David Cameron: Israeli blockade has turned Gaza Strip into a 'prison camp'

Prime minister intervenes in Middle East dispute and hopes Turkey can stop Iran's nuclear weapons programme

Cameron's comments, in a speech to business leaders in Ankara, prompted the Turkish prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, to issue another strong condemnation of how Israel dealt with the flotilla.

Erdogan likened the behaviour of Israeli commandos, who shot dead nine Turkish pro-Palestinian activists, to Somali pirates.

Cameron's criticism of Tel Aviv came when he called for Israel to relax its restrictions on Gaza. "The situation in Gaza has to change," he said. "Humanitarian goods and people must flow in both directions. Gaza cannot and must not be allowed to remain a prison camp."

He strongly condemned Israel after the assault on the Gaza flotilla.

"The Israeli attack on the Gaza flotilla was completely unacceptable," he said. "I have told prime minister [Benjamin] Netanyahu we will expect the Israeli inquiry to be swift, transparent and rigorous. "Let me also be clear that the situation in Gaza has to change." ...

Cameron also said Turkey should use its links with Iran to persuade Tehran to abandon its nuclear weapons programme ...

Guardian  27 July 2010    Israel    War on Terror Log

US was 'high on military' ahead of Iraq war

A tale of three wars

Should Israel Bomb Iran?

An Attack on Iran: Back on the Table

A tale of three wars: Afghanistan, Iraq...Iran

The third war

The idea that an attack on Iran is desirable is found most regularly in neo-conservative circles.

But arguments for the military option are also found in more centrist military and diplomatic thinking, as portrayed by the well-informed Joe Klein.

Meanwhile, an experienced former US ambassador to Israel, Dan Kurzer, takes the view that Israel is more likely to start a conflict with Hizbollah than the other way round ...

openDemocracy  22 July 2010    

Should Israel Bomb Iran?

An Attack on Iran: Back on the Table

Israel's Next War Could Be Lebanon

Israel vs Iran: fallout of a war

The voices in Washington calling for a military strike on Iranian nuclear plants are growing in number and strength.

The cautious attitude of the Barack Obama administration itself in relation to such a course means that direct military action by the United States itself remains on balance unlikely.

But current trends in the middle east suggest that the prospect of Israeli action against Iran in the next few months is coming closer ...

This current moment raises three vital questions for anyone concerned with security and stability in the middle east: whether Israel has the military capability to launch an effective strike on Iran, what form military action would take, and what Iran’s reaction would be ...

openDemocracy  15 July 2010    F-35 Strike Fighter

Leading Oil and Gas Companies Around the World1

Military Action Against Iran: Impact and Effects

Iran could spring a nasty surprise

A Quiet Axis Forms Against Iran in the Middle East

An Attack on Iran: Back on the Table

Israel vs Iran: the risk of war

Israel's shadow over Iran

Iran sanctions 'will not affect' Russia missile deal

Russia agreed to supply Iran with S-300 systems several years ago but has not delivered them.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov stressed the missiles were not subject to the limits set by the UN on cooperation with Iran.

He said Moscow was in talks on building further nuclear reactors in Iran.

The US and Israel are concerned the S-300 missiles, designed to counter both aircraft and cruise missiles, might be used to protect Iran's nuclear facilities from possible attack ...

BBC NEWS  10 June 2010    F-35 Strike Fighter    War on Terror    

UN sanctions on Iran: A gift to the regime

The sanctions have been devised to increase the cost paid by President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and the elite Revolutionary Guards in defying world opinion.

But the architects of the financial curbs failed to address two inconvenient truths: the first is that the opposition movement of Mir Hossein Mousavi also regards uranium enrichment as a national right, and opposes another round of sanctions; and the second is that Mr Ahmadinejad himself will relish them.

Renewed sanctions give him the opportunity of defying the world, and winning ...

raymonddelauney 10 Jun 2010, 1:14AM

But the architects of the financial curbs failed to address two inconvenient truths: the first is that the opposition movement of Mir Hossein Mousavi also regards uranium enrichment as a national right, and opposes another round of sanctions; and the second is that Mr Ahmadinejad himself will relish them.

Meanwhile the UK and the US pollute the Gulf of Mexico with oil .. they wish to continue to deny Iran the right to peacefully develop civil nuclear power.

There's only one country in the world that illegally developed nuclear weapons with the racist Apartheid regime in South Africa ...and that country has only recently been punished by invited to join the OECD.

Double standards all round then..

