Iran Thread

[kuronosan]

Are you American? Or only sometimes.

Sometimes.

Stop trolling.

[Elvis]

Stop trolling.

Stop bumping the thread with useless posts in reply to something that was said 2 days ago.

[Ragnus]

http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/...80D0DO20120114

(Reuters) - Iranian state television said on Saturday Tehran had evidence Washington was behind the latest assassination of one of its nuclear scientists.

In the fifth attack of its kind in two years, a magnetic bomb was attached to the door of 32-year-old Mostafa Ahmadi-Roshan's car during the Wednesday morning rush-hour in the capital. His driver was also killed.

The United States has denied involvement in the killing and condemned it. Israel has declined to comment.

"We have reliable documents and evidence that this terrorist act was planned, guided and supported by the CIA," the Iranian foreign ministry said in a letter handed to the Swiss ambassador in Tehran, state TV reported.(Reuters) - Iranian state television said on Saturday Tehran had evidence Washington was behind the latest assassination of one of its nuclear scientists.

In the fifth attack of its kind in two years, a magnetic bomb was attached to the door of 32-year-old Mostafa Ahmadi-Roshan's car during the Wednesday morning rush-hour in the capital. His driver was also killed.

The United States has denied involvement in the killing and condemned it. Israel has declined to comment.

"We have reliable documents and evidence that this terrorist act was planned, guided and supported by the CIA," the Iranian foreign ministry said in a letter handed to the Swiss ambassador in Tehran, state TV reported.

"The documents clearly show that this terrorist act was carried out with the direct involvement of CIA-linked agents."

The Swiss Embassy has represented U.S. interests in Iran since Tehran and Washington cut diplomatic ties shortly after the 1979 Islamic revolution.

State TV said a "letter of condemnation" had also been sent to the British government, saying the killing of Iranian nuclear scientists had "started exactly after the British official John Sawers declared the beginning of intelligence operations against Iran."

In 2010, chief of the British Secret Intelligence Service Sawers said one of the agency's roles was to investigate efforts by states to build nuclear weapons in violation of their international legal obligations and identify ways to slow down their access to vital materials and technology.

Tehran has urged the U.N. Security Council and Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon to condemn the latest killing, which Tehran says is aimed at undermining its nuclear work, which the West and Israel say is aimed at building bombs. Tehran says its nuclear program is purely civilian.

Tension has mounted between Iran and the West as the United States and European Union prepare measures aimed at imposing sanctions on the Iran's oil exports, its economic lifeblood.

The United States and Israel have not ruled out military action if diplomacy fails to resolve the nuclear dispute.

"The documents clearly show that this terrorist act was carried out with the direct involvement of CIA-linked agents."

The Swiss Embassy has represented U.S. interests in Iran since Tehran and Washington cut diplomatic ties shortly after the 1979 Islamic revolution.

State TV said a "letter of condemnation" had also been sent to the British government, saying the killing of Iranian nuclear scientists had "started exactly after the British official John Sawers declared the beginning of intelligence operations against Iran."

In 2010, chief of the British Secret Intelligence Service Sawers said one of the agency's roles was to investigate efforts by states to build nuclear weapons in violation of their international legal obligations and identify ways to slow down their access to vital materials and technology.

Tehran has urged the U.N. Security Council and Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon to condemn the latest killing, which Tehran says is aimed at undermining its nuclear work, which the West and Israel say is aimed at building bombs. Tehran says its nuclear program is purely civilian.

Tension has mounted between Iran and the West as the United States and European Union prepare measures aimed at imposing sanctions on the Iran's oil exports, its economic lifeblood.

The United States and Israel have not ruled out military action if diplomacy fails to resolve the nuclear dispute.

The US government had better get going on releasing those docs. Iran is adding fuel to the fire.

[djzombie]

http://rt.com/politics/syria-iran-nato-rogozin-749/

“Iran is our close neighbor, just south of the Caucasus. Should anything happen to Iran, should Iran get drawn into any political or military hardships, this will be a direct threat to our national security,” stressed Rogozin.

[Outlaw]

The EU has banned the import of Iranian crude oil and frozen it's assets.

http://edition.cnn.com/2012/01/23/wo...html?hpt=hp_t1

[Ragnus]

And so it begins.

