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Commodity Online
Iran’s Crude Oil is once again targeted by the US as it spruces up to tighten its financial sanctions in a move to deter buyers of Iranian oil. China, has meanwhile threatened a third world war if the US does not stay away from Iran.
The US has been stepping up pressure after a report from the IAEA suggested that Iran may be developing nuclear weapons. Iran has rubbished the allegations by stating that the nuclear technology is being developed only for peaceful purposes. Oil is Iran’s main source of revenue and pumped in $56 billion in the first 7 months of 2011, as per data by the Energy Department. As such, sanction on buying of Oil will strain the Iranian economy, the US believes.
France has also stepped forward to suggest that the EU stop all crude oil imports from Iran. The EU is however split on a decision.
In spite of all the sanctions of the West, crude oil is an important commodity and it is impossible to think that Iran, the third largest Crude Oil exporter, will have a hard time in finding buyers for Oil. Asia, especially China and India have increased their imports from Iran. The Chinese customs expect Iran to be the second largest crude supplier to China in 2011.India, meanwhile, has routed payments through Turkey after finding it difficult to pay for Iran’s crude oil through Europe.
The aggression of the West has been met with strong words from both Russia and China, who have been warning of any attacks on Iran. A Chinese television reported China’s Major General Zhang Zhaozhong as saying that China will not hesitate to protect Iran even with a Third World War in order to safeguard its domestic political needs.
Russia has also voiced similar sentiments regarding Syria with President Dmitry Medvedev publicly stating that he has put the missile attack early warning system in combat mode and will not tolerate any US missile defence system in Europe.
China to protect Iran even with a Third World War?
New World Reporter
November 29, 2011On November 21st, America, UK and Canada announced more sanctions against Iran. France also proposed to adopt new sanctions to force Tehran to stop it’s nuclear project. On Nov 23rd, the spokesman of Chinese Communist Party (CCP)’s Foreign Ministry said in a regular press conference held in Beijing that China is opposed to unilateral sanctions against Iran. Scholars believe that, being isolated, China and Iran need mutual support. Meanwhile, the CCP government, with internal and external difficulties, may express an even tougher diplomatic “voice”.
“Reuters” reported on Nov 23rd: “The United States, UK and Canada have announced new sanctions against Iran in the areas of energy and finance. France proposed ‘unprecedented’ new sanctions, including freezing the assets of the Central Bank of Iran and suspending the purchase of Iran’s oil. Earlier, the “International Atomic Energy Agency” (IAEA) had issued a report that Iran may be secretly developing nuclear weapons. On Nov 23rd, the CCP’s Foreign Ministry expressed opposition to the imposition of unilateral sanctions against Iran. In this regard, Xia Ming, a political professor from City University of New York in America, believes that since the Cold War, the United States and Western society’s biggest challenges have been seen as being from China and Iran. They are both isolated by the United States and the West. Therefore, China’s policy is foreseeable. Xia Ming says: “China and Iran are facing strong Western challenges within politics, economy and culture. So these two countries basically have a kind of coordination on the international stage, to support each other. So we can see that China and Iran coordinate a lot, with a lot of cooperation in matters of energy, arms and so on.”
“Associated Press” also reported on Nov 23rd: “Since 2006, the United Nations have carried out 4 rounds of sanctions against Iran. But with export of energy, Iran has not been severely affected by the sanctions.” “AFP” said: “China supports Iran and purchases large quantities of oil from Iran. Meanwhile, China is Iran’s biggest trading partner. Their bilateral trade totals up to $ 30 billion.
“Voice of America” reported, according to Chinese customs’ data, this year (2011) Iran could become China’s second largest crude oil supplier. However, Iran disdains the new round of sanctions. Israel and Washington said in the event that other efforts were not effective, the possibility of military action would not be ruled out.
It’s puzzling to some that Major General Zhang Zhaozhong, a professor from the Chinese National Defense University, said China will not hesitate to protect Iran even with a third World War. Professor Zhaozhong said that not hesitating to fight a third world war would be entirely for domestic political needs. To some extent though, this would be completely ridiculous to encourage” Professor Xia Ming pointed out that the United States and Western societies may deal with Iran by a method of “Jasmine Revolution”, similar to what happened in Libya. From the perspective of the Libya model, NATO could not possibly involve itself in large-scale military action, and it would be impossible to start a new war. In fact, a senior European diplomat with anonymity in Tehran said that the Iranian government was actually very worried about a military strike. Analysts also say that ordinary people don’t worship their leaders so much any more. But Professor Xia Ming said that the CCP regime itself is facing a much bigger crisis than Iran. The CCP regime not only faces challenges from Southeast Asia, the South China Sea, South Asia countries and so on, but also faces the pressure from America for the RMB exchange rate, export, and human rights issues, as well as the pressure of domestic issues meanwhile.