Guardian  10 June 2010

Gaza blockade: Iran offers escort to next aid convoy

• Aide threatens use of Revolutionary Guard
• Netanyahu warns of Jerusalem missile danger ...

The threat came as the Israeli prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, dismissed a UN proposal for an international commission to investigate last week's commando assault on aid ships, in which nine people died.

Another aid ship, the Rachel Corrie, carrying Irish and other peace activists, was boarded peacefully by Israeli forces on Saturday, escorted to the port of Ashdod, and its passengers deported.

Netanyahu has defended Israel's right to maintain the blockade by arguing that without it Gaza would become an "Iranian port" and Hamas missiles would strike Tel Aviv and Jerusalem. Israel's undeclared aim is to weaken or bring down the Hamas government.

Iran continued to exploit the "freedom flotilla" affair to lambast Israel. Its foreign minister, Manuchehr Mottaki, told the Organisation of the Islamic Conference in Jeddah on Sunday that Israel's crime was "another instance of the Zionist regime's brazen and merciless treatment of Muslims, especially the oppressed Palestinian people." ...

Guardian  06 June 2010    Israel    War on Terror Log

Israeli navy kills four Palestinians off Gaza coast

U.S. Is Said to Expand Secret Military Acts in Mideast Region

The top American commander in the Middle East has ordered a broad expansion of clandestine military activity in an effort to disrupt militant groups or counter threats in Iran, Saudi Arabia, Somalia and other countries in the region, according to defense officials and military documents.

The secret directive, signed in September by Gen. David H. Petraeus, authorizes the sending of American Special Operations troops to both friendly and hostile nations in the Middle East, Central Asia and the Horn of Africa to gather intelligence and build ties with local forces.

Officials said the order also permits reconnaissance that could pave the way for possible military strikes in Iran if tensions over its nuclear ambitions escalate ...

NYT  24 May 2010    War on Terror Log

The Obama administration is accelerating the deployment of new defenses against possible Iranian missile attacks in the Persian Gulf, placing special ships off the Iranian coast and antimissile systems in at least four Arab countries, according to administration and military officials ...

The deployments are also partly intended to counter the impression that Iran is fast becoming the most powerful military force in the Middle East, to forestall any Iranian escalation of its confrontation with the West if new sanctions are imposed.

In addition, the administration is trying to show Israel that there is no immediate need for military strikes against Iranian nuclear and missile facilities, according to administration officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity ...

NYT  30 Jan 2010

Iran can be bombed says General Petraeus

The US military commander for the Middle East and the Gulf region has confirmed that the United States has developed contingency plans to deal with Iran's nuclear facilities ...

Iran maintains its nuclear programme is for peaceful purposes, but the United States and other Western nations fear Tehran wants to acquire nuclear weapons.

Israel has called Iran's nuclear programme the major threat facing its nation. Gen Petraeus declined to comment about Israel's military capabilities, according to CNN ...

Telegraph  10 Jan 2010

Israel

The Obama administration has said that a Times report revealing that Iran has been secretly working on a trigger for a nuclear bomb urgently underscored the case for tough new sanctions against Tehran.

Referring to today's report, which showed that Iran has been working on testing a key final component of a nuclear bomb, a senior US official said: “Now that work may have been done on a trigger mechanism, this certainly gives urgency, in the absence of any meaningful response from Tehran…in terms of additional pressure on sanctions.”

The official added: “The revelations that work has been done [on a nuclear trigger] does add a sense of urgency and these revelations certainly don’t hurt.”

The reaction from the Administration in Washington comes as the US begins a push to get China and Russia to back a tough new set of sanctions against Iran after a year in which Tehran has snubbed President Obama’s overtures to open a diplomatic dialogue over its nuclear programme ...

Calls for a united front came as China backed out of a crucial meeting of the six powers involved in negotiations with Tehran, and Israel used increasingly aggressive rhetoric over the threat from Iran.

Making clear that Israel reserves the right to launch a military strike on Iranian nuclear facilities, Ehud Barak, the Israeli Defence Minister, warned “all players not to remove any options from the table,” adding: “We do not remove it.”

Mr Barak added: “There is a need for tough sanctions, something that is well and coherently coordinated to include Americans, the EU, the Chinese, the Russians [and] the Indians.” ...

Times  14 Dec 2009

Netanyahu has said often enough that he will never accept an Iranian nuclear bomb. He doesn't believe Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad when he insists that Iran's nuclear program is intended solely for civilian purposes. But he does take Ahmadinejad -- a notorious Holocaust denier -- at his word when he repeatedly threatens to wipe out Israel.

