Destabilization 2.0: Soros, the CIA, Mossad and the new media destabilization of Iran

Source: James Corbett, The Corbett Report.

23 June, 2009

It’s the 2009 presidential election in Iran and opposition leader Mir-Houssein Mousavi declares victory hours before the polls close, insuring that any result to the contrary will be called into question. Western media goes into overdrive, fighting with each other to see who can offer the most hyperbolic denunciation of the vote and President Ahmadenijad’s apparent victory (BBC wins by publishing bald-faced lies about the supposed popular uprising which it is later forced to retract). On June 13th, 30000 “tweets” begin to flood Twitter with live updates from Iran, most written in English and provided by a handful of newly-registered users with identical profile photos. The Jerusalem Post writes a story about the Iran Twitter phenomenon a few hours after it starts (and who says Mossad isn’t staying up to date with new media?). Now, YouTube is providing a “Breaking News” link at the top of every page linking to the latest footage of the Iranian protests (all shot in high def, no less). Welcome to Destabilization 2.0, the latest version of a program that the western powers have been running for decades in order to overthrow foreign, democratically elected governments that don’t yield to the whims of western governments and multinational corporations.

Ironically, Iran was also the birthplace of the original CIA program for destabilizing a foreign government. Think of it as Destabilization 1.0: It’s 1953 and democratically-elected Iranian leader Mohammed Mossadegh is following through on his election promises to nationalize industry for the Iranian people, including the oil industry of Iran which was then controlled by the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company. The CIA is sent into the country to bring an end to Mossadegh’s government. They begin a campaign of terror, staging bombings and attacks on Muslim targets in order to blame them on nationalist, secular Mossadegh. They foster and fund an anti-Mossadegh campaign amongst the radical Islamist elements in the country. Finally, they back the revolution that brings their favoured puppet, the Shah, into power. Within months, their mission had been accomplished: they had removed a democratically elected leader who threatened to build up an independent, secular Persian nation and replaced him with a repressive tyrant whose secret police would brutally suppress all opposition. The campaign was a success and the lead CIA agent wrote an after-action report describing the operation in glowing terms. The pattern was to be repeated time and time again in country after country (in Guatemala in 1954, in Afghanistan in the 1980s, in Serbia in the 1990s), but these operations leave the agency open to exposure. What was needed was a different plan, one where the western political and financial interests puppeteering the revolution would be more difficult to implicate in the overthrow.

Enter Destabilization 1.1. This version of the destabilization program is less messy, offering plausible deniability for the western powers who are overthrowing a foreign government. It starts when the IMF moves in to offer a bribe to a tinpot dictator in a third world country. He gets 10% in exchange for taking out an exorbitant loan for an infrastructure project that the country can’t afford. When the country inevitably defaults on the loan payments, the IMF begins to take over, imposing a restructuring program that eventually results in the full scale looting of the country’s resources for western business interests. This program, too, was run in country after country, from Jamaica to Myanmar, from Chile to Zimbabwe. The source code for this program was revealed in 2001, however, when former World Bank chief economist Joseph Stiglitz went public about the scam. More detail was added in 2004 by the publication of John Perkin’s Confessions of an Economic Hitman, which revealed the extent to which front companies and complicit corporations aided, abetted and facilitated the economic plundering and overthrow of foreign governments. Although still an effective technique for overthrowing foreign nations, the fact that this particular scam had been exposed meant that the architects of global geopolitics would have to find a new way to get rid of foreign, democratically elected governments.

Destabilization 1.2 involves seemingly disinterested, democracy promoting NGOs with feelgood names like the Open Society Institute, Freedom House and the National Endowment for Democracy. They fund, train, support and mobilize opposition movements in countries that have been targeted for destabilization, often during elections and usually organized around an identifiable color. These “color revolutions” sprang up in the past decade and have so far successfully destabilized the governments of the Ukraine, Lebanon, Georgia and Kyrgyzstan, among others. These revolutions bear the imprint of billionaire finance oligarch George Soros. The hidden hand of western powers behind these color revolutions has threatened their effectiveness in recent years, however, with an anti-Soros movement having arisen in Georgia and with the recent Moldovan “grape revolution” having come to naught (much to the chagrin of Soros-funded OSI’s Evgeny Morozov).

Now we arrive at Destabilization 2.0, really not much more than a slight tweak of Destabilization 1.2. The only thing different is that now Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and other social media are being employed to amplify the effect of (and the impression of) internal protests. Once again, Soros henchman Evgeny Morozov is extolling the virtues of the new Tehran Twitter revolution and the New York Times is writing journalistic hymns to the power of internet new media…when it serves western imperial interests. We are being asked to believe that this latest version of the very (very) old program of U.S. corporate imperialism is the real deal. While there is no doubt that the regime of Ahmadenijad is reprehensible and the feelings of many of the young protestors in Iran are genuine, you will forgive me for quesyioning the motives behind the monolithic media support for the overthrow of Iran’s government and the installation of Mir-Houssein “Butcher of Beirut” Mousavi.

BBC Caught In Mass Public Deception With Iran Propaganda

Source: InfoWars.com.

The BBC has again been caught engaging in mass public deception by using photographs of pro-Ahmadinejad rallies in Iran and claiming they represent anti-government protests in favor of Hossein Mousavi.

An image used by the L.A. Times on the front page of its website Tuesday showed Iranian President Ahmadinejad waving to a crowd of supporters at a public event.

In a story covering the election protests yesterday, the BBC News website used a closer shot of the same scene, but with Ahmadinejad cut out of the frame. The caption under the photograph read, ‘Supporters of Mir Hossein Mousavi again defied a ban on protests’.

The BBC photograph is clearly a similar shot of the same pro-Ahmadinejad rally featured in the L.A. Times image, yet the caption erroneously claims it represents anti-Ahmadinejad protesters.

See the screenshots below (click to enlarge).

