Obama’s Benghazi Investigator: An Iran Sympathizer

Frontpagemag.com

Thomas R. Pickering

The freshly appointed chairman of a federal investigation into the Benghazi massacre is an apologist for Islamic terrorism who has a cozy relationship with Iran, the world’s leading state sponsor of terrorism.

And to add insult to injury, at press time Tuesday evening the chairman of this new State Department panel, former Ambassador Thomas R. Pickering, was poised to participate in a panel discussion at the National Cathedral in Washington, D.C., on “what role the faith community can play in fighting Islamophobia.”

The news comes on the heels of a new report by the Investigative Project on Terrorism that found that “scores” of known radical Islamists met with senior Obama administration officials during hundreds of visits to the White House.

Pickering’s appointment as probe chairman was announced in the Federal Register on October 4. The State Department “Accountability Review Board” headed by Pickering is tasked with examining the circumstances surrounding the Sept. 11, 2012 deaths of Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens, information management officer Sean Smith, and security personnel Glen Doherty, and Tyrone Woods at the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya.

The problem is that Pickering has ties to the pro-Iran Islamist front group known as the National Iranian American Council (NIAC). NIAC lost an important defamation case in federal court last month in which it unsuccessfully argued the group was not a tool of the Islamic Republic of Iran.

Pickering is a member of the advisory board of NIAC. He was Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs from May 1997 through the end of 2000, according to a 2009 report titled “Rise of the Iran Lobby,” by Clare M. Lopez of the Center for Security Policy. He’s also vice chairman of international consultancy, Hills & Co., and co-chairman of the board of directors of the International Crisis Group (whose executive committee includes George Soros).

“Ambassador Pickering’s positions on Iran include calls for bilateral talks without preconditions and a plan for a multinational uranium enrichment consortium in Iran,” Lopez writes. “Iran has proposed a similar plan to the UN Security Council. Ambassador Pickering advocates a process leading to mutual diplomatic relations between Iran and the United States.”

“U.S. national security policy is being successfully targeted by Jihadist entities hostile to American interests,” she writes. One of these groups, NIAC, is involved in “a de facto partnership” with its better known but more notorious jihadist ally “the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR) and other organizations serving as mouthpieces for the mullahs’ party line.”

This network “includes well-known American diplomats, congressional representatives, figures from academia and the think tank world.” NIAC and its predecessor group, the American-Iranian Council, have long “functioned openly as apologists for the Iranian regime.”

CAIR is an affiliate of the Muslim Brotherhood and was named by the Department of Justice as an unindicted co-conspirator in the 2007 and 2008 Holy Land Foundation trials. 

The panel discussion featured Pickering, Arab American Institute president James J. Zogby, American Association for Muslim Advancement executive director Daisy Khan, and her husband, Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, chairman of the Cordoba Initiative.

Khan and Rauf are prime movers behind the proposal to build a mosque near Ground Zero in lower Manhattan.

Khan is known for her over-the-top attacks on those who question the wisdom of building a Muslim holy site so close to the place where nearly 3,000 Americans were killed in an Islamist attack on the World Trade Center on Sept. 11, 2001.

Asked in 2010 if America was “Islamophobic,” Khan replied that “It’s not even Islamophobia, it’s beyond Islamophobia — it’s hate of Muslims,” she said.

Of course use of the word “Islamophobia” is a tool of intimidation, calculated to silence the so-called Islamophobe.

If one fears Islamist ideology as an irredentist, imperialist, totalitarian force, one is rational. “Phobia” implies that one who fears or is skeptical of the intentions of Muslims is mentally unbalanced. The term is used the same way American leftists use the word “racist” to shut down debate.

While two George Soros-funded nonprofits, the Center for American Progress and Media Matters for America, are working overtime to try to convince Americans that this make-believe mental illness of Islamophobia is a threat to American democracy and pluralism, the embattled Obama administration has been in damage control mode for weeks as the president’s foreign policy aimed at appeasing totalitarian Islamic theocrats collapses. The administration has been sucking up to the Organization of the Islamic Conference, a 57-state (56 sovereign states and the Palestinian Authority) group that considers itself the Caliphate reborn.

Americans’ civil rights and political correctness are weapons of infiltration used by our Islamofascist enemies. Just like our Soviet Communist enemies during the Cold War, Islamists are using Americans’ goodness and their sense of fair play, including an aversion to being accused of racial stereotyping, against America.

Hard data do not support claims that Islamophobia exists in the United States.