Netanyahu draws parallels between Europe's appeasement of Hitler and the current situation. "It's 1938, and Iran is Germany," he says. This time, however, says Netanyahu, the Jews will not allow themselves to be the "sacrificial lamb."

But even politicians who normally take a less extreme view, like Deputy Prime Minister Dan Meridor, Israel's minister of intelligence and atomic energy, are now realizing that the situation is coming to a head. A narrow majority of the Israeli population currently favors bombing the Iranian nuclear facilities, while 11 percent would consider leaving Israel if Tehran acquires nuclear weapons.

Meridor says that his counterparts in the US government are reporting a sharp increase in the level of concern among Iran's moderate Arab neighbors. "Ninety percent of the conversations between the United States and countries like Egypt and Saudi Arabia now revolve around Iran, while 10 percent relate to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict," he says ...

Der Spiegel  02 December 2009

Europe Reluctant to Pledge More troops

The United States department of defence has confirmed that it is rushing into production the world's largest ever bomb, one designed specifically to destroy underground targets.

The Massive Ordnance Penetrator (MOP) weighs just short of fifteen tonnes, more than 80% of which is made up of a massively hardened ferro-cobalt alloy casing.

When dropped from high altitude, the bomb will drive through earth and concrete before two-and-a-half tonnes of explosive are detonated to destroy the target ...

The new weapon, more than ten times as powerful as the current BLU-109 bomb, is planned principally to be delivered from high altitude by the stealth B-2 strategic bomber ... there are clear dangers in the arrival of a weapon of this size and destructive power, not least if it proves difficult or impossible to negotiate a settlement with Iran.

The ambitions and unpredictability of the Mahmoud Ahmadinejad regime, and a regional environment where Israel's concerns and tensions with Hizbollah have ever-present combustible potential, make such deadlock a real possibility.

In the event of continuing deadlock, there would be very heavy pressure on Obama from rightwing sources to take military action - perhaps in the approach to the mid-sessional Senate elections in November 2010.

In those circumstances, the United States air force would be only too willing to utilise the new capabilities in its arsenal - including the Massive Ordnance Penetrator. The very existence of this weapon would most certainly add to the pressure on the president.

openDemocracy  22 October 2009

US 'bunker buster' bomb to be ready soon

Iran, America, Israel: the nuclear gamble

With memories of the 1979 revolution - in which the US lost a friend when the Shah was deposed - still fresh and hurting, Iran has come back into the frame in its role as a threat to the West. Well, Israel actually. With a holocaust denier running the country, Iran doesn't do tact and diplomacy, but underneath the rhetoric there are a number of questions hanging over the new coalition targeting Tehran. Should the West succeed in detaching Russia from supporting Iran, then it will be a matter of time before there is a 'popular' uprising which will end the threat Israel. If not, then expect the 'War on Terror' to open a new front.

Foreign Secretary David Miliband has said "no sane person" would look to attack Iran over its nuclear program "without real concern".

Interviewed on the BBC, he said the UK was "100% committed" to finding a diplomatic solution.

But Mr Miliband refused to rule out military action altogether, declining to say whether it was "inconceivable" ...

Israel's foreign minister Avigdor Lieberman has called for an "unequivocal" response from Western leaders.

"The revelations of this second nuclear enrichment site in Iran prove beyond any doubt that this country wants to equip itself with nuclear weapons", he told Israeli public radio ...

BBC World Affairs correspondent Paul Reynolds:

Iranian ambitions for this site are not known. It could be that they wanted a back-up in case their main plant at Natanz was attacked.

But another fear is that they intended to enrich uranium more highly at the secret plant, to a level suitable for a nuclear explosion.

The discovery will strengthen the demands by the US and its allies for further sanctions to be imposed on Iran unless it suspends all enrichment, as required by the Security Council ...

BBC NEWS  26 September 2009

Iran ducks out of nuclear confrontation

Iran defiant over secret nuclear facility

Iran test-fires short-range missiles

Miliband refuses to rule out military action

U.S. to Demand Inspection of New Iran Plant ‘Within Weeks’

Venezuela Denies Iran Is Helping It

Gates in plea to Israel for 'patience' over Iran

The lurch into recession a year ago wasn’t exclusively down to the collapse of Lehman Brothers and the wider financial crisis. In my view, it was always as much about the spike in oil prices. Shocked by prices at the pumps, American consumers en masse decided to stop spending.