“Well I guess it sure was a popular fictional rally for Mousavi, because I later noticed while browsing the news sites a familiar picture on the BBC’s lead Iran story – it shows the same crowd, zoomed in to cut out Ahmadinejad,” a reader told the WhatReallyHappened website. “It is clearly the same protest as in the background are the same tree and odd circular building. However, the BBC managed to outdo the LA times in quality reporting – their actual comment under the photo from the huge PRO-Ahmadinejad rally reads ‘Supporters of Mir Hossein Mousavi again defied a ban on protests’ – a blatant lie and deliberately misleading description of what is actually occurring in Iran!”

As soon as the truth about the misrepresented images surfaced on the WhatReallyHappened website yesterday, the BBC changed the photo caption on their original article.

This is not the first time the BBC has been caught red-handed using crude image and video framing techniques for the purposes of political propaganda.

During the fall of Baghdad in April 2003, the BBC and other mainstream news outlets broadcast closely framed footage of the “mass uprising” during which Iraqis, aided by U.S. troops, toppled the Saddam Hussein statue in Fardus Square.

The closely framed footage was used to imply that hundreds or thousands of Iraqis were involved in a Berlin Wall-style “historic” liberation, yet when wide angle shots were later published on the Internet, footage that was never broadcast on live television, the reality of the “mass uprising” became clear. The crowd around the statue was sparse and consisted mostly of U.S. troops and journalists. The BBC later had to admit that only “dozens” of Iraqis had participated in toppling the statue. The entire scene was a manufactured farce yet the propaganda technique of blocking wide-angle shots from being broadcast convinced the world that the event represented a triumphant and historic mass popular uprising on behalf of the Iraqi people.

Whatever your views on the legitimacy of Ahmadinejad and the accuracy of the Iranian election results, the fact that the Anglo-American establishment and its media organs are exploiting and fanning the flames of chaos in Iran to provoke further instability is unquestionable.

Indeed, the U.S. State Department, which routinely demonizes the Internet as a tool of extremists and terrorists when it is used to criticize U.S. foreign policy, took the unprecedented step today of requesting that Twitter.com “delay planned maintenance work so that Iranian protesters can continue to use it to post images and reports of unrest,” according to a London Times report.

SOTT FOCUS: Batten down the free-speech hatches, it’s time to bomb Iran

Source: Signs of the Times Editors.

The recent network related attack on SOTT.net known as ARP poisoning which redirected traffic to sites hosting malicious software comes at a curious time. While presidential candidates are pledging allegiance to Israel at AIPAC meetings, the Israeli Prime Minister is ordering Bush to prepare for strikes against Iran’s nuclear facilities.

His warning also comes on the heals of former German foreign minister, Joschka Fischer, warning of an impending Israeli strike against Iran:

As a result of misguided American policy, the threat of another military confrontation hangs like a dark cloud over the Middle East. The United States’ enemies have been strengthened, and Iran – despite being branded as a member of the so-called “axis of evil” – has been catapulted into regional hegemony. Iran could never have achieved this on its own, certainly not in such a short time.

A hitherto latent rivalry between Iran and Israel thus has been transformed into an open struggle for dominance in the Middle East. The result has been the emergence of some surprising, if not bizarre, alliances: Iran, Syria, Hizbullah, Hamas and the American-backed, Shiite-dominated Iraq are facing Israel, Saudi Arabia, and most of the other Sunni Arab states, all of which feel existentially threatened by Iran’s ascendance.

The danger of a major confrontation has been heightened further by a series of factors: persistently high oil prices, which have created new financial and political opportunities for Iran; the possible defeat of the West and its regional allies in proxy wars in Gaza and Lebanon; and the United Nations Security Council’s failure to induce Iran to accept even a temporary freeze of its nuclear program.

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Anyone following the press in Israel during the anniversary celebrations and listening closely to what was said in Jerusalem did not have to be a prophet to understand that matters are coming to a head. Consider the following:

First, “stop the appeasement!” is a demand raised across the political spectrum in Israel – and what is meant is the nuclear threat emanating from Iran.

Second, while Israel celebrated, Defense Minister Ehud Barak was quoted as saying that a life-and-death military confrontation was a distinct possibility.

Third, the outgoing commander of the Israeli Air Force declared that the air force was capable of any mission, no matter how difficult, to protect the country’s security. The destruction of a Syrian nuclear facility last year, and the lack of any international reaction to it, were viewed as an example for the coming action against Iran.

Fourth, the Israeli wish list for US arms deliveries, discussed with the American president, focused mainly on the improvement of the attack capabilities and precision of the Israeli Air Force.

Fifth, diplomatic initiatives and UN sanctions when it comes to Iran are seen as hopelessly ineffective.

And sixth, with the approaching end of the Bush presidency and uncertainty about his successor’s policy, the window of opportunity for Israeli action is seen as potentially closing.

The last two factors carry special weight. While Israeli military intelligence is on record as saying that Iran is expected to cross the red line on the path to nuclear power between 2010 and 2015 at the earliest, the feeling in Israel is that the political window of opportunity to attack is now, during the last months of Bush’s presidency.

In the meantime, Israel is preparing for its next genocidal assault on Gaza, “nearing the day of reckoning in the Gaza Strip” as Defense Minister Ehud Barak is quoted as saying.

With all the warnings of an impending attack on Iran, the Bush-Israel axis isn’t even going to bother with a coordinated propaganda campaign to rally the masses for the bombing, not with Bush’s historically low job rating. They know it won’t work again this time. So instead they’re just going to try to shut down the dissenting media, launch their attack, control the flow of information and the fascist state apparatus will get the support after the fact. They may be picking on sott.net to see how fast it can recover before moving on to the all bigger sites. Or could this whole thing be a “cover” for something else? Who knows? One thing is for certain, it’s not just the Chinese who can hack into a computer network. Consider this recent exercise to bring down a network.

But they can’t just launch an attack (well, they could). Even the “frightening monster” has its own image of itself to uphold. No, their plans are more devious, but don’t look to the US media to uncover this story. Remember Valerie Plame and the forged Niger documents that the Bush cartel used to justify the invasion of Iraq, where now more than 1 million Iraqis have been killed. The Washington Post thinks the only reason Cheney leaked her identity was nepotism:

The CIA sent Wilson’s husband, former ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV, to the African nation of Niger in 2002 to assess reports that Iraq had tried to buy nuclear material for weapons there. He concluded that the reports were groundless. Later, when Bush and his aides repeated them anyway, the former envoy accused the president of twisting his findings to justify the invasion.