As Jonathan S. Tobin wrote in Commentary last year: “the notion of a rising wave of hatred against Muslims is unsupported by any statistical research.”

“When you consider that Muslims claim to have about the same number of adherents in this country as Jews and that anti-Jewish crimes have always far outnumbered those committed against Muslims, the media hysteria about Islamophobia is exposed as a big lie. But even if there are fewer Muslims here than their groups claim, the conclusion is unchanged.”

And there is credible evidence that Obama, who told the UN last month that “the future does not belong to those who slander the prophet of Islam,” is sympathetic to Islamists’ increasingly vocal demands for Saudi-style anti-blasphemy laws.

So, apparently, is Ambassador Pickering, which makes him unfit to head any probe of what happened last month in Benghazi, Libya.

Iran secret-deal report upsets ayatollah, Obama

WND/ Reza Kahlili

The revelation on WND of the secret meetings between the Obama administration and Iran has caused confusion and anger for those who were taking part – and has derailed the previously agreed-to plans of an announcement for a breakthrough on the nuclear-weapons crisis prior to the U.S. elections.

In Monday night’s presidential debate, President Obama again denied reports in “newspapers” but later contradicted himself and admitted to the possibility of bilateral meetings with Iran.

In the heat of the moment and in response to Gov. Mitt Romney’s criticism of his handling of Iran’s nuclear program, the president said, “I’m pleased that you now are endorsing our policy of applying diplomatic pressure and potentially having bilateral discussions with the Iranians to end their nuclear program.”

Mark Fitzpatrick, a former State Department expert on proliferation and now at the International Institute for Strategic Studies, stated that, “I have been hearing for some time that they had been having private discussions, and now it is starting to become public.”

The British newspaper the Guardian reported the same on Tuesday.

Also on Tuesday, White House Press Secretary Jay Carney said Obama is open to having bilateral talks with Iran about its nuclear program, but the United States has not scheduled any negotiations.

As reported on Oct. 4 and again on Oct. 18, a three-person delegation representing the Obama administration secretly met with their Iranian counterparts about Oct. 1 in Doha, Qatar.

The source who provided details of that meeting and who remains anonymous for security reasons because he is highly placed in Iran’s regime, added that after the WND revelation of the secret meeting, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei was incensed.

The Iranian supreme leader demanded the Americans explain about the leak, which prompted the White House to leak a soft version of the story to the New York Times and deny the facts.

With that, the source said, the Obama administration tried damage control, first by indicating that the story revolved around an agreement for after the elections so no pre-election political motive could be ascribed, and second to ease the mind of the Islamic regime’s leaders about any leaks on the actual event.

The White House, which originally gave a “no comment” to the WND story, responded to the Times story. “It’s not true that the United States and Iran have agreed to one-on-one talks or any meeting after the American election,” Tommy Vietor, a White House spokesman, said Saturday.

The source pointed to the clever response by the White House in denying any agreements for future talks rather than any previous meeting and agreement.

According to the source, who provided new information, the Qatar meeting lasted for about 11 hours, requiring two breaks so the Iranian delegate could do daily prayers.

Besides the woman who led the American team, the source said, there were two American men, one of whom, in his early 60s with slightly darker receding hair, had spent time in Iran before the Islamic revolution. The other, in his 30s, had a military haircut and carried a briefcase so he could report back to Washington live through encrypted messages.

The American woman had met the Iranian delegate, Ali Akbar Velayati, several times before and was trusted by him. Velayati, a close adviser of the supreme leader on international affairs, met privately with the woman for four hours before both groups continued talks.

The source identified the other Iranian present as Asghar Hejazi, a cleric in charge of the 12,000-member Sepah-e-Vali Amr, which protects Khamenei. Hejazi has final authority over all intelligence and security of the Islamic regime.

The presence of Velayati, who makes the international decisions for the regime, and Hejazi, who heads the intelligence and security divisions in the supreme leader’s office, shows that Khamenei is in direct talks with the Obama administration, the source said.

The source emphasized that the Americans requested an announcement on an agreement to partially halt enrichment temporarily before the U.S. elections to help with Obama’s re-election, but the revelation of the meeting caused both sides to re-evaluate the announcement’s timing.

The revelation has also aggravated both Russia and the European Union, which have been participating in multilateral talks of 5+1 on the Iranian nuclear program.

Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Mikhail Bogdanov is rushing to Tehran to warn of any back-channel dealings with America, the source said. So is a delegate from the European Union arriving to strengthen its economic position.