The recovery would be shattered by a further oil price shock of this sort. The effect would be similar to, if not worse than, the Arab oil embargo of 1973. Claims by G20 leaders that thanks to decisive and unprecedented policy action the world has been saved from a second Great Depression would go up in smoke.

Worse, there’s nothing left in the fiscal and monetary cannon to deal with any further upsets. It’s already been all used up.

Telegraph  25 September 2009

Iran defiant amid new nuclear row

World reaction to Iran's nuclear sites

Iran's nuclear plant admission brings sanctions showdown nearer

Revelation may galvanise Security Council

Iran's second nuclear plant 'a vindication for Israel'

Iran: Time to come clean

... an Iranian gas executive told Reuters that international sanctions will not prevent Iran expanding gas production by more than 60 percent in the next five years but they are adding as much as 10-20 percent to project costs.

Iran, with the world’s second biggest gas reserves, plans to boost output to 1 billion cubic meters per day by 2014 from about 600 million cubic meters per day now, National Iranian Gas Company (NIGC) Managing Director Azizollah Ramazani said.

“We need more than $10 billion of investment for each year for reaching that huge capacity of production,“ he said on Saturday in the Tehran offices of NIGC, the state firm that handles the domestic gas industry.

Another firm handles exports.

He said 40 percent of funds were expected to come from foreign financing or investment, adding there was particular interest from Middle Eastern and Chinese firms.

Ramazani said Iran had in the past focused on meeting surging domestic demand, which he said was partly spurred on by subsidies that encouraged inefficient use in homes, industry and power plants.

But he said attention was turning to exports.

“In recent years, the country decided to diversify consumption of gas both for domestic use and also for export,“ the news agency quoted him as saying.

Iran Daily 09 February 2009

Barack Obama, the new US president, will engage in "tough and direct" diplomacy with Iran "without preconditions", the White House has said.

The Obama administration said in a website statement on Wednesday that it aimed to use "the power of American diplomacy" over what it called "Iran's illicit nuclear programme, support for terrorism, and threats towards Israel".

"Seeking this kind of comprehensive settlement with Iran is our best way to make progress," the statement said.

It added that should Iran abandon its nuclear programme the US would offer incentives such as membership in the World Trade Organisation (WTO), economic investment and moves towards normal diplomatic relations.

However, the statement warned that should Iran continue its "troubling" behaviour, the US would step up efforts to further isolate Iran economically and politically.

Western powers have accused Iran of seeking to obtain nuclear weapons but Iran insists its nuclear programme is solely for peaceful energy purposes.

Under George Bush, the former US president, Washington refused to engage in direct negotiations with Iran unless it first stopped enriching uranium, and also led efforts to push for increased economic sanctions against Iran.

Hillary Clinton, the new US secretary of state, faced criticism from Iran after she said during her failed campaign to be president that the US would "totally obliterate" Iran if it attacked Israel.

Al Jazeera 22 January 2009

Barack Obama's BlackBerry

Multinational companies are coming under increasing pressure from the US to stop doing business with Iran because of its nuclear programme.

European operators are facing threats from Washington that they could jeopardise their US interests by continuing to deal with Tehran, with increasing evidence that European governments, mainly France, Germany and Britain, are supporting the US campaign.

It emerged last night that Siemens, one of the world's largest engineering groups and based in Germany, has pulled out of all new business dealings with Iran after pressure from the US and German governments.

This follows the decision by Germany's three biggest banks, Deutsche, Commerzbank, and Dresdner, to quit Iran after a warning from US vice-president Dick Cheney that if firms remain in Tehran, they are going to have problems doing business in the US. ...

The Guardian 09 November 2007

A plan by the Bush administration to launch surgical strikes on Iran's Revolutionary Guard Corps has won the support of Gordon Brown, according to a US report, although a presidential "execute order" required for such an operation has yet to be issued.

The report in The New Yorker magazine by the journalist Seymour Hersh states that the White House has concluded that many of its problems in Iraq are the responsibility of Tehran. But rather than conduct an unpopular all-out assault on Iran's nuclear facilities, the US is planning limited air strikes, arguing that they are needed to defend soldiers in Iraq.

The article stated that, "The bombing plan has had its most positive reception from ... Gordon Brown", but this was denied yesterday by some with close ties to the US military.