Professor Xia Ming says : “China is facing pressure from America. Meanwhile, current domestic pressure is also very considerable. In particular, we can see in civil society, the challenge to the Chinese government and resistance forces are growing. Therefore, the Chinese government is indeed facing the arrival of a big power shift in the 18th session. So, China may express a tougher diplomatic voice. On the one hand, it is a reaction to pressure from America. On the other hand, it needs to meet the demand of domestic nationalist groups.”
Chinese Government Official: ‘US Threat To Pakistan Is Threat To China’
Chinese military stages massive wargame exercise near Pakistan in response to build-up of U.S. troops
Paul Joseph Watson & Yi Han
Infowars.com
Thursday, December 1, 2011The Chinese military has staged a massive wargame exercise near Pakistan in response to a build-up of U.S. troops in the region as a top Chinese government official warned that any threat to Pakistan would be taken as a direct threat to China.
Citing a report by China’s Central Television, Junshijia reports that an unnamed government official warned, “Any threat to Pakistan is a threat to China,” in response to increasing hostility directed towards Pakistan by both the US and NATO in the aftermath of a NATO bombing that killed 26 Pakistani soldierslast week.
Pakistan responded to the airstrike by sealing its border with Afghanistan, preventing supplies from reaching the US-occupied country.
According to the report, the United States is massing troops on Pakistan’s border in an act of aggression that China sees as a direct threat to its close alliance with the country. In response, China recently sent large numbers of Second Artillery PLA troops armed with sophisticated DF-21C and short-range DF-11A tactical missiles to China’s northwestern plateau near Pakistan for a huge military exercise designed to reflect China’s “attitude towards the US threat to Pakistan.”
The drill ran from the 14-27 of November and included Pakistani troops. It was also reported by numerous other Chinese news sources (1,2,3).
The report strongly emphasizes the Chinese position that its alliance with Pakistan represents a “brotherhood,” and that “China will never be in peace if Pakistan is lost.”
- A d v e r t i s e m e n t
“Militarily, China will be conducting massive and heavy equipment desert warfare in Pakistan on the 16th,” states the translated report. “America has always desired Pakistan, especially in recent years. As the U.S. war in Afghanistan deepens, and military actions against Iran’s determination become stronger, (the threat of ) confrontation with China increases, Pakistan is the place for America to gain military advantage strategically and geographically.”
As we reported earlier, while China’s official rhetoric in English language media regarding hostilities towards the likes of Pakistan and Iran has taken on a concerned tone, discussions taking place inside China itself are a great deal more bellicose.
In response to increased western hostility towards Iran, Chinese Major General Zhang Zhaozhong remarked that “China will not hesitate to protect Iran even with a third world war,” comments that have provoked much debate in China.
The subject of Iran is also discussed in the Chinese media report. A western-led military assault on Iran is strongly discouraged, a point China also hoped to stress by way of a show of force in its recent wargames. China’s ambassador to the UN has warned IAEA Director General Yukiya Amano not to create “unfounded” evidence to justify a military attack on Iran in the name of halting its controversial nuclear program.
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Paul Joseph Watson is the editor and writer for Prison Planet.com. He is the author of Order Out Of Chaos. Watson is also a regular fill-in host for The Alex Jones Show.
Chinese General Threatens “Third World War” To Protect Iran
US dispatches three more warships to Middle East
Paul Joseph Watson
Infowars.com
Thursday, December 1, 2011A military General from the Chinese National Defense University says that China should not hesitate to protect Iran, even if it means launching world war three, as more US warships are dispatched to the region amidst heightening tensions.
According to NDTV, a Chinese news station based outside the country, in regard to recent speculation that Iran would be the target of a US-Israeli military assault, Major General Zhang Zhaozhong commented that, “China will not hesitate to protect Iran even with a third world war,” remarks described as “puzzling to some”.
The news report also quotes Professor Xia Ming as paraphrasing Zhaozhong’s quote that, “not hesitating to fight a third world war would be entirely for domestic political needs.”