According to the source, in the past five months, four meetings were held in the U.S. with the Islamic regime’s surrogates (two of whom have green cards and travel to America routinely) to hash out what was to be discussed at the Qatar meeting. The source identified Valerie Jarrett, a senior Obama adviser, as the head of the U.S. effort to engage Iran.

The Qatar agreement would have Iran announce a partial halt to enrichment, ensure the regime’s right to peaceful enrichment, quickly remove much of the sanctions, accept that Iran’s nuclear program does not have a military dimension, and relieve international pressure on the regime while it continues its nuclear program.

Khamenei has asked for a written guarantee from Obama to ensure the U.S. would abide by its promises. He once threatened to reveal the contents of a previous Obama letter if threats (referring to Israel) were carried out against the regime. The source said Obama’s letter urged the Islamic regime to avoid giving any reason to Israel to attack and urged collaboration on a peaceful nuclear program.

The news of the revelation of the secret meeting was reflected widely in Iranian media without any official statement by regime officials, although they denied any agreement on future one-on-one meetings, as the White House did.

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Reza Kahlili is a pseudonym for a former CIA operative in Iran’s Revolutionary Guards and author of the award-winning book “A Time to Betray” (Simon & Schuster, 2010). He serves on the Task Force on National and Homeland Security and the advisory board of the Foundation for Democracy in Iran (FDI).

Lessons from Cuba on Iran nukes crisis

Washington Post/ Walter Pincus

There are lessons for our Iran policy to be gleaned from archival documents just released for the 50th anniversary of the 1962 Cuban missile crisis.
A major one: Understand your enemy’s real views, especially on nuclear weapons. In October 1962, did anyone in Washington know that Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev did not believe in “first strike,” the notion that Moscow could unleash a massive nuclear attack and destroy all America’s nuclear forces and thus not face a counterstrike?

Why would that have been important? Because U.S. policymakers spent billions before and after 1962 adding nuclear intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs), strategic submarines and bombers to the U.S. arsenal. Additional billions were spent — and are still being spent — in an effort to construct an antiballistic missile system. In the Cold War, it was primarily to counter a possible Soviet first strike.
Tehran’s public rhetoric aside, what does Washington know about the real nuclear-weapon beliefs of Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who apparently would make the decision to build and perhaps use any nuclear weapon?
Thanks to a document found in Czechoslovakia’s Communist Party archives and released by the Wilson Center’s Cold War International History Project, we can go back to Oct. 30, 1962, and a conversation Khrushchev had in Moscow with then-Czech Communist Party leader Antonin Novotny. Among the Soviets present were Aleksei Kosygin and Leonid Brezhnev. Both eventually would succeed Khrushchev.
The Cuban crisis had just ended. Khrushchev had agreed two days earlier to take the Soviet bombers, missiles and nuclear weapons out of Cuba; the United States had agreed not to invade Cuba, and secretly President John F. Kennedy, through his brother, Attorney General Robert Kennedy, had told the Soviet ambassador in Washington that after time passed, U.S. missiles in Turkey, aimed at the Soviet Union, would be removed. Both sides could declare success.
Novotny prepared a record of Khrushchev’s statements as the Soviet leader discussed details of the Cuban crisis, according to the released Czech document. Khrushchev claimed he had put the nuclear weapons in Cuba to prevent a U.S. invasion. When the United States discovered them, Cuban President Fidel Castro sent Khrushchev a letter saying that “the USA would attack Cuba within 24 hours,” according to the Novotny document.
In the letter, Castro “proposed that we ourselves should be the first to start an atomic war,” Khrushchev said. That led him to say, “Do you know what that would mean? . . . We were completely aghast. Castro clearly has no idea about what thermonuclear war is.”
Khrushchev added: “It is clear that with a first strike one cannot today knock the opponent [the United States] out of the fight. There can always be a counter-strike. . . . There are, after all, missiles in the earth [American ICBMs were based in underground silos], which intelligence does not know about; there are missiles on submarines, which cannot be knocked out of the fight right away, and so on. What would we gain if we ourselves started a war? After all, millions of people would die, in our country too. Can we even contemplate a thing like that?”  More >>

U.S. officials: Iran is behind recent cyberattacks

Security Clearance

Read >>

Economic war? Iranians protest currency collapse

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Iran Threatens U.S. as New Cyber Super-Weapon Strikes

FRONTPAGEMAG.COM/ Ryan Mauro

Iran is threatening to attack U.S. bases in the region with its missiles if it is attacked, but the reality is that the regime is already under attack. The latest all-but-certain covert operation is the deployment of sophisticated malware that is being called “The Flame.”  Its purpose appears to be the mass cultivation of intelligence and it is assessed to be 20 times more complex than Stuxnet, the original “cyber super-weapon” that ravaged Iran’s nuclear program.

