian Revolutionary Guards.

Iran said the British were in Iranian territorial waters; the British insist they were in Iraqi waters. The fact is they were in the Shatt al-Arab, a waterway that separates Iraq from Iran and is in itself the cause of a long-standing dispute between the two countries. Baghdad and Tehran never could agree as to where exactly the demarcation line stands. You have to admit it is practically impossible to paint a white line down the center of a river.

And Syria, the spare cog in the "axis of evil," also made headlines Wednesday -- and in a positive manner -- as U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi crossed a line painted by President Bush intended to isolate Damascus when she met with Syrian President Bashar Assad.

Pelosi, who is the third-ranking U.S. official after the president and vice president, brushed off strong criticism from the White House that she was undermining U.S. foreign policy.

But as Imad Mustapha, Syria's ambassador to Washington who was in Damascus for Pelosi's visit, told the BBC diplomacy means engaging in dialogue those with whom you disagree.

Pelosi, at a news conference after her meeting with Assad, said the Syrian leader was ready to discuss peace with Israel.

Washington's foreign policy towards Syria has consisted of shunning Damascus, rendering any hope of a rapprochement impossible. Regardless of how sincere Assad may be in sitting at a negotiating table with Israel, statements like these make him appear willing to negotiate, while Bush's hard-line stance only gives the United States a harsher image in a region where Uncle Sam enjoys little sympathy, to say the least.

Although diplomatic relations were not severed with Damascus, the Bush administration banned dialogue with Syria after the February 2005 assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri.

While the Bush administration and some Republicans are outwardly upset at Pelosi for breaking ranks over Syria's isolation, it remains that her trip to Damascus will, without a doubt, vastly improve the image of the United States in the Arab world by demonstrating that America knows how to talk to its friends and to those who are not exactly its friends.

And finally, North Korea, a traditionally hermetically sealed nation and the other evil cog in Bush's infamous nefarious axis, in an unusual gesture invited the United States to send envoys to collect the remains of American GIs killed during the Korean War. New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson, who is also a Democratic presidential candidate, will lead a delegation that will include members of President Bush's Republican administration.

It was just another day in the nation's capital.

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<B><font size=+1 color=red><center>U.S reaction: Why did the British sailors cooperate?</font>

By CLAIRE BATES
Last updated at 15:50pm on 5th April 2007
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/li...article_id=446929&in_page_id=1811&ito=newsnow </center>
While the U.S media welcomed the release of the 15 British hostages from Iran, most were sceptical of Iran's new 'diplomatic' stance.

And the Wall Street Journal strongly questioned the sailors' apparent cooperation with their captives.

The national daily admitted "Mr Blair's decision to use diplomacy to gain the sailors' release paid off." </b>

But the Journal added: "We would like to learn the full story of why the hostages seemingly cooperated so readily with their captors.

"It is hard to know what to make of yesterday's pictures of the sailors - in suits, not uniforms - smiling and shaking hands with a beaming Mr Ahmadinejad. These weren't civilians but sailors presumably trained to resist propaganda displays."

However, the American press were deeply divided on what the British hostage crisis revealed about the current state of Iran.

The The New York Times felt it proved Iran were prepared to use diplomacy if approached in the right way.

"The Islamic Republic of Iran sent its adversaries a pointed message," it said in an editorial today.

"Just as Iran will meet confrontation with confrontation, it will respond to what it perceives as flexibility with pragmatism. This message is worth heeding as the United States and Iran seem to be moving inexorably toward conflict."

But the New York Post disagreed. "It's important not to forget that Iran - a state sponsor of terror, after all - precipitated the crisis by kidnapping British military personnel," they said.

"If Iran's rewarded for releasing them, the world becomes a marginally more dangerous place. That's always the way with criminals."

The Washington Post agreed. "Iran is likely to pay a long-term price for the detention drama, again appearing to undertake rogue actions in violation of international law," they said.

And the Wall Street Journal said: "No one should conclude from this episode that the Iranian government is taking a new peaceful turn, or that it's President has become Mahmoud the Munificent. If anything, the events of the past two weeks show the opposite.

"Their objective was clearly to create some negotiating leverage and humiliate Prime Minister Tony Blair, who is leaving office later this year."

They concluded by reminding their readers: "While the release of the Brits is cause for celebration, we hope the world won't forget those who aren't getting out - the myriad of political prisoners, often democrats, in Iran's dungeons."