"It is quite the opposite," said Phillip Giraldi a former CIA counterterrorism officer. "In fact Robert Gates [the US Defence Secretary] was rebuffed during his recent visit to London when the idea was floated.

"Because British mine-sweepers based in the Gulf of Hormuz will be essential to any US action against Iran, US war planners need to have Britain on board," he said. "So far that is not forthcoming." ...

The Independent 02 October 2007

John Bolton, who still has close links to the Bush administration, told The Daily Telegraph that the European Union had to "get more serious" about Iran and recognise that its diplomatic attempts to halt Iran's enrichment programme had failed.

Iran has "clearly mastered the enrichment technology now...they're not stopping, they're making progress and our time is limited", he said. Economic sanctions "with pain" had to be the next step, followed by attempting to overthrow the theocratic regime and, ultimately, military action to destroy nuclear sites. ...

The experts found that Iran's scientists were operating 1,312 centrifuges, the machines used to enrich uranium. If Iran can install 3,000, it will need about one year to produce enough weapons grade uranium for one nuclear bomb.

advertisementExperts had judged that Iran would need perhaps two years to master the technical feat of enriching uranium using centrifuges - and then another two years to produce enough material to build a weapon.

But the IAEA found that Iran has already managed to enrich uranium to the four per cent purity needed for power stations. Weapons-grade uranium must reach a threshold of 84 per cent purity. ...

Telegraph.co.uk 16 May 2007

Blair and Bush are, in their different ways, like the G-men in the early days of the FBI. They love to have a public enemy number one. Sometimes the top slot has been taken by al-Qaeda, sometimes Hezbollah, Hamas or the Iraqi militia leader Moqtada al Sadr. And now they have the ramshackle regime of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to take on.

To reinforce the sense of growing danger from Tehran, Bush has asked his new Defence Secretary, Robert Gates, to dispatch a second aircraft carrier group to the Gulf. This is needed to counter the threat of Iran mining the Straits of Hormuz in response to UN sanctions. To help out, the Royal Navy is sending two more minesweepers to join the international force there. "And yet," warned Blair, in best parsonical finger-wagging mode in Dubai, "a large part of world opinion is frankly almost indifferent. It would be bizarre if it weren't so deadly serious." ...

If they believe they are acting in support of democracy, the Bush-Blair axis is showing pretty bad timing in turning up the rhetoric against Tehran.

In local elections this month, voters in Iran have turned away from Ahmadinejad. They have voted for moderate reformers led by the former president, Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, for places on the council of guidance, and not for the faction of Ayatollah Yazdi, the president's main backer in the clergy. Moreover, students on the campuses are, at last, stirring and have been demonstrating actively against the autocratic ways of the current regime.

The First Post 22 December 2006

Much of the intelligence on Iran's nuclear facilities provided to UN inspectors by American spy agencies has turned out to be unfounded, according to diplomatic sources in Vienna.

The claims, reminiscent of the intelligence fiasco surrounding the Iraq war, coincided with a sharp increase in international tension as the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) reported that Iran was defying a UN security council ultimatum to freeze its nuclear programme. ...

The Guardian

According to retired Colonel Walter Lang, senior defense intelligence officer for the United States Defense Intelligence Agency at the time, "the use of gas on the battlefield by the Iraqis was not a matter of deep strategic concern" to Reagan and his aides, because they "were desperate to make sure that Iraq did not lose."

He claimed that the Defense Intelligence Agency "would have never accepted the use of chemical weapons against civilians, but the use against military objectives was seen as inevitable in the Iraqi struggle for survival", however, despite this allegation, Reagan’s administration did not stop aiding Iraq after receiving reports affirming the use of poison gas on Kurdish civilians.

U.N. inspectors investigating Iran's nuclear program angrily complained to the Bush administration and to a Republican congressman yesterday about a recent House committee report on Iran's capabilities, calling parts of the document "outrageous and dishonest" and offering evidence to refute its central claims.

Officials of the United Nations' International Atomic Energy Agency said in a letter that the report contained some "erroneous, misleading and unsubstantiated statements." The letter, signed by a senior director at the agency, was addressed to Rep. Peter Hoekstra (R-Mich.), chairman of the House intelligence committee, which issued the report. A copy was hand-delivered to Gregory L. Schulte, the U.S. ambassador to the IAEA in Vienna.

The IAEA openly clashed with the Bush administration on pre-war assessments of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Relations all but collapsed when the agency revealed that the White House had based some allegations about an Iraqi nuclear program on forged documents ...

Washington Post 14 September 2006