The Flame has been discovered in seven Middle Eastern countries, though the number of infections found in Iran is more than the rest combined with 189 instances. There have been 98 infections detected in Israel and the Palestinian territories. Sudan was hit with 32 infections, a country whose regime is increasingly Islamist and friendly towards Hamas. There have been 30 infections found in Syria, 18 in Lebanon, 10 in Saudi Arabia and 5 in Egypt.

It is not believed at this time that the Flame targeted a specific industry or program like Stuxnet did. Instead, it is meant to act as the “the ultimate spy,” copying hard drive data, logging instant messages and other online communications, recording keystrokes, taking screenshots and even secretly turning on computer microphones to record nearby conversations. There is also the potential for sabotage because it can potentially delete information and change settings on computer systems, opening up doors for attack.

Iran says it is building a copy of downed US spy drone

World Blog/

Abedin Taherkenareh / EPA

Iranians gather around a replica of an American spy drone on display next to Azadi (Freedom) square during a ceremony marking the 33rd anniversary of the 1979 Islamic revolution in Tehran on Feb. 11.

By msnbc.com and news services

A top Iranian official claimed on Sunday that his government was copying the top-secret American spy drone captured by Iran's armed forced last year.

Gen. Amir Ali Hajizadeh, who is chief of the aerospace division of the powerful Revolutionary Guards, was quoted by a semi-official news agency as saying that Iranian experts are recovering information from the RQ-170 Sentinel captured in December in eastern Iran, al Arabiya News reported.

"There is almost no part hidden to us in this aircraft. We recovered part of the data that had been erased. There were many codes and characters. But we deciphered them by the grace of God," Hajizadeh said. More >>

Advanced Preparations of U.S.-Israel War Against Iran

Infowars.com/ Ben Schreiner

Following the highly scrutinized meeting between President Barack Obama and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu earlier this month in Washington, consensus held that Obama had managed to secure assurances from the war-hungry Netanyahu that Israel would delay a military strike against Iran till 2013.  That is, till after the November U.S. presidential election.

According to the Israeli daily Maariv, this commitment of Israeli “restraint” had been bought with the sale of U.S. “advanced bunker-busting bombs and long-range refueling planes” to the Israeli Defense Forces, as al-Akhbar (3/8) reported.  Needless to say, such advanced weaponry would be required in any Israeli attack on Iran. 

“You shall still have your war,” Obama thus seemingly sought to convey to Netanyahu, “but only in due time.”   

Since the Obama-Netanyahu summit, however, indications of such Israeli restraint have dissipated.  The Israeli dogs of war are not so easily tamed.  In fact, in his latest column for Bloomberg (3/19), the Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg reports that talk of striking Iran is once more convulsing through the Israeli political establishment.  And according to Goldberg, all such discussions have assumed a rather optimistic bent.     

“One conclusion key officials have reached,” Goldberg writes, “is that a strike on six or eight Iranian facilities will not lead, as is generally assumed, to all-out war.”

We learn further that Israeli officials interpret Obama’s claims of “having Israel’s back” as meaning that even in the event of an Israeli strike against Iran in the face of U.S. protest, “Obama would move immediately to help buttress Israel’s defenses against an Iranian counterstrike.”  

All this leaves Goldberg to assess that Israel shall ultimately strike Iran.  As he writes, “I’m highly confident that Netanyahu isn’t bluffing—that he is in fact counting down to the day when he will authorize a strike against a half-dozen or more Iranian nuclear sites.” More >>

Obama, Iran and the 1939 Syndrome

FrontPage Magazine/ By P. David Hornik 

1938: Pacto de Munich por Gran Bretaña, Francia, Alemania e Italia.

On Tuesday EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton announced that the group of six global powers—permanent UN Security Council members the U.S., Britain, France, China, and Russia plus Germany—were resuming nuclear talks with Iran at an unspecified time and place.

She announced it just as Israeli prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu was in Washington trying to convince the U.S. leadership that neither diplomacy nor sanctions were coming anywhere near stopping Iran’s push to nuclear weapons.

Ashton had earlier—on February 14—received a proposal for talks from Iran’s nuclear negotiator Saeed Jalili. On Tuesday she said, “Today I have replied to Dr. Jalili’s letter….” What opportune timing.

And what a further blow to Israel.