[djzombie]

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/46097912.../#.Tx1jjW_wtvY

A member of Iran's influential national security committee in parliament, Mohammad Ismail Kowsari, said Monday that the strait "would definitely be closed if the sale of Iranian oil is violated in any way." He went on warn the U.S. against any "military adventurism."

Another senior lawmaker, Heshmatollah Falahatpisheh, said Iran has the right to shutter Hormuz in retaliation for oil sanctions and that the closure was increasingly probable, according to the semiofficial Mehr news agency.

"In case of threat, the closure of the Strait of Hormuz is one of Iran's rights," Falahatpisheh said. "So far, Iran has not used this privilege."

The lawmakers' comments do not directly reflect the views of Iran's ruling clerics, but they echo similar statements made earlier this month by military commanders with close ties to the theocracy.

At the same time, however, Iran has tried to ease tensions by offering to reopen nuclear talks with the U.S. and other world powers after a one-year gap, and backing off warnings about U.S. naval operations in the Gulf — where the U.S. Navy 5th Fleet has a base in Bahrain.

Another link - though I'm not as familiar with the source.

http://www.businessinsider.com/iran-...l-right-2012-1

[Andalusian girls]

Posturing, they know as well as we do what would happen if their leaky scows attempted to shut the strait. We just sent a Nimitz-class aircraft carrier flanked by French and British warships through Hormuz to hammer home the point.

They will grow increasingly desperate as the sanctions pile up though, especially with the upcoming elections. The 2009 demonstrations showed all the fault lines in their theocratic utopia and I wonder if the clerical establishment has the acumen to hold the society together as the pressure continues to mount. They may get reckless enough to damn the inevitable consequences.

[Elvis]

Posturing, they know as well as we do what would happen if their leaky scows attempted to shut the strait. We just sent a Nimitz-class aircraft carrier flanked by French and British warships through Hormuz to hammer home the point.

They will grow increasingly desperate as the sanctions pile up though, especially with the upcoming elections. The 2009 demonstrations showed all the fault lines in their theocratic utopia and I wonder if the clerical establishment has the acumen to hold the society together as the pressure continues to mount. They may get reckless enough to damn the inevitable consequences.

If we weren't applying sanctions, warring with countries surrounding iran, supporting a racist, apartheid state that is entering the 45th year of the longest occupation, then iran's societal 'breakdown' would look very different.

Their theocratic regime is concerned with its own survival but its pretty ignorant to imply this meltdown is independent of US strategic regional interest playing out for the past decade (at the least).

As far as being desperate goes, i wouldnt count on it.

Have you (or anyone else on BG) learned from the Iraq sanctions? Much much more harsh and guess what? They did not work to compel Saddam to buckle. What they did do is cripple the society and make invasion that much easier.

Joy Gordon's book, Invisible War, concludes that the sanctions were ineffective and tied up in extensive red tape and beuracratic blah blah. Brb in class....

BACK

Yea, and the sanctions on Iraq were also for security reasons. I think the difference is that the case against Iraq was much weaker and much more ridiculous. Our sanctions against Iraq were implemented to completely disable Iraq's *capacity* to make WMDs.

Excerpt from Gordon's book, which you can find on the book's website:

For thirteen years the United States unilaterally prevented Iraq from importing nearly everything related to electricity, telecommunications, and transportation, blocked much of what was needed for agriculture and housing construction, and even prohibited some equipment and materials necessary for health care and food preparation.

Ironically, where the United States accused the Iraqi government of acting with incomprehensible perversity, such as failing to order needed medicines, it turns out that in many cases it was the U.S. positions that were incomprehensible and perverse, such as objecting to Iraq’s import of antibiotics and child vaccines.

Throughout the sanctions regime, U.S. practices were extreme and harsh, and often unilateral, going well beyond the mandate of the Security Council’s resolutions, and well beyond the will of the rest of the Council members. The Security Council resolutions required the elimination of Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction (WMD). However, the goal of the United States was the elimination of Iraq’s capacity to produce WMD. While the production of nuclear weapons requires a large and sophisticated production facility, the production of biological and chemical weapons, or at least some of their components, can take place in nothing more than a college chemistry lab or in manufacturing facilities for things like fertilizers and pesticides. To eliminate a nation’s capacity to produce biological and chemical weapons means eliminating all science education above the secondary school level, eliminating the capacity to produce yogurt and cheese, or, as one U.S. official would have it, eliminating eggs, because egg yolks could possibly be used as a medium in which to grow viruses, which in turn could possibly be used for biological weapons.