Prosecutors maintained that administration officials, including Libby, leaked Valerie Wilson’s identity and CIA position to insinuate that the agency had chosen Joseph Wilson for the Niger mission because of nepotism. Defense attorneys said Libby had not sought to deceive investigators but had innocently misremembered what he knew and said about Valerie Wilson because she was insignificant to him.

Unmentioned by the Post‘s story (but not surprisingly) is that Valerie Plame was working specifically on Iran as a clandestine CIA officer to counter nuclear proliferation. Her outing caused significant damage to U.S. national security.

One former counterintelligence official described the CIA’s reasons for not seeking Congressional assistance on the matter as follows: “[The CIA Leadership] made a conscious decision not to do a formal inquiry because they knew it might become public,” the source said. “They referred it [to the Justice Department] instead because they believed a criminal investigation was needed.”

The source described the findings of the assessment as showing “significant damage to operational equities.”

…

Several intelligence officials described the damage in terms of how long it would take for the agency to recover. According to their own assessment, the CIA would be impaired for up to “ten years” in its capacity to adequately monitor nuclear proliferation on the level of efficiency and accuracy it had prior to the White House leak of Plame Wilson’s identity.

So the arm of the CIA directly involved to counter nuclear proliferation in the Middle East has been shut down for ten years. Well, you can’t have a bomb without blue prints.

Alarm about the sale of nuclear know-how follows the disclosure that the Swiss government, allegedly acting under US pressure, secretly destroyed tens of thousands of documents from a massive nuclear smuggling investigation. The information was seized from the home and computers of Urs Tinner, a 43-year-old [S]wiss engineer who has been in custody for almost four years as a key suspect in the nuclear smuggling ring run by Abdul Qadeer Khan, the Pakistani metallurgist who in 2004 admitted leaking nuclear secrets and is under house arrest in Islamabad.

…

While the Swiss government maintains the treasure trove of nuclear intelligence was destroyed for reasons of national security, the Americans may have been involved because Tinner is believed to have also been working for the CIA. Albright said Tinner was recruited by the American agency from 1999-2000.

…

“The Swiss were doing other people’s dirty work,” said an international official familiar with the investigation into the Khan network. “The allegation is that Urs was on the CIA payroll for a very large sum of money.”

Olli Heinonen, deputy director general at the IAEA, has led the investigation into the Khan network for years. Last year his office sought and gained access to the Tinner files and some of his officials were also summoned to witness their destruction.

The Americans were also present, according to the international official. “The Americans were involved in the destruction. They were calling the shots,” he said. The IAEA refused to comment publicly on the case. A former senior IAEA official said: “I am quite astonished. It’s very unusual to see people destroying documents like this. They should be put somewhere very safe.

It now appears that there’s a concerted effort by the Bush/Cheney underworld to have a nuclear bomb go off somewhere and blame it on Iran.

The involvement of the CIA in the black market sale of nuclear secrets was revealed by whistleblower, Sibel Edmonds, a Turkish language translator for the FBI following the 9/11 attacks. According to her:

Among the hours of covert tape recordings, she says she heard evidence that one well-known senior official in the US State Department was being paid by Turkish agents in Washington who were selling the information on to black market buyers, including Pakistan.

The name of the official – who has held a series of top government posts – is known to The Sunday Times. He strongly denies the claims.

However, Edmonds said: “He was aiding foreign operatives against US interests by passing them highly classified information, not only from the State Department but also from the Pentagon, in exchange for money, position and political objectives.”

She claims that the FBI was also gathering evidence against senior Pentagon officials – including household names – who were aiding foreign agents.

“If you made public all the information that the FBI have on this case, you will see very high-level people going through criminal trials,” she said.

And what does the US do about nuclear black market whistleblowers?

A senior customs investigator could face prosecution under the Official Secrets Act over suspicions that he exposed how US and British intelligence agencies interfered in his attempts to halt an international nuclear smuggling ring.

Police and officials from the Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC) have searched the home of Atif Amin for evidence that he passed classified information to the American authors of a book about the worldwide nuclear proliferation network.

Amin was in charge of Operation Akin, an investigation into links between British companies and the illegal network run by Abdul Qadeer Khan, a Pakistani scientist who helped build that country’s nuclear arsenal.

The investigation is the subject of a book recently published in the US, America and the Islamic Bomb: The Deadly Compromise. Its authors, David Armstrong and Joseph Trento, contend that in 2000 Amin uncovered evidence in Dubai of the Khan network’s involvement in establishing Libya’s nuclear programme but was ordered to drop his inquiries and return home, at the request of the CIA and MI6.

The Libyan programme and the Khan network were not exposed and halted until 2003. The book argues that in the intervening three years the network continued to sell nuclear technology and possibly weapons designs to Iran, North Korea and possibly other countries, under the noses of US and British intelligence.

It quotes a frustrated Amin as telling colleagues: “They knew exactly what was going on all the time. If they’d wanted to, they could have blown the whistle on this long ago.”

Another interestingly timed revelation is that ‘Halliburton sold nuke components to Iran‘. When one examines things a little more closely, it appears that these are only nuclear power reactor components, not weapons, and were sold to a private oil company. However, once the shouting starts, no one will care. It smacks of a trail of recrimination being setup in advance, to be revealed at the right emotionally-loaded moment. One can imagine the reaction: “See? that’s where they got ‘em!”. Of course the revelation would be ‘embarrassing’, but would still coincidentally serve the anti-Iran agenda.

This is rather reminiscent of other mind-boggling ‘mistakes’ in the handling of deadly weaponry, such as when ballistic missile parts were “mistakenly” shipped to Taiwan, or when a B-52 bomber was mistakenly armed with six nuclear-tipped cruise missiles and flown across the country. Perhaps this is the idea, to create the meme of weapons-handling incompetence? In this way Western weapons of mass destruction can be used in a clandestine operation anywhere, whilst being plausibly attributed to whatever faction is desired. In the meantime they can purge the ranks of the disloyal in preparation for the bombing and use these ‘mistakes’ as the publicly stated reasons to do it.