Typical headlines have been saying Netanyahu told President Obama on Monday that Israel hasn’t yet taken a decision on attacking Iran. Yet, as described here and here, an “unnamed American intelligence official” has conveyed a different impression to Israel’s Channel 2 news.

Channel 2 reported on Monday night that the official said, “U.S. intelligence services believe that, in principle, Israel has already made the decision to bomb Iran.” According to Channel 2, the official warned that such an attack would entail thousands of casualties and spark a regional war or even World War III—in short, an all-out catastrophe. An official Israeli source dismissed these statements as “scare-mongering and psychological warfare.”

Just as there is a dissonance between the mainstream version—which says Israel hasn’t yet decided—and this apparent desperate attempt to bypass the Israeli leadership and scare its population silly via its most popular news channel, there is a dissonance between Obama’s words this week and what we read elsewhere.

In his AIPAC speech on Sunday: “I firmly believe that an opportunity still remains for diplomacy—backed by pressure—to succeed.”

And in Tuesday night’s news conference: “[Iran] understand[s] that the world community means business. To resolve this issue will require Iran to come to the table and discuss…how to prove to the international community that the intentions of their nuclear program are peaceful.”

Meanwhile IAEA chief Yukiya Amano says Iran has “tripled” its monthly production of 20-percent-enriched uranium since the IAEA’s previous report in November. That was the report that was seen as dramatically confirming Israel’s insistence over the years that Iran had never stopped working on the bomb.

Amano also expressed serious concern about the IAEA being denied, again, access to Parchin—the site where Iran has “built a large containment chamber” to “conduct high-explosives tests” that the IAEA considers “strong indicators” of nuclear-weapons development. That was according to November’s report. What’s going on in the chamber now? No one knows.

No wonder administration officials are so worried Israel will attack and trying to scare the Israeli people out of their wits about what will happen if it does. Seemingly it would make more sense for the administration—and the Western world as a whole—to get seriously scared about Parchin and drop the hang-up with Israel.

On Tuesday it was reported that Iran now says it will let the IAEA into Parchin—at an unspecified date. Even if that transpires, it will obviously be after Iran has had enough time to “clean” the site.  More »

US, Britain urge Israel not to attack Iran

By JOSEF FEDERMAN

The U.S. and Britain on Sunday urged Israel not to attack Iran's nuclear program as the White House's national security adviser arrived in the region, reflecting growing international jitters that the Israelis are poised to strike.

In their warnings, both the U.S. joint chiefs of staff, Gen. Martin Dempsey, and British Foreign Minister William Hague said an Israeli attack on Iran would have grave consequences for the entire region and urged Israel to give international sanctions against Iran more time to work. Dempsey said an Israeli attack is "not prudent," and Hague said it would not be "a wise thing."

Both Israel and the West believe Iran is trying to develop a nuclear bomb — a charge Tehran denies. But differences have emerged in how to respond to the perceived threat.

The U.S. and the European Union have both imposed harsh new sanctions targeting Iran's oil sector, the lifeline of the Iranian economy. With the sanctions just beginning to bite, they have expressed optimism that Iran can be persuaded to curb its nuclear ambitions.

On Sunday, Iran's Oil Ministry said it has halted oil shipments to Britain and France in an apparent pre-emptive blow against the European Union. The semiofficial Mehr news agency said the National Iranian Oil Company has sent letters to some European refineries with an ultimatum to either sign long-term contracts of two to five years or be cut off. The 27-nation EU accounts for about 18 percent of Iran's oil exports.  More >>

US aircraft carrier has close encounter with Iranian patrol boat [Video]

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Countdown! Iran's finger on nuclear trigger

WND.com. / By Reza Kahlili

WASHINGTON – Iranian nuclear experts have completed the component for a nuclear bomb trigger, overcoming a major obstacle in obtaining the bomb, according to sources within Iran.

As reported last May, the Iranian nuclear and military industries, under the order of Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, were to weaponize at least two warheads with a nuclear payload no later than next month.

Sources within the Revolutionary Guards reveal that the work on the trigger is taking place covertly under the control of the Guards in the cities of Darkhovin and Isfahan.

Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, the main brain behind the Iranian nuclear bomb program, is guiding the project. Fakhrizadeh reportedly reports directly to Khamenei and is under tight security because of the assassination of other Iranian nuclear scientists.

The Islamic regime has rejected several requests by the International Atomic Energy Agency to interview him. The U.N. nuclear watchdog believes Fakhrizadeh was responsible for the project “111,” which would convert highly enriched uranium into metal for a nuclear warhead and its reentry design.

