"RussiaToday" -- A UN nuclear watchdog report suggests Iran could be developing a nuclear bomb, apparently
confirming long-held suspicions in the West. But Tehran denies the claims, again insisting that its atomic intentions are peaceful. Michel Chossudovsky,
who's from an independent Canadian policy research group, believes that what Iran says hardly matters, because the U.S. is planning for war.
-- Feb. 15, 2010 -- The U.S.-sponsored drive to impose new economic sanctions on Iran has nothing to do with the noble cause of limiting proliferation of nuclear weapons on the planet. It is directly linked to the U.S. military doctrine of establishing 'full spectrum dominance' - i.e., military dominance on land, sea, air, and outer space over all other countries in the world. The logical extension of this doctrine is that only countries firmly allied to the U.S. government should be allowed to acquire nuclear weapons or to even develop the capacity to do so.
Israel , for example, is widely-believed to hold secret Nuclear weapons. Yet there is no call for sanctions or investigations of them. The reason is simple: They are a U.S. ally. India and Pakistan have declined to sign the nuclear non-proliferation treaty and have developed nuclear weapons. Yet there is no call for sanctions or investigations of them. The reason is simple: They are U.S. allies.
Iran and North Korea are being subjected to economic sanctions, calls for more sanctions, and even threats of military aggression against them The reason is again simple: They are not U.S. allies.
February 16, 2010 "http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,677837,00.html"
>Spiegel" -- Hans Blix is the former head of the International
Atomic Energy Agency and also worked as a UN weapons inspector in Iraq. He talks to SPIEGEL about whether Iran really has the ability to enrich uranium
and if economic sanctions can ever be effective.
SPIEGEL: Tehran has announced that it has enriched
a "first batch" of uranium from 3.5 to 20 percent. Does this mean that we now face a new stage in the escalation of
title="the conflict with Iran?" href=" http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,677030,00.html"
>the conflict with Iran?
Hans Blix: The government in Tehran originally declared that it only intended to enrich uranium
to 3.5 percent, to produce fuel for nuclear reactors. But now it needs uranium enriched to about 20 percent for its research reactor, in order to produce
isotopes for medical use. Tehran had the same problem once before, in the early 1980s. The United States had built a research reactor for Tehran, Iran
had ordered nuclear fuel and had even paid for it, but then came the mullahs' revolution, and America refused to deliver the fuel. The West has faced a
dilemma since then: If we don't supply them with the fuel, Iran has a reason to produce...
Although some of my friends in Tehran who walked for miles to attend
the hours of festivities at Azadi Square told me regretfully that they were not offered free food or drink, I don't doubt that refreshments were indeed
distributed at the rally.
Last October I attended a memorial service in Tehran organised by the Revolutionary Guard to honour
hundreds of Iranian medical volunteers killed while caring for their comrades during the bloody eight-year war with Iraq.
At the entrance of the packed auditorium small trays of fruit, juice and water were handed out. I
tried to politely decline the offer from the man in camouflage, but was later happy that his insistence succeeded. I found the banana and pineapple flavoured
juice box quite refreshing as the service dragged on for a number of hours.
Anyone who has spent time in Iran and the Middle East knows about the hospitality of this...
The threat of military action against Iran over its nuclear program has hung over the Middle East for a number of years. Does Iran pose a “clear and present danger” to US or global interests? What would be the basis for a military strike and what would be the consequences? Today asks the experts.
Ambassador Hua Liming, fmr Chinese Ambassador to Iran
Patrick Chovanec, Associate Professor at Tsinghua University
Soraya Ulrich - Independent researcher on US foreign policy and writer
Stephen Sniegoski - Author of 'The Transparent Cabal - The Neoconservative Agenda, War in the Middle East, and the National Interest of Israel."
hour 1
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What Do We Really Know About The Islamic Republic of Iran?
Video Report By Rageh Omaar
Rageh Omaar embarks on a unique journey inside what he describes as one of the most misunderstood countries in the world, looking at the country through the eyes of people rarely heard - ordinary Iranians. It took a year of wrangling to get permission to film inside Iran but the result is an amazing portrayal of an energetic and vibrant country that is completely different to the usual images seen in the media.
Originally published on October 03, 2009
"Asia Times"
-- The United States and Western "bomb, bomb, bomb Iran" crowd - hysteria running at fever pitch ahead of Thursday's multilateral nuclear talks in Geneva - could do worse than have a word with Brazilian President Luis Inacio Lula da Silva.
Lula actually talked to Iranian President Mahmud Ahmadinejad face-to-face for over an hour on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly last week. He invited Ahmadinejad to visit Brazil in November. About the meeting, he went straight to the point, "What I wish for Iran is what I always wanted for Brazil - a peaceful, civilian nuclear program."
Lula is an island of common sense in an ocean of hysteria. French President Nicolas Sarkozy publicly gave a December deadline for Iran not to make a "tragic mistake", as in provoking Armageddon. Italian Foreign Minister Franco Frattini reiterated the Group of Eight was giving Iran only three more months.
United States President Barack Obama - now running three wars (Iraq and the AfPak combo) - demanded that Iran (which is not at war with anybody) demonstrate "its peaceful intentions or be held accountable to international standards and international law".
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin "Bibi" Netanyahu announced to...
" --- Thursday is a fateful day for the world, http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20091001/wl_nm/us_nuclear_iran_46"
>as the US, other members of the United Nations Security Council, and Germany meet in Geneva with Iran in a bid to resolve outstanding issues. Although
Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad had earlier attempted to put the nuclear issue off the bargaining table, this rhetorical flourish was a mere opening
gambit and nuclear issues will certainly dominate the talks. As Henry Kissinger pointed out, these talks are just beginning and there are highly unlikely
to be any breakthroughs for a very long time. Diplomacy is a marathon, not a sprint.
But on this occasion, I thought I'd take the opportunity to list some things that people tend to think they know about Iran, but
for which the evidence is shaky.
Belief: Iran is aggressive and has threatened to attack Israel, its neighbors or the US
" -- In 2001, the Observer in London published a series of reports that claimed an “Iraqi connection” to al-Qaeda, even describing the base in Iraq where the training of terrorists took place and a facility where anthrax was being manufactured as a weapon of mass destruction. It was all false. Supplied by US intelligence and Iraqi exiles, planted stories in the British and US media helped George Bush and Tony Blair to launch an illegal invasion which caused, according to the most recent study, 1.3 million deaths.
Something similar is happening over Iran: the same syncopation of government and media “revelations”, the same manufacture of a sense of crisis. “Showdown looms with Iran over secret nuclear plant”, declared the Guardian on 26 September. “Showdown” is the theme. High noon. The clock ticking. Good versus evil. Add a smooth new US president who has “put paid to the Bush years”. An immediate echo is the notorious Guardian front page of 22 May 2007: “Iran’s secret plan for summer offensive to force US out of Iraq”. Based on unsubstantiated claims by the Pentagon, the writer Simon Tisdall presented as fact an Iranian “plan” to wage war on, and defeat, US forces in...
are some terms that people in Islamic
and Western countries should never say to each other, because they confuse and inflame more than they clarify. The most obvious ones would be “jihad”,
“crusade” and “great satan”. All of them are used in somewhat innocuous ways by the people who utter them, but mean something completely
different – and much more inflammatory – to foreign ears.
I would like to propose a topical addition to the list of words
that should never be used, and that would be “myth”. Specifically when it is used in the context in which Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad
and Egyptian Brotherhood leader Mohammed Mehdi Akef have mentioned it in recent...