The black ops program to set off a nuclear bomb somewhere in the West and blame it on Iran or some other cartoonish “Axis of Evil” character to justify future wars of aggression is well established and going as planned.

THE A.I.P.A.C. CONFERENCE – HATE IRAN WEEK GETS UNDERWAY IN WASHINGTON.

By Damian Lataan.

The annual American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) conference got under way yesterday and wasted no time in kicking off the proceedings with Republican presidential candidate John ‘Bomb Bomb Bomb, Bomb Bomb Iran’ McCain launching into a hate tirade against Iran by accusing his likely presidential election opponent, Barack Obama, of having ‘policies toward Iraq and Iran [that] would create chaos and endanger the United States and Israel’. It’ll be interesting to see how Obama responds to McCain’s accusations when he gets to address AIPAC. Hillary Clinton too is down to address the conference and, if by the time she appears she has decided that she’s still in the running, it’ll be interesting to see what she has to say as well. If, on the other hand, Hillary has decided to withdraw from the Democrat race, it will be just as interesting to see how closely whatever remarks she makes to the conference fall in line with Obama’s. Either way, it’s going to be interesting.

On Wednesday, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert is scheduled to address the conference. He will, no doubt, be telling them and the world how evil the Iranians are for developing nuclear power and how underhanded they are being because they may be pursuing nuclear weapons. And the audience, of course, will be totally oblivious to the superb irony of an underhandedly nuclear armed Israel telling the world that Iran is secretly developing nuclear weapons.

Well, why not? The world fell for it last time when they accused that other thorn in the side of Israeli aspirations for a Greater Israel, Iraq, of secretly developing nuclear weapons long after they’d actually given the idea away. Surely, they believe, the world will fall for it again. And, while they’re at it, they will more than likely accuse Syria of the same thing in the hope that two birds might be killed with the same stone if they could just get America to do the job for them.

And while the US is dealing with Iran, it would leave Israel free to deal with Hamas in the Gaza and Hezbollah in south Lebanon.

There’s a lot riding on this years AIPAC conference what with it being the last one to be held during the Bush administration and, therefore, the last opportunity the American Israel Lobby has to effectively call for America to attack Iran. They know that a US under an Obama administration will not be likely to attack Iran. For this reason, the ‘Hate Iran Week’ will be the most intense yet.

Carter Reveals Israel’s Possession of 150 Nuclear Weapons

Source: Tim King, Salem-News.com.

Weapons of Mass Destruction in Israel are part of a secret pact with the U.S.

At this moment a search of “Israel” in Google News turns up endless results. The first entry about a “Call for PM to Step Down” shows 1,761 articles. If you search “Carter” however, you pull up 214 stories with the biting revelation that Israel has 150 nuclear weapons.

One hundred and fifty nuclear weapons from a country that is not a declared nuclear power?

As George W. Bush conducts a witch hunt over Iran’s “suspected nukes” in an effort to spread tired American combat forces into another war, the hard truth hits us and it will likely alter the way many people view the nation from now on. Israel, a country that literally “terrorized” people off the land it it now occupies in the late 1940′s, is more than 150 times the threat to the U.S. that Iran could be.

The United States regards Israel as a friend and always has, and we have given them billions and billions of dollars in support over the years. The plight of the Jewish people in post Third-Reich Europe deserved plenty of support, but the way the nation’s founders went about reclaiming what they consider to be the Promised Land, leaves much to be desired.

To this day Israel is often at bitter odds with neighboring Muslim nations and the kidnapping of two Israeli soldiers can bring the retaliation of an Israeli bomb into a neighborhood where children live. Many people say bitter feelings against the U.S. support of Israel led to the September 11th 2001 attacks. And now we learn that allegations made against Israel as far back as the 1980′s about possessing nuclear weapons were true. It is a big piece of news, and leads to the obvious conclusion that all of the peace negotiations over the years with Israel’s neighbors were held under false pretenses, and the United States knew about it the whole time.

This information about nuclear weapons is not what the United States and Israel want you to know. It is sad that many of you will first learn about it here, rather than on the major networks. It makes little sense that this story has received such minimal play. Could there be a directive at the networks to give it as little coverage as possible?

A President Speaks out

President Jimmy Carter over the weekend in Wales where he revealed the fact that Israel has at least 150 nuclear weapons.

It took a man with the heart of President Jimmy Carter to have the necessary huevos to heap this information onto a platter the world could see, and the media and press turned their backs on it in many respects this weekend.

One Portland resident, Diana Graham, caught a brief news report from Al Jazeera about Carter’s announcement over the weekend. She says she came home and scoured the Internet and the newspapers for more information.

But Graham found nothing else about the former President’s words over Israel’s ability to destroy the world with nuclear bombs. Her thought after learning tonight that the information was accurate was simply, “I have to wonder what else Israel is not telling us about.”

In fairness, there do appear to have been some reports, including one from CNN’s Wolf Blitzer and Ed Henry which is included below, but you have to spend some time looking for them.

A search of “Iran” brings 1,082 articles about suspected nuclear weapons in a single group. Iran’s government has specifically and consistently denied their existence, but the President of the United States and his henchmen want you to believe Iran has nuclear weapons. The only nuclear aspirations Iran has are to run power plants.

Sunday October 5, 1986: Headline: Revealed – the secrets of Israel’s nuclear arsenal/ Atomic technician Mordechai Vanunu reveals secret weapons production. The news has been reported but never confirmed by a top level U.S. official like former President Jimmy Carter.

Jimmy Carter revealed the fact that Israel has at least 150 nuclear weapons Sunday, and they can not officially lie to the world about that one any longer. The former president made the claim during an appearance in Wales, BBC News reported.

Carter said, “The U.S. has more than 12,000 nuclear weapons; the Soviet Union (sic) has about the same; Great Britain and France have several hundred, and Israel has 150 or more.”

Israel follows a policy of ambiguity and has never admitted that its arsenal contains nuclear weapons.