The IAEA last November indicated that Iran had experimented with firing multiple detonators with a high level of simultaneity. The report also indicated that Iran as early as 2003 began a large-scale experiment to initiate a high-explosive charge in the form of a hemispherical shell. This indicates work on a nuclear bomb.

According to Sepahonline, which is close to the Revolutionary Guards, Iranian nuclear bomb progress is overseen by the supreme leader’s military adviser, Rahim Safavi, a former chief commander of the Guards, and a cleric, Mohsen Ghomi, who has communicated the will of the supreme leader for a speedy completion of the project. These activities are taking place at several secret locations unknown to the IAEA. One location reportedly is in the city of Mobarake, south west of Isfahan.

Peter Vincent Pry, executive director of the newly established Task Force on National and Homeland Security, a congressional advisory board, concludes from IAEA intelligence that Iran’s nuclear weapons program is very advanced.

”Iran has already developed hemispherical explosive lenses and highly precise detonators,” Pry states, “a clear indicator Iran is working on, or has already built, an implosion-type nuclear weapon. The United States used an implosion atomic bomb during World War II to destroy Nagasaki.”  More >>

Strait of Hormuz: Where US-Iran tensions flare

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Obama sent secret letter to Ayatollah

By msnbc.com news services

An Iranian lawmaker claimed Wednesday that President Barack Obama called for direct talks with Iran in a secret letter to the Islamic Republic's supreme leader that also warned Tehran against closing the strategic Strait of Hormuz.

Obama administration officials denied to The Associated Press there was such a letter.

Iran has threatened to close the waterway, the route for about one-sixth of the global oil flow, because of new U.S. sanctions over its nuclear program.

Conservative lawmaker Ali Motahari revealed the content of the purported letter days after the Obama administration said it was warning Iran through public and private channels against any action that threatens the flow of oil from the Persian Gulf.

"In the letter, Obama called for direct talks with Iran," the semiofficial Fars news agency quoted Motahari as saying Wednesday. "The letter also said that closing the Strait of Hormuz is (Washington's) red line."

"The first part of the letter contains threats and the second part contains an offer for dialogue," he added.

Iran's Foreign Ministry spokesman Ramin Mehmanparast confirmed that Tehran received the letter and was considering a possible response. More >>

Iran, the U.S. and the Strait of Hormuz Crisis

Stratfor/

By George Friedman

The United States reportedly sent a letter to Iran via multiple intermediaries last week warning Tehran that any attempt to close the Strait of Hormuz constituted a red line for Washington. The same week, a chemist associated with Iran's nuclear program was killed in Tehran. In Ankara, Iranian Parliament Speaker Ali Larijani met with Turkish officials and has been floating hints of flexibility in negotiations over Iran's nuclear program.

This week, a routine rotation of U.S. aircraft carriers is taking place in the Middle East, with the potential for three carrier strike groups to be on station in the U.S. Fifth Fleet's area of operations and a fourth carrier strike group based in Japan about a week's transit from the region. Next week, Gen. Michael Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, will travel to Israel to meet with senior Israeli officials. And Iran is scheduling another set of war games in the Persian Gulf for February that will focus on the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps' irregular tactics for closing the Strait of Hormuz. Read More »

Jaque a Irán. ¿Por qué ahora?

Huber Matos Araluce

Si el régimen teocrático iraní da un paso en falso tratando de cerrar el estrecho de Ormuz, los Estados Unidos han prometido impedirlo. El resultado sería un conflicto militar limitado a favor de los Estados Unidos, o el principio de una guerra que Irán perderá.

La reacción iraní es consecuencia de las nuevas sanciones impuestas por Estados Unidos contra las compras del petróleo de Irán, con el fin de presionar a Teherán para que detengan su refinamiento de material radiactivo.

Si por tres años Obama no ha tomado medidas tan drásticas, a meses de una elección presidencial en los Estados Unidos, la pregunta es válida: ¿por qué ahora?

¿Es porque la crisis en Siria hace a Irán más vulnerable?

¿Es que los judíos le han dado algún tipo de ultimátum a la Casa Blanca?

¿Es que los países árabes han exigido a Obama una actitud más fuerte contra Irán?

¿Es que la actual presión contra Irán está realmente relacionada con la situación de Iraq, aunque parezca que tiene que ver con su proyecto nuclear?

¿O es que a Obama le conviene un conflicto con Irán que le asegure su reelección?