U.S. could crack Iran air defence-Russian generals
05 Apr 2007 14:36:12 GMT
Source: Reuters

http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/L05183555.htm

MOSCOW, April 5 (Reuters) - The United States would suffer losses if it attacked Iran but weight of numbers would ensure it eventually achieved air supremacy, Russian generals said on Thursday.

"According to our estimates, Iran's air defence system is pretty strong," General Yuri Solovyov, head of Moscow's air defences, told a news conference.

"Iran's weapons, among others, include our anti-aircraft systems which allow them to fight all types of flying objects currently in service in the U.S. army ... Besides, we all remember our specialists have trained them since Soviet times."

Russia said in January it had completed delivery of TOR-M1 anti-aircraft missile systems to Iran, provoking an outcry from Washington and its Middle East ally Israel who said the sale undermined regional security.

Moscow said the missile systems were short-range and purely defensive. Russian media have quoted unnamed sources in Russian military intelligence as saying the United States could launch a strike on Iran as early as April 6.

Washington and Tehran are at loggerheads over Iran's nuclear programme which the West fears is aimed at building an atomic bomb. Iran says it wants only to produce electricity.

The U.S. has also accused Iran of supporting militants in neighbouring Iraq.

"Today's situation is such that the attacking side (the U.S,) has more modern and powerful weapons and enjoys supremacy in quantity, compared to Iran's defences," said General Sergei Razygrayev, chief of staff of Moscow's air defence system.

"They (the Americans) will be able to create such a quantitive supremacy that they will accomplish the set task, though they will also suffer losses," Razygrayev said.

On Tuesday, Russian Chief of General Staff Yuri Baluyevsky was quoted as saying the U.S. could damage Iran's military and industrial potential but "it is impossible to win".

Razygrayev said that to project a possible scenario for Iran, Russian military experts had analysed U.S. air strikes on former Yugoslavia and Iraq.

He said the U.S. would seek to suppress Iran's radar systems and launch a massive strike with cruise missiles.

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<B><font size=+1 color=red><center>What Message Was Iran Sending?</font>

Wednesday, Apr. 04, 2007
By SCOTT MACLEOD/CAIRO
http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1606856,00.html?xid=rss-world </center>
Article ToolsPrintEmailReprints Already facing U.N. sanctions and speculation about a U.S. attack over its nuclear program, Iran's capture of 15 British sailors and marines on March 23 had the makings of a new Middle East crisis that could spin dangerously out of control. So, Tehran's decision to free the captives in what President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad called a "gift to the British people" was a notable victory for Iranian pragmatists over hard-liners — one that could even build momentum within Tehran's power structure and in Western capitals for a diplomatic solution to the standoff over Iran's uranium-enrichment program.
</b>
Iran claimed it had arrested the Britons for illegally entering Iranian waters, a charge London hotly disputed. Although President Bush declared that Iran had seized the 15 sailors and marines as "hostages," Iran's treatment of its captives from the start indicated that it sought to make a point rather than provoke a war. In contrast to images of blindfolded hostages when Iranians stormed the U.S. embassy in Tehran in 1979, Iranian footage this time showed the British captives in their uniforms sitting together and eating — a diplomatic affront, but hardly a menacing scene.

The capture of the Britons seemed designed to send three messages to London, and more importantly, to Washington:


Don't think about attacking Iran, because it has the capacity to threaten Western interests in the Gulf and throughout the Middle East, directly as well as through allies in Iraq, Lebanon and Palestine;

Expect Iran to instigate trouble if the West continues to punish Iran for what it sees simply as exercising as its legal right to nuclear technology; and,

Iran will play tit-for-tat if U.S. forces continue arresting Iranian officials working inside Iraq, as in the Jan. 11 raid on an Iranian consular facility in Erbil where five Iranians were detained.

Iran's sudden decision to release the Britons may mean that the Western pressure on the Iranian regime is bearing fruit. A day after the Britons were taken captive, the U.N. Security Council passed the second set of sanctions against Iran in three months — and a third round of sanctions is anticipated if Iran does not freeze its uranium-enrichment program, which the U.S. fears could enable Tehran to produce a nuclear weapon. As Under Secretary of State R. Nicholas Burns told the Senate last week, "Despite the fulminations of President Ahmadinejad, Iran is not impervious to financial and diplomatic pressure."