“The problem is that there are those who can use these statements when it comes to discussing the international effort to prevent Iran getting nuclear weapons,” said Aharon Zeevi-Farkash, a former Israeli intelligence official, the Jewish Telegraphic Agency reported.

They began their article with: “Jimmy Carter, in violation of a decades-old U.S. policy, publicly acknowledged that Israel has nuclear weapons.”

So, our elected officials have known this but not told us? World level negotiations have taken place for decades that almost always favor the Israeli position. Most decisions the U.S. and Israel have been involved with had some adverse impact on neighboring Muslim nations. Now we learn that all along, Israel was allowed to keep its world-annihilating nuclear arsenal… quietly.

Apparently the unspoken rule about Israel not having to be honest about nuclear weapons has been in effect since the smoky days of the Nixon administration. Most people will probably never comprehend the enormity of what this means, but having an international pass in the liar’s club is hardly a sign of a fair, honest or open government.

Threats from Iran and Israel

A review of history shows approximately the same threat existing toward the U.S. from both Israel and Iran. In fact, the United States has been far more hostile to Iran in an overall way that Iran ever has been to the U.S.

U.S.S. Liberty after being attacked.

Israel on the other hand, bit the hand that feeds during the Six-Day War with Egypt, when Israeli jet fighters repeatedly attacked the Navy ship U.S.S. Liberty in 1967, killing many Americans and injuring far more. (see: The Day Israel Attacked the United States)

Relations with Iran were decent with the U.S. until the early 1950′s, when Iranian demands to be paid a fair and legal price for oil led to the U.S. government helping the British overthrow Iran’s first democratically elected President in 1953.

That’s when we installed the Shah, who was transformed by the CIA into a puppet leader for U.S. government interests and oil. By the time Jimmy Carter was President of the United States, the U.S. installed Shah was at the receiving end of a good deal of criticism that echoes of today’s criticism of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

Unlike previous American presidents, Carter spoke out and openly criticized the Shah’s government and its human rights record. President Carter also pressured the Shah to relax freedom of speech and to allow more freedom for political dissidents.

So we know that Israel attacked the U.S.S. Liberty, which was clearly marked with the American flag according to the sailors on board, and we know that there have been many hit and miss problems with Iran over the years since the 1979 Revolution during which U.S. hostages were taken and held for years.

The Day the U.S. Killed 290 Civilians

Iran Air Flight 655: “I will never apologize for the United States of America, ever. I don’t care what it has done. I don’t care what the facts are.” Vice-President George H. W. Bush, August 1988

What we might forget about though, or at least like to forget, is what happened on July 3rd 1988 towards the end of the Iran-Iraq War.

That is when the U.S. Navy guided missile cruiser U.S.S. Vincennes shot down an Iranian Airbus A300B2 on a scheduled commercial flight in Iranian airspace over the Strait of Hormuz. The U.S. attack on the Iranian plane killed 290 civilians from six nations, including 66 children.

At first, the United States said that flight 655 was a warplane. The next story was that the plane was outside the civilian air corridor and did not respond to radio calls.

Both statements were found to be untrue. As it turns out, the Iranian commercial pilots never heard the radio calls because they were made on military frequencies and the commercial jet did not have those frequencies.

The United States ended up paying hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars out in settlements but it seems that no amount of money is worth 300 human lives. The United States is no newbie when it comes to poorly planned military attacks.

Two years later, William C. Rogers III, captain of USS Vincennes at the time of the Iranian commercial liner downing, was awarded the Legion of Merit award for “exceptionally meritorious conduct in the performance of an outstanding service” by George Bush Sr.

It is fascinating that one nation that we ripped off in the 50′s and overthrew is viewed as such a military threat. FOX News keeps beating the drum with reports that U.S. soldiers are being killed in the George W. Bush wars with Iranian weapons.

When asked if Iran is supplying weapons to the Taliban by Voice of America, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, laughed and said the US doesn’t want Iran to be friends with Afghanistan. “What is the reason they are saying such things?” asked Ahmadinejad.

His honesty has done him little good at times, but it seems correct that President Jimmy Carter would be the one to spill the beans on Israel’s arsenal of nuclear weapons. He knows that the extension of peace and efforts to avoid war often don’t win a person any popularity contests, and that seems the true hallmark of a real world leader who may be the most honest President the United States has seen, at least in recent generations.

The story may be about Israel, but it is also about Iran and the United States and Great Britain and France and all of the other countries that may have also been a party to this world level deception over nuclear weapons. An attack on Iran would be the single most irresponsible thing any U.S. leaders could consider.

If the United States is going to hound other nations about nuclear weapons while it, along with Russia, possess 12,000 of these true weapons of mass destruction, then maybe they should look at countries that at least have nuclear weapons.

The video clip below comes to you courtesy of CNN and YouTube:

Tim King is a former U.S. Marine with twenty years of experience on the west coast as a television news producer, photojournalist, reporter and assignment editor. Today, in addition to his role as a war correspondent in Afghanistan where he spent the winter of 2006/07, this Los Angeles native serves as Salem-News.com’s Executive News Editor. Salem-News.com is the nation’s only truly independent high traffic news Website, affiliated with Google News and several other major search engines and news aggregators. Tim’s coverage from Iraq that was set to begin in April has been delayed and may not take place until August, 2008. You can send Tim an email at this address: newsroom@salem-news.com

Hay Ride: Jimmy Carter Crosses the Line

Source: Chris Floyd.

Here’s a thought experiment. Try to imagine a major American political figure boldly calling on Europe to break with the United States, unilaterally lift the blockage on Gaza and negotiate directly with Hamas, the democratically-elected government of Palestine.

He then goes on to reveal — from his access to the most highly classified intelligence — that Israel, far from being at risk from “destruction” by Iran or anyone, possesses a minimum of 150 nuclear weapons: the first time that any such high-level U.S. official has ever publicly confirmed the existence of Israel’s arsenal, much less detailed its size.

What’s more, this Establishment renagade then calls for the complete withdrawal of American forces from Iraq, combined with pledges of massive aid to rebuild Iraq “from the destruction we’ve caused.”