China has vehemently reaffirmed its alliance with Iran in recent weeks, most notably yesterday when it refused to criticize Iran for a raid on the British Embassy in Tehran launched by Iranian students earlier this week.
Both China and Russia have made it clear that they will veto any UN authorization of military action against Iran in the aftermath of claims that Iran is on the verge of developing a nuclear weapon.
“China has noted the tough reactions made by the relevant countries over this event and is concerned over the development of the situation,” Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Hong Lei told reporters today.
“We hope relevant countries will keep calm and exercise restraint and avoid taking emotional actions that may rachet up the confrontation.”
- A d v e r t i s e m e n t
Meanwhile, in a related development, three more US warships have been dispatched to join the USS John C. Stennis in the 5th fleet region.
With the Stennis, a Nimitz-class nuclear-powered supercarrier, already stationed just outside Iranian territorial waters, the USS Carl Vinson aircraft carrier has just been deployed from its home port to join the U.S. 5th Fleet AOR.
“In addition to the USS Carl Vinson’s departure, guided-missile cruiser USS Bunker Hill and guided-missile destroyer left in the morning, and the USS Halsey will depart at 2 p.m,” reports NBC SanDiego, adding that the ships are headed for the Middle East.
Fears of an imminent military assault on Syria were sparked when the USS George H.W. Bush left its usual theater of operations to position itself just off the Syrian coast, but the warship has now completed its mission and is sailing back to its home port in Norfolk Virginia.
View the latest naval update map courtesy of Stratfor.com below (click for enlargement).
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Paul Joseph Watson is the editor and writer for Prison Planet.com. He is the author of Order Out Of Chaos. Watson is also a regular fill-in host for The Alex Jones Show.
More Tunnels, Yes. More Chinese Nukes? Could Be
Posted by Matt in December 2nd, 2011 Subscribe to Daily UpdatesAs you might expect, the arms control community was up in arms about the new report from Phillip Karber, a Georgetown University professor showing that China could potentially have many more nuclear weapons than previous estimates. They were working pretty hard to find fault with it.
The most obvious fault – and one that has been widely noted – is Karber’s repetition of a fantastical estimate for the number of nuclear weapons in the PLA arsenal, which turns out to come from blogosphere speculation based on earlier misestimates that were long ago debunked.
The arms control community loves to point to Jeffery Lewis’ ArmsControlWonk.Com where Jeffery debunks estimates that include large numbers of Chinese nuclear weapons. Except the issue is more complicated than Jeffery lets on. In fact, a little digging by a commenter on ArmControlWonk.Com shows that China really could have in the neighborhood of 3,000 nuclear weapons. Of course, no one knows the real answer because China won’t tell us.
Take a look at the exchange between commenter Yale Simkin and Jeffery Lewis. Yale makes some pretty credible remarks that show us how China really could potentially have around 3,000 nuclear weapons.
Jeffery’s essay stated an “An accurate list” of Chinese fissile production facilities was at the NTI site. That page links to another NTI page of various expert estimates of actual production.
The range of HEU was 4 – 20 tons.
10 kilograms of HEU per boosted warhead yields a range of possible warheads of 400 to 2000.
The DOE estimate of 1.7 – 2.8 tons of plutonium, at 3 kg per boosted device yields 567 – 933.
This results in an outside number of +2900 potential warheads.
The above number assumes that plutonium is used separately from HEU to create more weapons. If the plutonium is used with HEU to create higher yielding bombs then fewer nuclear warheads can be created – 2,000 instead of 2,900.
Jeffery’s response:
… size of the stockpile is based on Pu production divided by slightly more than 3 kg per warhead.”
So, when I do stockpile estimates, I size the force to the number of Pu pits the Chinese could make.
I think I figured 3-5 kg of Pu spread across a 1.7-2.8 t stockpile for a total of 340-930 warheads.
If the Pu usage is more intense, on the order of 7 kg per primary (see De Geer for evidence that the Chinese might have more Pu per bomb), then, well, that number drops pretty low — to about 240-400.
Yale’s response:
Yale Simkin | May 18, 2009
De Geer’s numbers are based on pulling a quite small number from a great deal of noise. He also makes some big assumptions as to the elemental and isotopic composition of the primary, secondary blanket (and possible fissile sparkplug in the secondary – which he appears not to address), nor the possiblity of a failed tertiary stage with Pu sparkplug, nor fusion boosting.