But the release of the Britons could also mean that Iran has achieved some of its objectives. The surprise announcement came just a day after the sudden release of an abducted Iranian diplomat in Iraq, who Iranian officials claimed had been arrested on U.S. orders. British, American and Iraqi officials denied any connection between the freed Iranian and release of the Britons. Iran also disclosed on Wednesday that its embassy in Iraq had finally been granted access to the five Iranians detained at Erbil.

The peaceful end to the naval dispute is a victory for diplomacy. Iranian and British leaders maintained constant contact through direct diplomatic channels, and kept their heads amid rising domestic political pressure on both ends to act tough. In particular, the outcome is a significant boost for Iran's pragmatists led by Ali Larijani, head of Iran's Supreme National Security Council, who is Iran's chief nuclear negotiator whose council is Iran's top foreign policy body, and who is Iran's chief nuclear negotiator.

Last year, Ahmadinejad's hard-line opposition had helped scuttle a deal Larijani was crafting in discussion with European Union foreign policy chief Javier Solana that involved a temporary suspension of Iran's enrichment program. In announcing the release of the Britons, Ahmadinejad signaled that the more radical faction of Iran's leadership would not stand in the way of Larijani's dealings with the West. The question, now, is whether Larijani can achieve the same success in guiding Tehran to a compromise in Iran's nuclear showdown — and whether the U.S., following Britain's example, is willing to give diplomacy a real chance.

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<B><center> Russian News Sourse

<font size=+1 color=brown>U.K. intrusion was a test of Iran's defenses - Iranian official</font>

17:44 | 05/ 04/ 2007
http://en.rian.ru/world/20070405/63168234.html </center>
TEHRAN, April 5 (RIA Novosti) - The U.K.'s intrusion into Iran's territorial waters was an attempt by the West to test the republic's defense capabilities, a senior aide to Iran's supreme leader said Thursday. </b>

Iran detained 15 British Navy personnel in the Gulf March 23 for allegedly violating its maritime border with Iraq. Britain has insisted the servicemen were in Iraqi waters under a UN mandate, and were returning in dinghies to HMS Cornwall after patrolling oil platforms.

"By trespassing into our country's territorial waters, the occupation forces in Iraq sought, among other things, to test Iran. But considering Iran's political and military wisdom, they met with a firm rebuff," said Ali Akbar Velayati, international affairs advisor to Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei

He said that Iran, like the Islamic world as a whole, "is not afraid of Western power."

"Muslims must know that they can stand up to the strongest enemies of Islam," he said.

The 15 British Navy personnel, released by Iranian authorities Wednesday after almost two weeks in custody, returned to the United Kingdom Thursday.

The freed sailors and marines arrived at Heathrow airport on a British Airways flight at 12:03 p.m. local time (11:03 a.m. GMT). They were then transferred to two military helicopters to fly to the Chivenor military base in Devon, 200 miles southwest of London, for a private meeting with their families.

Iran's hard-line president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, announced the release of the 15 Royal Navy personnel in a surprise move late Wednesday, following a diplomatic standoff that his country and Britain had been engaged in since the crew's detention in the Persian Gulf March 23.

Ahmadinejad announced the Britons' release after just two days of talks, saying it was not the result of a deal, but that they had been pardoned by the Iranian leadership as a gesture of good will.

In return for the release, the British Foreign Ministry said it would soon consider lifting restrictions imposed on Iran following the incident.

The crisis pushed up oil prices and raised fears of a military conflict in the volatile region, as speculation grew of an impending strike by the U.S. on Iran in April.

The U.S. administration has repeatedly accused Tehran of interfering in Iraq's internal affairs by providing weapons and extremist training to the country's Shiite factions. It also suspects the Islamic Republic of covertly developing nuclear weapons.

In January U.S. servicemen detained five Iranian officials in Erbil, in Kurdistan, confiscating computers and documents without providing any explanation.

Shortly before the release of the British sailors, IRNA reported that Iranian diplomats would be allowed to meet the five Iranians detained by the U.S.

Another Iranian diplomat, seized separately in February in Baghdad, was released and returned to Iran Tuesday. Iran accused the U.S. of abducting him, a charge the U.S. denied.

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<B><font size=+1 color=green><center>Blair suspects Iran's hand in Iraq attacks</font>

Mark Oliver
Thursday April 5, 2007
Guardian Unlimited
http://politics.guardian.co.uk/foreignaffairs/story/0,,2051025,00.html </center>
Tony Blair today warned that "elements of the Iranian regime" were arming insurgents in Iraq after it was confirmed four British troops were killed in Basra last night.