This fantasy became a reality yesterday in the drenching rain of a Welsh border town. Former President Jimmy Carter had come to Hay-on-Wye for the annual literary festival, and held forth in a wide-ranging interview before a large crowd. Carter denounced the policies of the so-called “Quartet” — the U.S., EU, UN and Russia — which have led to the strangulation of Gaza and immense suffering to the people “imprisoned” there, in Carter’s words:

The blockade on Hamas-ruled Gaza, imposed by the US, EU, UN and Russia – the so-called Quartet – after the organisation’s election victory in 2006, was “one of the greatest human rights crimes on Earth,” since it meant the “imprisonment of 1.6 million people, 1 million of whom are refugees”. “Most families in Gaza are eating only one meal per day. To see Europeans going along with this is embarrassing,” Carter said….

Referring to the possibility of Europe breaking with the US in an interview with the Guardian, he said: “Why not? They’re not our vassals. They occupy an equal position with the US.”

Here, of course, Carter has crossed perhaps the brightest glaring red line in American politics: equating a bunch of foreigners with the divinely blessed denizens of the shining city on the hill. No country, anywhere, is allowed to be the equal of the United States, in anything, at any time. This is not just a deeply ingrained part of the national psyche; it is also the avowed policy of the “unipolar dominationists” who have long controlled the commanding heights of American power. As we’ve noted before:

this goes back to the first Bush Administration, when then-Defense Secretary Dick Cheney asked two of his top aides, Paul Wolfowitz and Scooter Libby, to draw up a “Defense Guidance Plan” to shape American strategy in the post-Cold War world. They produced an aggressive, ambitious document calling for the unilateral use of American military might to “discourage advanced industrial nations from challenging our leadership or even aspiring to a larger regional or global role.” Military intervention would be “a constant fixture” of what Wolfowitz and Libby called a “new order” which the United States – not the United Nations – would “establish and protect.”

As we all know, this document was refined, revised and expanded by the dominationists in their various think-tanks and corporate sinecures for years, reaching its fullest expression in the infamous PNAC paper of September 2000 (also known as the “boy, we sure need a new Pearl Harbor” document). It was later incorporated virtually whole cloth into the official “National Security Strategy” of the United States.

Carter has already been in hot water with the Establishment because of his recent dealings with Hamas. Barack Obama joined in the denunciations of Carter, declaring that he — the self-proclaimed agent of hope and change — would never negotiate with Hamas.

This brings up a curious point. Obama has taken a great deal of undeserved heat for his common-sense declaration that he would be willing to sit down with the leaders of hostile nations, such as Iran; but he adamantly refuses any negotiation with Hamas. In other words, he is (rightly) willing to negotiate with enemies of the United States — but not with an enemy of Israel. This position is actually more hardline than that of the Israelis themselves, the majority of whom favor direct negotiations with Hamas.

Carter’s unprecedented explicitness regarding Israel’s nuclear weapons somehow escaped the notice of the Guardian — which sponsored the festival and conducted the interview — but The Times picked it up:

Israel has 150 nuclear weapons in its arsenal, former President Jimmy Carter said yesterday, while arguing that the US should talk directly to Iran to persuade it to drop its nuclear ambitions.

His remark…is startling because Israel has never admitted having nuclear weapons, let alone how many, although the world assumes their existence. Nor do US officials deviate in public from that Israeli line.

But Carter, who as president had full access to America’s secret knowledge about Israel’s arsenal, steamrolled right over the long-held public line. The existence of this arsenal is of course the true context of Middle East relations: the fact that Israel can “obliterate” any of its antagonists in a matter of minutes, while none of them poses, even remotely, a similar “existential threat” to Israel. Yet the entire U.S. “bipartisan foreign policy establishment” gears much of its Middle Eastern policies around the professed goal of guaranteeing the survival and security of Israel.

The plain fact is that Israel is more than capable of guaranteeing its own survival. As for its manifold security problems, these might be better addressed by a more realistic, pragmatic engagement with its neighbors, and with the Palestinians locked down under its control. But as long as Israeli leaders can count on the full backing of the United States — financially, diplomatically and militarily — no matter what they do, they will have no incentive to come to any viable terms, and can continue their own dominationist policies, which over the years have only bred more suffering, more radicalization and more intransigence in their opponents.

Carter’s position on Iraq is, of course, the only sensible alternative left after years of needless slaughter and ruin: complete withdrawal and massive reparations. It goes without saying that neither of these essential elements play a part in the “withdrawal” plans of any of the remaining presidential candidates. [Carter's remarks on Iraq are not in the on-line Guardian story, but appeared in the print-only version.]

Carter’s emergence as a dissident from the Establishment line is one of those bitter ironies in which history delights. As we have noted here before, Carter bears a large share of responsibility for the dismal state of the modern world. It was he who, on the advice of his foreign policy guru, Zbigniew Brzezinski, helped lay the foundations of the global jihad movement, giving guns, money and training to some of the most violent and retrograde extremists in the world — in a deliberate, and successful, attempt to goad the Soviet Union into intervening to save its client government in Afghanistan. From this seed — cultivated on a massive scale later by the Reagan-Bush administrations — violent sectarianism spread across the world, helped at every point by the United States or its allies in Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, and elsewhere. This shadow world — where covert ops, terrorism, organized crime and state policy mix inextricably together, sometimes colluding, sometimes falling out — has now enveloped the globe.

Still, to paraphrase the great philosopher Donald Rumsfeld, you oppose mass murder, torture, repression and imperial aggression with the deeply tainted, grossly hypocritical public figures you have, not the saintly, unspotted agents of transformation you wish you had. Carter’s remarks represent a welcome crossing of lines by a prominent Establishment figure. Too bad that no one in America will ever hear them.

Where are those Iranian arms in Iraq?

By Gareth Porter, Asia Times.

The United States military command in Iraq continues to talk about an alleged pipeline of Iranian weapons to Iraqi Shi’ites opposing the US occupation, implying that they have become dependent on Iran for indirect-fire weapons and rocket-propelled grenades (RPGs).