That being said, he does make his point, which is not demonstrating the quantity of fissile in a Chinese nuke, rather it was showing that the H-Bomb explosion was a Teller-Ulam design rather than the Teller classical (or Sakharov layercake).
But what about the actual numbers he did derive. What are their utility in stockpile analysis?
De Geer calculated that the Chinese test left 3.09 +/- 1.01 g of primary Pu unburned per kiloton of fission. He then calculated the fission yield of the explosion was 2,500 +/- 200 kilotons.
From that you get a range of UNBURNED (not total) primary Pu of 4.784 Kgs to 11.07 kgs.
De Geer tightened the range to a likely probability of 5.1 kgs to 10.3 kgs.This is not the amount of Pu in the primary. A reasonable yield for the primary is, lets say, 25kt. At 17.3kt/kg of fissioned Pu, this adds about 1.4 kg of Pu. (The primary may have been more powerful, but I leave it at 25kt)
So, our range is now 6.2 to 12.5 kgs. (Fat Man was 6.3 kg)
There is also the very significant quantity of Pu burned by fusion neutrons even with a primary separate and shielded from the secondary.
The bottom line is that De Geer’s numbers are very high. His lowest numbers are possible – but very inefficient. His highest numbers are very weird. They are higher than the bare-sphere critical mass quantity for Pu239!
It would mean a extremely low-density core geometry and real quick and powerful assembly.
I dunno…
However…
Does any of this matter?The quantity of Pu used in a primary for a test of 4000 kilotons 33 years ago is not necessarily identicalto the current stockpile designs.
Again, none of this is relevant to the point I was trying to make in my post.
I was not claiming that China is using both HEU and Pu, nor that they are using them in efficient designs.My post was about what is their POTENTIAL capability? – the necessary starting point for considering China’s future stockpile.
To quote myself: While I don’t see any reason for China to have built more than a few hundred warheads, what COULD they build?
And: Again, I am not promoting the view that China has that many devices or that they are efficient in per weapon fissile requirements, but Zheng may not have been way off in what they CAN do.
While we may consider their intentions and needs, good policy requires that we must not lose sight of their capabilities. (See ACW discussions like here )
If China used both its HEU and Pu, and used it in high-tech efficient designs, then without any further fissile production, it is sitting on more than 2000 bombs worth of SNM – a fact of at least passing importance.
On Georgetown Team’s China Claims: More Tunnels, Yes. More Nukes? Not Necessarily. – China Real Time Report – WSJ
The Washington Post elaborated yesterday on the research of Phillip Karber, a Georgetown University professor, and an army of students who have used commercial satellite imagery, open-source Chinese materials, and internal PLA documents to track military tunneling projects across China. Karber’s conclusion is striking and controversial: the extent of the tunneling, he says, indicates that the number of PLA nuclear weapons could be vastly more than the 200 to 400 warheads that are usually cited by researchers. One of Karber’s more questionable sources suggests a total as high as 3,500.
Kaber’s story, originally reported by The Wall Street Journal Editorial Page in late October, has sparked a firestorm of controversy among China watchers and nuclear experts. The backlash from some sectors of the arms control community has been particularly bitter, with one commentator calling Karber’s work “incompetent and lazy,” comparing it unfavorably with his son’s high school research papers.
Target Iran: Washington’s Countdown to War
By Tom Burghardt
November 29, 2011 “Information Clearing House” — The Iranian people know what it means to earn the enmity of the global godfather.
As William Blum documented in Killing Hope: U.S. Military and CIA Interventions Since World War II, 1953’s CIA-organized coup against Iranian Prime Minister Mohammed Mossadegh, guilty of the “crime” of nationalizing the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company, may have “saved” Iran from a nonexistent “Red Menace,” but it left that oil-rich nation in proverbial “safe hands”–those of the brutal dictatorship of Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi.
Similarly today, a nonexistent “nuclear threat” is the pretext being used by Washington to install a “friendly” regime in Tehran and undercut geopolitical rivals China and Russia in the process, thereby “securing” the country’s vast petrochemical wealth for American multinationals.
As the U.S. and Israel ramp-up covert operations against Iran, the Pentagon “has laid out its most explicit cyberwarfare policy to date, stating that if directed by the president, it will launch ‘offensive cyber operations’ in response to hostile acts,” according to The Washington Post.