As the BA flight carrying the 15 Royal Navy personnel freed by Iran yesterday landed at Heathrow, Mr Blair emerged from No 10 and welcomed their return but said it came as "grieving" began over the four fatalities in Basra.</b>

The British troops were killed at around 2am local time by a roadside bomb attack that had targeted their Warrior armoured vehicle patrol in an area west of Basra city. A civilian Kuwaiti translator was also killed in the attack and a fifth British soldier was left seriously injured.


The latest deaths bring the British death toll in Iraq for the last few days to six, making it the bloodiest week for UK forces in Iraq for more than two years.
Mr Blair said it was "too early" to know if there was a direct link to Iran in the latest British fatalities but repeated claims he has made before of general Iranian involvement in arming insurgents.

He said: "Now it is far too early to say that the particular terrorist act that killed our forces was an act committed by terrorists that were backed by any elements of the Iranian regime, so I make no allegation in respect of that particular incident.

"But the general picture, as I have said before, is that there are elements of the Iranian regime that are backing, financing, arming and supporting terrorism in Iraq."

British and US officials believe that the Quds brigade, a secretive organisation directed by the Iranian spiritual leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and part of the Iranian revolutionary guard, is helping to provide insurgents in Iraq with the training and finance to create roadside bombs.

Two months ago, the US president, George Bush, said the Quds brigade was providing networks outside Iran with devices, though he rowed back on claims by his administration that high level Iranian leadership was ordering the moves. He said he did not know who was ordering the smuggling of weapons, but added that he was going to "do something about it".

The five Iranians captured by US forces in Irbil, northern Iraq in January, are suspected by the US of being members of the Quds brigade. Tehran insists they are diplomats; the UK yesterday denied that moves to allow the Iranians diplomatic access to these detainees had anything to do with the release of the British sailors and marines who had been captured by Iranian revolutionary guards on March 23.

Mr Blair first warned in October 2005 of concerns over improvised explosive device technology and weaponry coming from Iran. He said British forces had noticed a sudden increase in the sophistication of the devices, which were increasingly to blame for coalition fatalities.

However, no incontrovertible proof of links to Iran has been presented by the US or UK. Parts of some of the devices used against British forces are sent back to the UK for analysis.

Today's casualties were the worst loss in a single incident since four British service personnel were killed in an attack on a coalition boat patrol last November. And the British casualties in Iraq in recent days have been the heaviest since 10 British personnel died when an RAF Hercules plane crashed outside Baghdad on January 30 2005.

Captain Katie Brown, a spokeswoman for the British military in Basra, said the patrol was attacked in the Hayaniya district, west of Basra.

In London, an MoD spokeswoman said: "It is with deep regret that we can confirm that four British soldiers and a civilian interpreter were killed in a roadside bomb attack against a Warrior patrol west of Basra this morning. Next of kin are being informed and no further details will be released until this process is complete."

The total death toll of British service personnel in Iraq since hostilities began now stands at 140, 109 of whom died in action.

The first of the recent fatalities was Kingsman Danny John Wilson, 28, of Chindip Company, 2nd Battalion, the Duke of Lancaster's Regiment, who died on Sunday after he was hit by small arms fire during a patrol in Basra city. The soldier, from Workington, Cumbria, was taken to the multinational Basra palace base, where he later died of his injuries.

The following day, Rifleman Aaron Lincoln, 18, from Durham died after coming under attack from small arms fire while on a routine patrol in the al-Ashar district of central Basra. The serviceman, of the 2nd Battalion, the Rifles, was also evacuated to Basra palace and then to the field hospital at Basra air station but died later.

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<B><font size=+1 color=blue><center>Blair Urges Tough Line With Iran As Captives Return</font>

04:13 PM, April 5th 2007
by Playfuls Team
http://www.playfuls.com/news_10_22758-Blair-Urges-Tough-Line-With-Iran-As-Captives-Return.html </center>
The 15 British sailors and Royal Marines freed by Iran returned to Britain Thursday as Prime Minister Tony Blair urged the international community to uphold a tough line over Iran's nuclear ambitions and its alleged support for terrorism.

As the 14 men and one woman stepped off a British Airway's plane from Tehran in bright sunshine in London, posing briefly for photographers, Blair said the joy over their release was tempered by the "ugly reality" of four British soldiers being killed in southern Iraq Thursday. </b>

"Just as we rejoice at the return of our 15 personnel, so today we also grieve and mourn for the loss of our soldiers in Basra who were killed as a result of a terrorist act," said Blair.