But US officials have failed thus far to provide evidence that would support that claim, and a long-delayed US military report on Iranian arms is unlikely to offer any data on what proportion of the weapons in the hands of Shi’ite fighters are from Iran and what proportion comes from purchases on the open market.

When Major General Kevin Bergner was asked that question at a briefing on May 8, he did not answer it directly. Instead, Bergner reverted to a standard US military line that these groups “could not do what they’re doing without the support of foreign support [sic]“. Then he defined “foreign support” to include training and funding as well as weapons, implicitly conceding that he did not have much of a case based on weapons alone.

Bergner’s refusal to address that question reflects a fundamental problem with the US claims about Iranian weapons in Iraq: if there are indeed any Iranian rockets and mortars and RPGs in the arsenal of Muqtada al-Sadr’s Mahdi Army’s stand-off weapons, they represent an insignificant part of it.

Reports by the US command in Iraq over the past 15 months cited only a handful of Iranian weapons out of hundreds counted in caches found in Shi’ite areas. Nearly 700 mortars and rockets were reported by specific caliber size, along with a handful of RPGs, in nearly two dozen caches. Of that total, only four rockets were reported as being of Iranian origin, and another 15 were listed as possibly being Iranian.

Although those reports do not represent all the Mahdi Army caches found, they provide further evidence of the relative unimportance of Iranian rockets, mortars and RPGs in the Mahdi Army arsenal. That is because US military officials are so eager to publicize any discovery of an Iranian-made weapon system that they would exploit any opportunity available to do so.

The US command has gone so far as to claim that it had found “four Iranian hand grenades” – but they were in a cache of weapons found in an al-Qaeda area.

Based on weapons caches discovered over the past 15 months, the Mahdi Army has relied overwhelmingly on four types of heavy weapons: 60mm and 120mm mortars, 107mm rockets and 57mm anti-tank missiles.

Those are essentially the same mortars and rockets that have turned up in al-Qaeda and Sunni insurgent weapons caches, suggesting that both groups have obtained their heavier weapons from the international arms market. In fact, 60mm and 120mm mortars were used by Sunni guerrillas in the very early months of the war against US. occupation troops.

A US explosives expert, Major Marty Weber, confirmed in April 2007 that most 107mm rockets found in Iraq were Chinese-made. He claimed that Iran had repainted Chinese 60mm and 107mm rockets them and sold them on the “open market”.

However, Chinese, Yugoslav and Pakistani 107mm rockets have also been the weapon of choice of Taliban guerrillas in Afghanistan, according to US military officers there.

The US military has refrained from making any charges against Iran over the 107mm rockets found in Iraq, perhaps because it would support the conclusion that the Mahdi Army was buying weapons on the international market rather than obtaining them from the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps.

US officials tried to capitalize on the increased mortar and rocket attacks on the Green Zone and US military headquarters last year to argue that they were the result of a rising tide of Iranian supply of such stand-off weapons – particularly 240mm rockets – to what the US command calls “special groups” of Shi’ite militiamen.

One US official, who insisted on being identified only as a “senior official”, told this writer in mid-September 2007 that rockets and mortars provided by Iran since the beginning of that year – and especially 240mm rockets – were doing much greater damage because of their greater accuracy and power compared with the older Katyusha rockets – mostly from Iraqi stocks – that had been employed in attacking US bases and the Green Zone in previous years.

But evidence from the US command itself contradicts that dramatic narrative of a bold, new Iranian intervention in the war. A Multi-National Force – Iraq press release dated June 1, 2007, reported that a cache of weapons had been found in an area from which Mahdi Army troops had fired rockets at the Green Zone. It did not claim any Iranian rockets or mortars in the cache but only 20 107mm rocket warheads, three fully assembled 107mm rockets and one 60mm mortar.

No 240mm rocket has been reported found in a Mahdi Army weapons cache over the past year, but a single warhead for a 240mm rocket was reported to have been found in Basra on April 19. No official claim has been made that it was manufactured in Iran, however.

After a rocket fired at Camp Victory on September 11, 2007, killed one and wounded 11 others, US officials told the news media that the command spokesman, General Bergner, would display fragments of a 240mm rocket – complete with Iranian markings – at his next press briefing to “show the link between the Iranian weapons and the damage they are doing”.

But Bergner admitted to the media that there were no discernible Iranian markings on the fragment, and that a number of countries manufacture 240mm rockets. He was able to assert only that ordnance experts “assess it is of [sic] consistent with the rockets of Iranian origin we have seen used in other attacks”.

That was a very weak claim, because Bergner had not provided any evidence to the media that previous attacks had involved Iranian 240mm rockets either.

When the military headquarters at Camp Victory was hit by rocket fire last Oct. 12, officials admitted that it was 107mm rockets, not 240mm rockets that had been used.

Top US commander in Iraq, General David Petraeus. insisted last October that there is “absolutely no question” that Iran is providing RPG-29 rocket-propelled grenade launchers to Iraqi Shi’ite groups. But RPG-29s are manufactured by Russia, not Iran. Syria was known to have purchased large quantities of the RPG-29 in 1999-2000. Both the Israeli newspaper Ha’aretz and the Beirut-based defense monthly Defense 21 have confirmed that the RPG-29s used by Hezbollah in 2006 were Russian-made weapons obtained via Syria.

In weapons caches reported from Shi’ite locations, not a single RPG-29 has been identified. Of the 160 RPG launchers reported in Mahdi Army caches, along with 800 RPG missiles, none were identified as Iranian, although some were identified as being Soviet-made. Only 11 were reported to be RPG-7s – a type of launcher that is made by Russia and China as well as Iran and used by 40 countries around the world.

Gareth Porter is an historian and national security policy analyst. The paperback edition of his latest book, Perils of Dominance: Imbalance of Power and the Road to War in Vietnam, was published in 2006.

Iran mosque blast plotters admit Israeli, US links: report

Source: Yahoo News.

Iran’s chief prosecutor said bombers who caused a deadly blast at a mosque in Shiraz had confessed of links to Israel and the United States, the ISNA student news agency reported on Friday.

“Those responsible for the attack against the Shiraz mosque have confessed to having links to worldwide oppression, in particular the United States and Israel,” Ghorbanali Dorri-Najafabadi was quoted by the agency as saying.