Antecedentes

Desde el triunfo de la revolución islámica en Irán en 1979, Estados Unidos se ha opuesto sistemáticamente al desarrollo de un programa de energía atómica en ese país, alegando que el propósito de Irán es el desarrollo de armas nucleares. Irán ha insistido en que ese no es su objetivo. 

Aunque Irán tiene grandes reservas de petróleo y de gas, es razonable que trate de generar electricidad con energía atómica. Esto le permitiría usar sus yacimientos de fuentes no renovables en forma más productiva. Evitaría también la contaminación ambiental resultante del petróleo y del gas.

El desarrollo atómico en Irán tiene una larga historia. Comenzó en 1957, bajo los auspicios de los Estados Unidos, en un programa que se conoció como “Átomos para la Paz”. En 1974 el Shah firmó un acuerdo con Siemens y Framatome (Sociedad Franco Americana de construcciones atómicas) para la fabricación de cuatro reactores que producirían electricidad.

Un año después Siemens inició la construcción de dos de ellos. El trabajo se interrumpió por desinterés de la revolución islámica, en 1979. Un reactor estaba prácticamente terminado, y el otro hasta un 50%. Durante la guerra con Irak los bombardeos iraquíes dañaron estas instalaciones.

En enero de 1979 Framatome había comenzado la construcción de dos reactores, que fue suspendida unilateralmente por la compañía francesa.  Los iraníes alegan que por presión de los Estados Unidos.

En 1994 Irán negoció con la empresa rusa Minaton la terminación de uno de los reactores comenzados por Siemens en Bushehr, en el Golfo Pérsico. Además de los problemas de adaptación del equipo ruso a la infraestructura que estaba ya construida, el proyecto tuvo atrasos debido a la resistencia de Irán a aceptar que devolvería a Rusia el residuo del combustible atómico de esta planta. 

Este residuo radioactivo puede manipularse para fabricar armas atómicas. El acuerdo entre Irán y Rusia estaba bajo las guías de la Agencia Internacional de Energía Atómica.

En repetidas ocasiones Irán se ha resistido a cumplir sus compromisos internacionales relacionados con la inspección y notificación sobre sus actividades en las instalaciones atómicas. Ha fabricado un número de ellas bajo tierra y en zonas urbanas, aumentando la alarma de Occidente y de sus vecinos.

El reciente anuncio de la Agencia Internacional de Energía Atómica de que Irán está enriqueciendo el material nuclear a niveles de pureza de un 20% parece haber desencadenado la reciente crisis.  

Es una evidencia más de que el objetivo de Irán es el desarrollo de bombas atómicas.  Pero no es una sorpresa. Las intenciones de la teocracia iraní en este sentido se conocen desde hace muchos años.

Como hemos señalado, desde 1979 Estados Unidos se ha opuesto al desarrollo de un programa nuclear en Irán. En enero de ese año, la revolución islámica obligó a huir al Sha Mohammad Reza Pahlevi, un aliado cercano de los Estados Unidos, que resultó el último soberano de una monarquía de 2,500 años de existencia. Había llegado al poder en 1941, tras la abdicación de su padre.

En 1953 el entonces primer ministro iraní, Mohammed Mossadegh, democráticamente elegido, fue derribado por un golpe de estado organizado por la CIA norteamericana y el MI-6 inglés, a causa de sus medidas de reformas sociales, pero fundamentalmente por la nacionalización del petróleo, que los ingleses controlaban desde 1913. En 1997 el presidente norteamericano Bill Clinton prácticamente se disculpó por ese golpe de estado. 

Pero el conflicto con Irán no se limita a los Estados Unidos y a Israel. En 1979 el líder iraní, el Ayatola Khomeini, de la secta chiíta del Islam, le declaró la guerra verbal a las monarquías y a los gobiernos islámico-sunitas árabes. Esto exacerbó el conflicto religioso en la zona, e intensificó la desconfianza histórica de los países árabes hacia Irán. 

El pueblo iraní es indoeuropeo (*). Apareció en escena 500 años antes de Cristo. El rey Ciro el Grande unificó a Persia. Los árabes, de origen semita, empezaron a hacer su historia más de diez siglos después, con Mohamed, quien nació en el año 570 de la era cristiana. En el siglo séptimo dominaron a los persas, y diseminaron el Islam y el alfabeto árabe. Continuar leyendo en  Cubanalisis >>

Dangerous mix: Iran, oil, sanctions

Iran's Navy Commander Adm. Habibollah Sayari speaks to the press last week about Iran's 10-day military exercise

By Vali Nasr, Special to CNN

Editor's note: Vali Nasr is a professor of international politics at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy of Tufts University and senior fellow in foreign policy at the Brookings Institution.