Citing “a long-overdue report to Congress released late Monday,” we’re informed that “hostile acts may include ‘significant cyber attacks directed against the U.S. economy, government or military’,” unnamed Defense Department officials stated.
However, Air Force General Robert Kehler, the commander of U.S. Strategic Command (USSTRATCOM) told Reuters, “I do not believe that we need new explicit authorities to conduct offensive operations of any kind.”
The Pentagon report, which is still not publicly available, asserts: “We reserve the right to use all necessary means–diplomatic, informational, military and economic–to defend our nation, our allies, our partners and our interests.”
Washington’s “interests,” which first and foremost include “securing its hegemony over the energy-rich regions of the Middle East and Central Asia” as the World Socialist Web Site observed, may lead the crisis-ridden U.S. Empire “to take another irresponsible gamble to shore up its interests in the Middle East … as a means of diverting attention from the social devastation produced by its austerity agenda.”
Recent media reports suggest however, that offensive cyber operations are only part of Washington’s multipronged strategy to soften-up the Islamic Republic’s defenses as a prelude to “regime change.”
Terrorist Proxies
For the better part of six decades, terrorist proxies have done America’s dirty work. Hardly relics of the Cold War past, U.S. and allied secret state agencies are using such forces to carry out attacks inside Iran today.
Asia Times Online reported that “deadly explosions at a military base about 60 kilometers southwest of Tehran, coinciding with the suspicious death of the son of a former commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) in Dubai in the United Arab Emirates, have triggered speculation in Iran on whether or not these are connected to recent United States threats to resort to extrajudicial executions of IRGC leaders.”
And Time Magazine, a frequent outlet for sanctioned leaks from the Pentagon, reported that the blast at the Iranian missile base west of Tehran, which killed upwards of 40 people according to the latest estimates, including Major General Hassan Moqqadam, a senior leader of Iran’s missile program, was described as the work “of Israel’s external intelligence service, Mossad.”
An unnamed “Western intelligence source” told reporter Karl Vick: “‘Don’t believe the Iranians that it was an accident,’ adding that other sabotage is being planned to impede the Iranian ability to develop and deliver a nuclear weapon. ‘There are more bullets in the magazine,’ the official says.”
While Iranian officials insist that the huge blast was an “accident,” multiple accounts in the corporate press and among independent analysts provide strong evidence for the claim that Israel and their terrorist cat’s paw, the bizarre political cult, Mojahedin-e Khalq (MEK) were responsible for the attack.
Richard Silverstein, a left-wing analyst who writes for the Tikun Olam web site, said that the blast was a sign that “the face of the Israeli terror machine may have reared its ugly head in the world.”
Citing “an Israeli source with extensive senior political and military experience,” Silverstein’s correspondent provided “an exclusive report that it was the work of the Mossad in collaboration with the MEK.”
Hardly a stranger to controversial reporting, Silverstein published excerpts of secret FBI transcripts leaked to him by the heroic whistleblower Shamai Leibowitz. Those wiretapped conversations of Israeli diplomats caught spying on the U.S., “described an Israeli diplomatic campaign in this country to create a hostile environment for relations with Iran.”
In a Truthout piece, Silverstein wrote that Leibowitz, a former IDF soldier who refused to serve in the Occupied Territories, “explained that he was convinced from his work on these recordings that the Israel foreign ministry and its officials in this country were responsible for a perception management campaign directed against Iran. He worried that such an effort might end with either Israel or the US attacking Iran and that this would be a disaster for both countries.”
Unfortunately, while Leibowitz sits in a U.S. prison his warnings are all but ignored.
According to Silverstein’s latest account, “it is widely known within intelligence circles that the Israelis use the MEK for varied acts of espionage and terror ranging from fraudulent Iranian memos alleging work on nuclear trigger devices to assassinations of nuclear scientists and bombings of sensitive military installations.”
Silverstein noted that “a similar act of sabotage happened a little more than a year ago at another IRG missile base which killed nearly 20.”
Terrorist attacks targeting defense installations coupled with the murder of Iranian scientist, five “targeted killings” have occurred since 2010, aren’t the only aggressive actions underway.
On Friday, The Washington Post reported that “a series of mysterious incidents involving explosions at natural gas transport facilities, oil refineries and military bases … have caused dozens of deaths and damage to key infrastructure in the past two years.”