Any industrialized nation relies continually on manufacturing processes that could possibly be converted to produce some aspect of a biological or chemical weapon. To eliminate this capacity, as opposed to the weapons themselves, would literally require reducing a nation to the most primitive possible condition and keeping it in those circumstances in perpetuity. That was not at all the policy adopted by the Security Council, which required only that Iraq be subject to partial disarmament and monitoring, but it was the policy of the United States.

The deliberate and systematic nature of the U.S. policy was evident above all in the redundancy. The water treatment system was compromised first by the lack of equipment and chemicals for water purification; but if Iraq had somehow been able to produce or smuggle those, the water system would then have been compromised by the lack of electrical power, because electrical generators and related equipment had been bombed, and because the replacement equipment was blocked by the United States. If Iraq had been somehow able to generate sufficient electricity, then the clean water could not have been distributed because the bombings had caused so much breakage in the water pipes, and the United States then blocked the importation of water pipes. If Iraq had somehow been able to smuggle or manufacture water pipes, it did not have the bulldozers or cranes necessary to install them because those were blocked as well. The same was true in every area: agricultural production, manufacturing of basic goods, transportation, communication systems, education, and medical care. It was this terrible redundancy that ensured that nothing the Iraqi government did, that no amount of ingenuity or adaptation or targeting of resources, could have restored conditions fit to sustain human life.


From: Invisible War : Excerpt
Digitally reproduced by permission of the publisher from Invisible War: The United States and the Iraq Sanctions by Joy Gordon, Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, Copyright (c) 2010 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College.

I read the book a couple years ago. It got so fucking redundant after 200 pages or so but that was because our policy of sanctions was so fucking redundantly ridiculous. Boycotting baby bottles (or something along those lines) because they could contribute to the infrastructure which would itself then contribute to blah blah (slippery slope) WMDs.

[Andalusian girls]

If we weren't applying sanctions, warring with countries surrounding iran, supporting a racist, apartheid state that is entering the 45th year of the longest occupation, then iran's societal 'breakdown' would look very different.

Their theocratic regime is concerned with its own survival but its pretty ignorant to imply this meltdown is independent of US strategic regional interest playing out for the past decade (at the least).

i don't follow, are you stating Iran is seeking nuclear armaments and playing this game of brinkmanship in response to a perceived threat from the United States? or are you saying our actions are helping facilitate domestic opposition against the regime ? hindering it?

the former is self-evident, they are terrified of us and for good reason, the latter i wonder about sometimes; if we weren't such good tools for their propagandists would they survive so well.

As far as being desperate goes, i wouldnt count on it.

Have you (or anyone else on BG) learned from the Iraq sanctions? Much much more harsh and guess what? They did not work to compel Saddam to buckle. What they did do is cripple the society and make invasion that much easier.

yes and the sanctions of World War 1 caused Imperial Germany's collapse when their armies were still in the field, what of it? context is all that matters, and in this one given the mass unemployment of Iran's youth, the fact that so much of the economy is invested in petroleum, and the rage of the populist protests we saw a few years ago any economic instability, and sanctioning their oil would engender much, endangers the current regime. this appears to be the goal of the Obama administration as military options appear to be off the table for the nonce.

i doubt very much the sanctions will convince the regime to stop pursuing nuclear technology, but i do not believe that is the goal. this regime will seek, and acquire, them regardless of what we do (including air sorties). if it survives they get the bomb, if it collapses they do not. simple equation.

[Elvis]

i don't follow, are you stating Iran is seeking nuclear armaments and playing this game of brinkmanship in response to a perceived threat from the United States? or are you saying our actions are helping facilitate domestic opposition against the regime ? hindering it?

the former is self-evident, they are terrified of us and for good reason, the latter i wonder about sometimes; if we weren't such good tools for their propagandists would they survive so well.