London has repeatedly accused Iranian forces of being behind attacks on British soldiers in southern Iraq.

The group, back in their uniforms after being put in specially- made grey suits by the Iranian authorities for their release Wednesday, were immediately flown to a naval base in Devon, south- west Britain, for debriefing sessions.

After 13 days in captivity, they were to be reunited with their families later Thursday. The crew was snatched by Iranian coastguards from patrol boats in the Shatt al-Arab waterway on March 23.

While Tehran insisted they were in Iranian waters at the time, Britain has maintained that the boats were well inside Iraqi waters at the time of their seizure.

Blair said Thursday that the "dual-track strategy" pursued with Iran during the past two weeks of diplomatic contact had opened "new and interesting lines of communication."

"Being open to bilateral dialogue with the Iranian regime, but at the same time mobilizing international support and pressure, whether in the United Nations and Europe, with the United States of America, or with our allies in the region," Blair explained.

It would be "utterly naive" to believe that the Britons would have been freed unless "both elements of the strategy had been present," added Blair.

Iran, meanwhile, made clear its annoyance of what it called the "internationalization" of the incident by Britain. The capture was condemned by the EU, the United Nations Security Council and individual governments in the Middle East.

Blair urged the international community to "remain absolutely steadfast in enforcing its will, whether it is in respect of nuclear weapons or whether it is in respect of the support of any part of the Iranian regime for terrorism, particularly when directed against democratic governments."

"The choice in a sense is a choice which I think has to be made by Iran," added Blair.

Blair said the captives were freed "without any deal, without any negotiation, without any side agreement of any nature whatsoever."

Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who announced the release in a dramatic gesture Wednesday, also said that "no concessions" had been made by the British government, but Britain had pledged that "the incident would not be repeated."

Ahmadinejad made a point of bidding a personal farewell to all group members, who were clad in grey suits for the occasion, and showered with gifts and good wishes in front of rolling TV cameras.

In Tehran Thursday, Iranian media released footage showing the group drinking tea and receiving gifts before boarding their flight home.

Leading Seaman Faye Turney, the only woman among the group, was quoted by the Iranian media as saying to Ahmadinejad: "Apologies for our actions, but many thanks for having it in your hearts to let us go free."

Turney, 26, and the mother of a three-year-old girl, had come to symbolize the vulnerability of the captives in several appearances on Iranian TV channels during the period of detention.

Ahmadinejad announced the release as a "gift to the British people" at a dramatic press conference in Tehran Wednesday, citing the birthday of the Prophet Mohammed and the "passing of Christ" for the timing of his decision.

Britain's Independent newspaper Thursday summed up the mixed feelings among the British public and commentators about the dramatic fashion of the captives' release.

"Rejoice" said the paper on its split front page, next to a picture of Blair. But turned upside down, it printed the word "Victory" next to an image of Ahmadinejad.

© 2007 DPA

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<B><font size=+1 color=purple><center>IDF fires into Lebanon for first time since war</font>

Published: 04.04.07, 19:29 / Israel News
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3384749,00.html </center>
It has now been released that an IDF force opened fire in to Lebanese territory</b> for the first time since the end of the Second Lebanon War last Thursday after troops identified suspicious movement near Zari'it, the location where Israeli soldiers Eldad Regev and Ehud Goldwasser were kidnapped in July.

After the incident troops scouted the area, but found nothing. A military source said the shooting was in line with the IDF's operational policy being employed along the northern border to defend Israeli sovereignty. (Hanan Greenberg)

"The US Can Learn from this Example of Mutual Respect"!


I TOLD YOU!!!! THAT'S EXACTLY WHY IRAN TOOK THOSE HOSTAGES AND THEN RELEASED THEM.

Britain and America once again just played directly into their hands.

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The West was again, made to look like fools. Damn, we are good at that are we not?

I could sit here and type a novel about how stupid we are. I have neither the time, nor the inclination. Stupid is, as stupid does. We have shown how stupid we are. It is no longer a secret. Just ask Nancy. As much as I admire and respect the US of A. I am as disappointed in you as I am in the Brits. And Nancy is a side menu, who deserves no recognition at all.

The Flying Dutchman said:

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It appears that "Amajin-da-butthead" has won a political/diplomatic coup! From the way this author is "Kissing Up" to him ~ Dutchman</i>

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The biggest victory for Iran and Osama bin Laden was when GW Bush invaded and overthrew their biggest common enemy, Saddam Hussein, and turned that country over to the Shiites.


don