They also admitted carrying out “one or two minor operations,” the agency said, without providing further details except to say the group launched military operations a year ago.

The April 12 blast in the southern city left 13 people dead and more than 200 wounded. Authorities subsequently announced the arrest of 15 people.

Earlier Friday, senior Iranian cleric Ayatollah Ahmed Khatami said people had also plotted attacks in the holy city of Qom, 120 kilometres (75 miles) south of Tehran, and at a book fair held in the capital.

Iran has already accused Britain and the United States of training and financing those behind the bombing. In the past it has also blamed US and British agents based in neighbouring Iraq and Afghanistan for launching attacks on border provinces with significant ethnic minority populations.

The strike in Shiraz was the first in decades in Iran’s Persian heartland. The normally placid city is not in a border zone, nor is it home to any significant ethnic or religious minority population.

Iran rejects nuclear inspections unless Israel allows them

Makes sense.

Source: ALEXANDER G. HIGGINS, AP writer in Yahoo News.

An Iranian envoy said Monday his government will not submit to extensive nuclear inspections while Israel stays outside the global treaty to curb the spread of atomic weapons.

“The existing double standard shall not be tolerated anymore by non-nuclear-weapon states,” Ambassador Ali Asghar Soltanieh told a meeting of the 190 countries that have signed the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty.

Nuclear safeguards are far from universal, he said, adding that more than 30 countries are still without a comprehensive safeguard agreement with the International Atomic Energy Agency to ensure full cooperation with that U.N. body.

“Israel, with huge nuclear weapons activities, has not concluded” such an agreement or submitted its facilities to the IAEA’s safeguards, Soltanieh said.

Israel, which does not discuss whether it has atomic weapons, did not sign the nonproliferation treaty, which requires all signatories except the major powers to refrain from obtaining nuclear arms. India and Pakistan, which have developed nuclear weapons, also are not signatories.

Iran did sign the treaty and is under U.N. Security Council sanctions meant to pressure the Tehran government into allowing inspections that will ensure it isn’t developing nuclear weapons. Iran insists its atomic program is peaceful, with the sole goal of using reactors to generate electricity.

A U.S. envoy accused Iran of “provocative and destabilizing activities” and said its leaders were responsible for leading the country into the sanctions imposed by the Security Council.

“The path of defiance is also the path of isolation, of continuing and additional sanctions and of further stunted economic opportunities for a proud and sophisticated people already suffering from economic turmoil and mismanagement by its regime’s leaders,” said Christopher A. Ford, U.S. special representative for nuclear nonproliferation.

Ford said Iran joined North Korea and Syria in weakening the nonproliferation treaty.

“This treaty regime faces today the most serious tests it has ever faced: the ongoing nuclear weapons proliferation challenges presented by Iran, by North Korea and now by Syria,” Ford said.

Ford cited U.S. intelligence that North Korea was helping Syria in “secretly constructing a nuclear reactor that we believe was not intended for peaceful purposes.” Syria denied last week that it was working on an undeclared reactor, which purportedly was destroyed by an Israeli airstrike last September.

Soltanieh said nuclear-armed powers like the United States, Britain and France are practicing “nuclear apartheid” by denying or restricting peaceful atomic technology to countries like Iran.

“Access of developing countries to peaceful nuclear materials and technologies has been continuously denied to the extent that they have had no choice than to acquire their requirements for peaceful uses of nuclear energy, including for medical and industrial applications, from open markets,” Soltanieh said.

This usually means the material is more expensive, poorer quality and less safe, he said.

Iran Ends Oil Transactions In U.S. Dollars

War under false pretenses imminent.

Ahmadinejad has one thing right: the dollar is a “worthless piece of paper.”

OPEC’s Second-Largest Producer Now Pegs Petroleum To Euros And Yen

Source: CBS News.

Iran, OPEC’s second-largest producer, has completely stopped conducting oil transactions in U.S. dollars, a top Oil Ministry official said Wednesday, a concerted attempt to reduce reliance on Washington at a time of tension over Tehran’s nuclear program and suspected involvement in Iraq.

Iran has dramatically reduced dependence on the dollar over the past year in the face of increasing U.S. pressure on its financial system and the fall in the value of the American currency.

Oil is priced in U.S. dollars on the world market, and the currency’s depreciation has concerned producers because it has contributed to rising crude prices and eroded the value of their dollar reserves.

“The dollar has totally been removed from Iran’s oil transactions,” Oil Ministry official Hojjatollah Ghanimifard told state-run television Wednesday. “We have agreed with all of our crude oil customers to do our transactions in non-dollar currencies.”

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad called the depreciating dollar a “worthless piece of paper” at a rare summit last year in Saudi Arabia attended by state leaders from the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries.

Iran put pressure on other OPEC countries at the meeting to price oil in a basket of currencies, but it has not been able to generate support from fellow members — many of whom, including Saudi Arabia, are staunch U.S. allies.

Iran has a tense relationship with the U.S., which has accused Tehran of using its nuclear program as a cover for weapons development and providing support to Shiite militants in Iraq that are killing American troops. Iran has denied the allegations.

Iranian oil officials have said previously that they were shifting oil sales out of the dollar into other currencies, but Ghanimifard indicated Wednesday that all of Iran’s oil transactions were now conducted in either euros or yen.

“In Europe, Iran’s oil is sold in euros, but both euros and yen are paid for Iranian crude in Asia,” said Ghanimifard.

Iran’s central bank has also been reducing its foreign reserves denominated in U.S. dollars, motivated by the falling value of the greenback and U.S. attempts to make it difficult for Iran to conduct dollar transactions.

U.S. banks are prohibited from conducting business directly with Iran, and many European banks have curbed their dealings with the country over the past year under pressure from Washington.

However, the U.S. has been wary of targeting Iran’s oil industry directly, apparently worried that such a move could drive up crude prices that are already at record levels.

Iranian analysts say Tehran can withstand U.S. pressure as long as it can continue its oil and gas sales, which constitute most of the country’s US$80 billion in exports.