Do I have to pick one? Is it one or the other? It's everything. Iran is run by a theocratic Islamist regime and wants (like any other smart country in the region) nuclear weapons. I find it extremely cynical of American intelligentsia to imply that there is something sinister in Iran's 'nuclear ambitions'.

The last sentence you wrote disassociates the blame for our part in the mess by saying it's 'useful' for propagandists.

How much spin can you apply to 'target killings' (assassination, terrorism)?

Your last sentence reminds me of the line, 'blah blah endangers our troops' (video of soldier doing stupid shit/pictures/documents leaked/etc.).

yes and the sanctions of World War 1 caused Imperial Germany's collapse when their armies were still in the field, what of it? context is all that matters, and in this one given the mass unemployment of Iran's youth, the fact that so much of the economy is invested in petroleum, and the rage of the populist protests we saw a few years ago any economic instability, and sanctioning their oil would engender much, endangers the current regime. this appears to be the goal of the Obama administration as military options appear to be off the table for the nonce.

i doubt very much the sanctions will convince the regime to stop pursuing nuclear technology, but i do not believe that is the goal. this regime will seek, and acquire, them regardless of what we do (including air sorties). if it survives they get the bomb, if it collapses they do not. simple equation.

Yes, context does matter. I mentioned Iraq and the Iraq sanctions which were spear-headed by the United States to stop the 'capacity' for Iraq to create WMDs.

I don't have to elaborate on the similarities between Iraq and Iran. It's not identical. It's close enough that I can talk about the Iraq sanctions though.

We're living in 2012, not the 1910s-1920s.

On a side-note, what happened to Germany was not at all out of the ordinary for the time period. Not to say it wasn't harsh. That is a fact. In 1871, after Germany had won the Franco-Prussian War, it annexed Alsace-Lorraine (among other things + it's own form of reparations). There's at least a hundred years of 'context' leading up to WW1's aftermath that you seem to miss.

My comparison makes more sense, has context provided that is so in-your-face and OBVIOUS, plus is contemporary.

Another excerpt (and maybe tomorrow, I'll make one final post on this subject so it doesn't derail, filled w/ the documentation because the book is meticulously cited - as much as it could be):

U.S. officials did not act with the deliberate cruelty that is envisioned by international human rights law. It was not a hatred of Iraqis that led U.S. officials to act as they did; it was the decision that the Iraqis would bear the cost of the United States’ intractable political dilemma. This particular catastrophe did not require actual hatred; it required only the capacity of U.S. officials to believe their own rationales, however implausible they might have been, and that there be no venue in which to challenge their reasoning as casuistic and disingenuous. Madeline Albright’s memorable gaffe in response to the question “500,000 children— is it worth it?”— which she regretted for years— was always and only a public relations error. It made no difference that she and other State Department officials, from that point on, vigorously insisted that they cared deeply about Iraqi children. The more accurate answer, regardless of the public rhetoric, was: of course it was worth it. Blocking glue, water pipes, water tankers, thermos fl asks, ambulance radios, irrigation equipment— all of this was worth it because the negligible imaginary possibility that these could be turned to nefarious purposes always outweighed the collapse of the Iraqi health system, Iraq’s frantic efforts to increase agricultural production, the disappearance of Iraq’s middle class, the hundreds of thousands of tons of untreated sewage that went daily into Iraq’s rivers.

From: Invisible War : Excerpt
Digitally reproduced by permission of the publisher from Invisible War: The United States and the Iraq Sanctions by Joy Gordon, Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, Copyright (c) 2010 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College.

[Andalusian girls]

Do I have to pick one? Is it one or the other? It's everything. Iran is run by a theocratic Islamist regime and wants (like any other smart country in the region) nuclear weapons. I find it extremely cynical of American intelligentsia to imply that there is something sinister in Iran's 'nuclear ambitions'.

it is not, but your thought streams are so erratic they are difficult to follow.

and there is something sinister about any nation's acquisition of nuclear weapons, nonetheless a theocratic tyranny that plays at nihilism. fusion bombs have the potential to eradicate humanity as we know it, any proliferation of them should be viewed with distrust and aggression.

The last sentence you wrote disassociates the blame for our part in the mess by saying it's 'useful' for propagandists.

no, it does not. not even a little bit. how could you possibly even come to that conclusion?

How much spin can you apply to 'target killings' (assassination, terrorism)?

