False Pretenses23 Jan 2008Summary: President George W. Bush and seven of his administration’s top officials, including Vice President Dick Cheney, National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, made at least 935 false statements in the two years following September 11, 2001, about the national security threat posed by Iraq. source: The Center for Public Integrityread more
America’s “Divide and Rule” Strategies in the Middle East23 Jan 2008Summary: Bush and Saudi KingThe Arab elites are being marshaled into formation yet again to do the dirty work of foreign powers. Once again, Arab leaders are also accessories to the agenda of foreigners in the Middle East against their own people. source: Global Researchread more
Iranian people fear new wave of sanctions23 Jan 2008Summary: The sanctions, US officials say, are meant to strike at Iran’s leadership without weakening the economic status of Iranians. But Shahriar Khateri, director of Tehran’s Chemical Warfare Victims Research Unit, has seen at first hand how Iranian Kurds gassed by Saddam Hussein in 1987 have been affected by the halting of a medical research collaboration with Newcastle University. “The only crime of chemical victims is that they are Iranians. Thousand of them are paying a heavy price for it,” he said. source: The Independentread more
Iran sanctions hit the wrong target23 Jan 2008Summary: The Iran nuclear crisis has now reached a new threshold with several unintended consequences, one of which is the potential to damage the legitimacy of the United Nations. The more the world powers try to sustain or bolster UN sanctions on Iran over its nuclear program, unwittingly the more they undermine not only their own efforts but also the credibility and effectiveness of the preeminent world organization responsible for global peace. source: Asia Times Onlineread more
Iran vows to follow nuclear path despite sanctions23 Jan 2008Summary: Washington has spearheaded a drive for new sanctions and had been pushing for a new resolution to impose a ban on business with leading Iranian state banks. But that drive appears to have failed. Russia and China, both commercial partners of Iran, have hardened their opposition to tough sanctions since a U.S. intelligence report last month said Iran had halted its nuclear weapons programme in 2003. source: Reutersread more
US Officials Rejected Key Source on ‘94 Argentina Bombing23 Jan 2008Summary: The Iranian defector who was the source of Argentina’s allegation that Iranian officials began planning the Jul. 18, 1994 terror bombing of a Jewish community center at a meeting nearly a year earlier had been dismissed as unreliable by US officials, according to the FBI agent who led the US team assisting the investigation in 1997-98. source: Antiwar.comread more
The Iran Diplomatic Accountability Act of 200822 Jan 2008Summary: To provide for the appointment of a high-level United States representative or special envoy for Iran for the purpose of easing tensions and normalizing relations between the United States and Iran. source: The Library of Congressread more
US falls short on new Iran sanctions22 Jan 2008Summary: The five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council and Germany agreed Tuesday to impose new sanctions on Iran over its suspect nuclear program, yet the measures appeared to fall short of what the Bush administration had wanted. source: Associated Pressread more
Israel may have to take military action against Iran: Bolton22 Jan 2008Summary: Former US ambassador to the United Nations John Bolton said on Monday that Israel may have to take military action to prevent its archfoe Iran from acquiring an atomic bomb. Bolton also said that further UN sanctions against the Islamic republic will be ineffective in stopping Iran’s controversial nuclear programme which Israel and the US believe is aimed at developing a bomb—a claim denied by Tehran. source: AFPread more
China Reluctant to Support New Sanctions Against Iran21 Jan 2008Summary: Jiang YuChina has hinted it would not support a new round of sanctions against Iran despite Tehran’s continued defiance of United Nations resolutions on its nuclear program. The five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council and Germany are meeting in Berlin to discuss further sanctions against Tehran. Daniel Schearf reports from Beijing. source: VOAread more
India launches Israeli satellite21 Jan 2008Summary: India has successfully launched an Israeli spy satellite into orbit. Israeli and Indian space engineers were at the launch, and that 80 minutes afterwards, the Israel Aerospace Industries’ (IAI) ground station began receiving Tecsar’s first signals. source: BBC newsread more
Moving the Goal Posts on Dealing with Iran?s Nuclear Issue21 Jan 2008Summary: Undoubtedly, the third sanction will escalate the threat of another illegal and immoral war of pre-emption in the Middle East, this time most likely initiated by an Israeli aerial attack of the Natanz enrichment facility, followed by a wider US military intervention to deal with other nuclear sites. American warmongers such as Bolton and Podhoretz are already seen to encourage US and Israel leaders towards a war, and they consider sanctions ineffective for persuading Iran to abandon its peaceful nuclear activities. source: CASMIIread more