(CNN) -- Iran has threatened that it will retaliate against the Obama administration's proposed new economic sanctions on Iran's oil exports by blocking the flow of oil from the Persian Gulf. "If sanctions are adopted against Iranian oil," said Iran's Vice President Mohammad Reza Rahimi, "not a drop of oil will pass through the Strait of Hormuz," the narrow waterway at the mouth of the Persian Gulf, which one-fifth of the world's oil supply passes through daily.

To drive the point home, Iran has started a 10-day naval exercise in the Persian Gulf to show off how it could use small speedboats and a barrage of missiles to combat America's naval armada. And the U.S. Navy has responded, in the words of a spokeswoman: "Anyone who threatens to disrupt freedom of navigation in an international strait is clearly outside the community of nations; any disruption will not be tolerated."

This is a significant escalation of tension between the United States and Iran, and the start of a more dangerous phase in the West's attempt to curtail Iran's nuclear program.

The new sanctions are a response to last month's alarming report on Iran's nuclear intentions by the United Nations nuclear watchdog agency, the International Atomic Energy Association. The Obama administration has ruled out military strikes to stop Iran's nuclear program in favor of tougher sanctions, which, once signed by the president, and if fully implemented, would sharply reduce Iran's oil revenue. The administration sees this added pressure on Iran's fragile economy as an effective alternative to military strikes.  

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Did Russia Help Iran Down Drone?

DEBKAfile/

Iran's electronic trap for snaring the Lockheed Martin RQ-170 Sentinel, one of the world's most secret drone programs in almost perfect condition, must be accounted a huge military and intelligence coup and a landmark in the long tussle over Tehran's nuclear program. It may have acquired the technology for its cyber attack from Pakistan, China, or even Russia.
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Iran toughens cyber challenge to US, claims superior drones

DEBKAfile/

Iranian Defense Minister Brig. Gen. Ahmad Vahidi Monday, Dec. 26, replied to Sunday's debkafile report which revealed Tehran's plan to use its big 10-day naval drill east of the Strait of Hormuz to test its vaunted cyber intelligence prowess against US warships. He said Iran has great capabilities in "all fields of national defense, including the use of intelligence drones." The Islamic Republic, he said, could employ aerial drones to counter any potential US-led covert war. But he did not refer to a full-scale war offensive. More >>

Engineer: Iran hijacked US drone

The GPS splitter prototype reportedly part of the downed drone

By Scott Peterson and Payam Faramarzi/

ISTANBUL, Turkey — Iran guided the CIA's "lost" stealth drone to an intact landing inside hostile territory by exploiting a navigational weakness long-known to the US military, according to an Iranian engineer now working on the captured drone's systems inside Iran.

Iranian electronic warfare specialists were able to cut off communications links of the American bat-wing RQ-170 Sentinel, says the engineer, who works for one of many Iranian military and civilian teams currently trying to unravel the drone’s stealth and intelligence secrets, and who could not be named for his safety.

Using knowledge gleaned from previous downed American drones and a technique proudly claimed by Iranian commanders in September, the Iranian specialists then reconfigured the drone's GPS coordinates to make it land in Iran at what the drone thought was its actual home base in Afghanistan.

"The GPS navigation is the weakest point," the Iranian engineer told the Monitor, giving the most detailed description yet published of Iran's "electronic ambush" of the highly classified US drone. "By putting noise [jamming] on the communications, you force the bird into autopilot. This is where the bird loses its brain."

The “spoofing” technique that the Iranians used – which took into account precise landing altitudes, as well as latitudinal and longitudinal data – made the drone “land on its own where we wanted it to, without having to crack the remote-control signals and communications” from the US control center, says the engineer.

The revelations about Iran's apparent electronic prowess come as the US, Israel, and some European nations appear to be engaged in an ever-widening covert war with Iran, which has seen assassinations of Iranian nuclear scientists, explosions at Iran's missile and industrial facilities, and the Stuxnet computer virus that set back Iran’s nuclear program.

Now this engineer’s account of how Iran took over one of America’s most sophisticated drones suggests Tehran has found a way to hit back. The techniques were developed from reverse-engineering several less sophisticated American drones captured or shot down in recent years, the engineer says, and by taking advantage of weak, easily manipulated GPS signals, which calculate location and speed from multiple satellites. More >>

Also  “Three U.S. and four Israeli drones captured in Iran to be put on display soon”: Tehran Times says. “Downed” RQ-170 saga continues