Your last sentence reminds me of the line, 'blah blah endangers our troops' (video of soldier doing stupid shit/pictures/documents leaked/etc.).

what in the name of God are you talking about

i was pondering aloud the extent to which our actions in the Middle East have served to prop up regimes which position themselves as our counterbalance

Yes, context does matter. I mentioned Iraq and the Iraq sanctions which were spear-headed by the United States to stop the 'capacity' for Iraq to create WMDs.

I don't have to elaborate on the similarities between Iraq and Iran. It's not identical. It's close enough that I can talk about the Iraq sanctions though.

We're living in 2012, not the 1910s-1920s.

On a side-note, what happened to Germany was not at all out of the ordinary for the time period. Not to say it wasn't harsh. That is a fact. In 1871, after Germany had won the Franco-Prussian War, it annexed Alsace-Lorraine (among other things + it's own form of reparations). There's at least a hundred years of 'context' leading up to WW1's aftermath that you seem to miss.

My comparison makes more sense, has context provided that is so in-your-face and OBVIOUS, plus is contemporary.

yes clearly i missed the part Alsace-Lorraine's annexation played in World War 1 in my half-sentence that was solely designed to point out all sanctioning efforts are not created equal

how old are you? are you on medication? have you recently contracted rabies? why am i attempting to talk to you

[Elvis]

and there is something sinister about any nation's acquisition of nuclear weapons, nonetheless a theocratic tyranny that plays at nihilism. fusion bombs have the potential to eradicate humanity as we know it, any proliferation of them should be viewed with distrust and aggression.

Good. Make a thread about American nukes. Oh and we go to war a lot. Invade a lot. Support terrorist groups. Support a colonial-settler State in the 21st century. BLAH BLAH - yet, you're isolating Iran for 'distrust' of it's intentions (what the fuck do you think they're going to do, fire off the first one they get?) because of their Islamism.

what in the name of God are you talking about

i was pondering aloud the extent to which our actions in the Middle East have served to prop up regimes which position themselves as our counterbalance

Yes, I know what you said. I'm saying, how much extra work do propagandists have to do, you know, PROPAGANDIZING, when Iranian scientists are being blown to smithereens and we are applying sanctions.

How much work do these propagandists really have to do? They only have to read the Washington Post. Jennifer Rubin. They only have to read the Jerusalem Post. Caroline Glick. They only need to pay attention to American politicians working to remove MEK from the US terrorist list.

So let me repeat myself, since you lack reading comprehension:

You are disassociating the US blame in this mess by characterizing our follies as 'useful' to propagandists. You're not addressing the follies themselves and why no one needs to SPIN them into anti-American fervor when a natural reaction to US actions from the Iranian perspective, or the Iraqi perspective, etc. IS to be anti-American. DERRRR

yes clearly i missed the part Alsace-Lorraine's annexation played in World War 1 in my half-sentence that was solely designed to point out all sanctioning efforts are not created equal

how old are you? are you on medication? have you recently contracted rabies? why am i attempting to talk to you

Are you dense? You wrote some spittle about context. I was gracious enough to even include my side-note - which by the fucking way, is known as the TREATY OF VERSAILLES. How can you not see that? How old are you? Are YOU on medication? Have you recently contracted rabies?

Is the fact that this treaty bares the same name, and resulted in a similar collapse of a nation not fucking obvious to you (or anyone else reading)? That is context.

All of this was generous of me.

There is more profundity and relevance and fucking logistical similarities between the Iraq sanctions and now, in the present, the Iran sanctions (and what they may become).

BUT LETS TALK ABOUT WW1 AND GERMANY. NO WAIT, HOW ABOUT SLAVERY? THAT WAS REAL BAD

[Andalusian girls]

an all capitalized and elongated derr, thanks for the clarification

[djzombie]

http://www.israelnationalnews.com/Ne...5#.TxvvOG_y92C

Israeli officials told visiting USS Chief Joint of Staffs Martin Dempsey that it would give President Barack Obama no more than 12 hours notice if and when it attacks Iran, The London Times reported Sunday.

The Netanyahu government also will not coordinate with the United States an attack on the Islamic Republic, according to the report, the latest in a number of suposed scenarios concerning cooperation or lack of it between Jerusalem and Washington.