UN split over Iran sanctions21 Jan 2008Summary: The world’s leading powers were struggling to present a united front on further UN sanctions against Iran, the US secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice, admitted today. source: The Guardian read more
Anti-Iran Coalition in the Gulf? Read This.20 Jan 2008Summary: While in the run-up to Bush?s visit to Saudi Arabia, its foreign minister, Saud al-Faisal, was quoted in some of the mainstream press as warning against U.S. efforts to pit the Gulf states against Iran in this way, a remarkably blunt editorial, entitled ?Peace Now,? that appeared in the Jeddah-based English-language Arab News on the second day of the president?s sojourn in Saudi Arabia ? two days after his Abu Dhabi speech ? received virtually no notice. source: Anti War.Comread more
Bush fails to persuade Arab allies20 Jan 2008Summary: BEIRUT —Even as smiling members of the Saudi royal family feted President Bush and his entourage this week, presenting the lame-duck leader with an ornamental sword, Saudi Arabia’s most prominent English-language daily stabbed him with a pen over his aggressive Iran policy. source: LA Timesread more
Russia delivers more than half nuclear fuel to Iran: official20 Jan 2008Summary: Bushehr Nuclear PlantTEHRAN (AFP) ? Russia has delivered more than half the fuel for Iran’s Bushehr nuclear power plant, after a fourth consignment arrived on Sunday, the official IRNA news agency reported. source: AFPread more
Will US & Israel Attack Iran?19 Jan 2008Summary: First off, of course, is the obvious; if it?s going to happen, then it has to happen soon because after next November Bush won?t be around and it is doubtful that his successor would even dream of it, let alone actually do it. So, as every day goes by, the reality of the final confrontation draws closer. Other pointers are as follows. About eight weeks ago, toward the end of November last year, the US Navy put out tenders to charter extra ships to carry over a million barrels of ship and jet fuel for their warships and aircraft in the Straights of Hormuz off the coast of Iran. Before the end of January the carrier USS John C. Stennis will join the carrier USS Dwight D. Eisenhower which is already cruising Persian Gulf waters. This extra fuel order comes on top of last August?s massive order from Israel for millions of litres military JP-8 jet fuel and military diesel fuel. Allowing time for the various House and Senate committees to approve the order, the fuel has either been recently delivered or is also on its way. This activity comes atop an increasingly aggressive rhetoric from the US and Israel particularly after Bush?s recent visit to Israel and the region where he has unsuccessfully attempted to garner support among the Arab nations of the Middle East to put pressure on Iran over its so-called nuclear weapons program. -Damain Laatan (Australia) blog source: Freemarketnews.comread more
U.S. plays down chance of Iran resolution soon18 Jan 2008Summary: The United States on Friday played down the chance of major powers agreeing on new U.N. sanctions against Iran when ministers meet in Berlin next week, underlining discord over how to proceed with Tehran. source: Reutersread more
IAEA: Iran makes progress on nuclear program explanation18 Jan 2008Summary: Iran had made progress in the explanation of certain questions concerning its controversial nuclear program, International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) chief Mohammed El-Baradei said in Bratislava, capital of Slovakia on Friday. source: China Viewread more
The hands of Esau: Olmert is the president of the great power, Bush is his vassal?18 Jan 2008Summary: Which of the two men is the leader of the greatest power on earth and which is the boss of a small client state? A visitor from another planet, attending the press conference in Jerusalem, would find it hard not to answer: Olmert is the president of the great power, Bush is his vassal. Olmert is taller. He talked endlessly, while Bush listened patiently. While Olmert anointed Bush with flattery that would have made a Byzantine emperor blush, it was quite clear that it is Olmert who decides policy, while Bush humbly accepts the Israeli diktat. And Bush’s flattery of Olmert exceeded even Olmert’s flattery of Bush. source: speroforum.comread more
No Sunshine For Bush In Mideast18 Jan 2008Summary: President Bush’s failed policies in the region ? in Iraq, Lebanon, Israel and Palestine ? have turned him into one of the most despised figures in the Middle East and brought American prestige in the Arab and Muslim worlds to an all-time low. source: Courant.comread more
Bush’s Iran/Argentina Terror Frame-Up18 Jan 2008Summary: Although nukes and Iraq have been the main focus of the Bush Administration’s pressure campaign against Iran, US officials also seek to tar Iran as the world’s leading sponsor of terrorism. And Team Bush’s latest tactic is to play up a thirteen-year-old accusation that Iran was responsible for the notorious Buenos Aires bombing that destroyed the city’s Jewish Community Center, known as AMIA, killing eighty-six and injuring 300, in 1994. source: The Nationread more
Campaign Against Sanctions and Military Intervention in Iran (CASMII)