It is left to speculation whether the rumors are based on facts or are leaked by officials to mask the possibility of secret military coordination.

The London Times said its sources explained that that Israel fears that President Obama would try to torpedo an Israel attack if more notice were given because he is concerned that Iran will respond by blocking the Strait of Hormuz, sparking a rise in the price of oil that could cripple Western economies. If the attack were to occur in the next 10 months, it would put President Obama in a tight spot on the eve of his bid for re-election.

President Shimon Peres told Dempsey, "I am sure that in this fight [against Iran] we will emerge victorious. It is a fight that does not belong exclusively to the United States or Israel, but a global struggle to create a safe world for all peoples.”

[Churchill]

Call me a sociopath again, idc, but when Israel is wiped off the planet no tears will be shed

[Churchill]

As far as Iran, they aren't as big of pushovers as people would have you believe. Of all the countries/places/things people have thought we'd go to war with during my service, Iran was the only one that actually frightened me. It's one thing to go on missions in dirt farmer countries like Afghanistan and Iraq, and other similar places around the world. It's another to fight against standard armies, in a light infantry special operations unit, and face things like mortars, artillery, tanks, IFVs, etc. Sure, we'd have air support and all the usual type of shit at our back but at the end of the day eating mortars is the only thing that's ever scared me and fighting Iran is scary because they have them, can use them, and can inflict massive casualties with them.

[djzombie]

Found this earlier too but forgot to post it.

http://www.tehrantimes.com/politics/...orts-to-europe

TEHRAN - The Iranian parliament is discussing a plan calling for a halt to Iran’s oil exports to the European countries that voted for sanctions on Iran’s oil industry, MP Nasser Soudani has announced.

The European Union formally imposed an oil embargo on Iran and agreed to a freeze on the assets of the Central Bank of Iran on Monday, but existing contracts will be honored until July 1.

“A number of representatives of the Majlis and I are seeking to approve a plan according to which all European countries that made Iran the target of their sanctions will not be able to buy even one drop of oil from Iran and oil taps will be turned off to them so that they will not play with fire again,” Soudani, who is a member of the Majlis Energy Committee, told the Fars News Agency in an interview published on Wednesday.

“Europe will burn in the fire of Iran’s oil wells,” and sanctions will take their toll on European countries for three reasons, he said, noting, “The first reason is that a number of European countries have no other option besides buying Iran’s oil since the structure of their refineries is compatible with Iran’s oil, and it is difficult for them to replace Iran’s oil.”

“The second reason is that the embargo will cause an increase in oil prices, and the Europeans will be compelled to buy oil at higher prices,” Soudani stated.

He added, “The third reason is that the Europeans, due to their need for Iran’s oil, will be compelled to buy Iran’s oil indirectly and through intermediaries, and this will inflict more expenses on them.”

“European firms have no alternative but to enter into contracts with us since abandoning Iran’s oil would mean the extinguishing of the candles of their economic lives.”

In addition, MP Emad Hosseini told the Mehr News Agency on Wednesday that the plan may be discussed at an open session of the Majlis by January 29.

“If the plan is ratified, the government will have to stop selling oil to Europe before the implementation of the oil embargo on Iran by the EU,” added Hosseini, who is the rapporteur of the Majlis Energy Committee.

[Elvis]

http://www.israelnationalnews.com/Ne...5#.TxvvOG_y92C

You are quoting a settler-run news source.

Jerusalem is not part of Israel, yet in these articles the authors constantly substitute 'Jerusalem' for Israel in the same vein as the 'Washington' for the United States.

In spite of the fact that you apparently found yourself on a Jewish fundamentalist settler website, Dempsey has said all those things AND that attacking Iran would be preventing another Holocaust. Basically, he is saying Iran is another Nazi Germany because Iran keeps threatening to destroy Israel.

Same song and dance. Just like how Iran was close to a bomb for 10-15 years. There's always a story every year that Israel gave the US notice it's going to attack Iran.

[djzombie]

The link is there for all to see. Take it as you will. If you don't deem it as a worthy source that's fine, not for me to decide for you.

Also, I don't frequent these sites that I link so I know nothing about them or the source. I read these from another forum. Good luck finding an unbiased source of information, anywhere, about anything regarding current events.