According to the Post, “suspicions have been raised in Iran by what industry experts say is a fivefold increase in explosions at refineries and gas pipelines since 2010.”
With Iran’s oil industry under a strict sanctions regime by the West, maintenance of this critical industrial sector has undoubtedly suffered neglect due to the lack of spare parts.
However, “suspicions that covert action might already be underway were raised when four key gas pipelines exploded simultaneously in different locations in Qom Province in April,” the Post disclosed.
“Lawmaker Parviz Sorouri told the semiofficial Mehr News Agency that the blasts were the work of ‘terrorists’ and were ‘organized by the enemies of the Islamic Republic’,” hardly an exaggerated charge given present tensions.
Whether or not these attacks were the handiwork of Mossad, their MEK proxies or even CIA paramilitary officers and Pentagon Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) commandos, as Seymour Hersh revealed more than three years ago in The New Yorker, it is clear that Washington and Tel Aviv are “preparing the battlespace” on multiple fronts.
‘Collapse the Iranian Economy’
Along with covert operations and terrorist attacks inside the Islamic Republic, on the political front, a bipartisan consensus has clearly emerged in Washington in favor of strangling the Iranian economy.
Indeed, congressional grifters are threatening to crater Iran’s Central Bank, an unvarnished act of war. IPS reported that neocon Senator Mark Kirk (R-IL), “a key pro-Israel senator,” has offered legislation “that would effectively ban international financial companies that do business with the Central Bank of Iran (CBI) from participating in the U.S. economy.”
“Dubbed the ‘nuclear option’ by its critics,” Jim Lobe reported that “the measure, which was introduced Thursday in the form of an amendment to the 2012 defence authorisation bill, is designed to ‘collapse the Iranian economy’… by making it virtually impossible for Tehran to sell its oil.”
However, “independent experts,” Lobe wrote, “including some officials in the administration of President Barack Obama, say the impact of such legislation, if it became law, could spark a major spike in global oil prices that would push Washington’s allies in Europe even deeper into recession and destroy the dwindling chances for economic recovery here.”
That amendment was introduced as tensions were brought to a boil over allegations by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in its latest report that Iran may be seeking to develop nuclear weapons.
IAEA Director General Yukiya Amano claims the Agency has “identified outstanding issues related to possible military dimensions to Iran’s nuclear programme and actions required of Iran to resolve these.”
“Since 2002,” Amano averred, “the Agency has become increasingly concerned about the possible existence in Iran of undisclosed nuclear related activities involving military related organizations, including activities related to the development of a nuclear payload for a missile, about which the Agency has regularly received new information.”
However, despite the fact that the “Agency continues to verify the non-diversion of declared nuclear material at the nuclear facilities,” to whit, that such materials have not been covertly channeled towards military programs, Amano, reprising former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld’s famous gaff that “the absence of evidence is not the evidence of absence,” the IAEA “is unable to provide credible assurance about the absence of undeclared nuclear material and activities in Iran, and therefore to conclude that all nuclear material in Iran is in peaceful activities.”
Far from being an independent “nuclear watchdog,” the IAEA under Amano’s stewardship has been transformed into highly-politicized and pliable organization eager to do Washington’s bidding.
As a 2009 State Department cable released by WikiLeaks revealed, U.S. Ambassador Glyn Davies cheerily reported: “Yukiya Amano thanked the U.S. for having supported his candidacy and took pains to emphasize his support for U.S. strategic objectives for the Agency. Amano reminded Ambassador on several occasions that he would need to make concessions to the G-77, which correctly required him to be fair-minded and independent, but that he was solidly in the U.S. court on every key strategic decision, from high-level personnel appointments to the handling of Iran’s alleged nuclear weapons program.” (emphasis added)
Although the new report “offered little that was not already known by experts about Iran’s nuclear programme” IPS averred, “it cited what it alleged was new evidence that ‘Iran has carried out activities relevant to the development of a nuclear device’ since 2003–the date when most analysts believe it abandoned a centralised effort to build a nuclear bomb’.”
But as the United States, with the connivance of corporate media, bury the conclusions of not one, but two National Intelligence Estimates issued by the U.S. Director of National Intelligence, it is clear to any objective observer that “nonproliferation” is a cover for aggressive geopolitical machinations by Washington.
Both estimates, roundly denounced by U.S. neoconservatives and media commentators when they were published, insisted that “in fall of 2003, Tehran halted its nuclear weapons program,” a finding intelligence analysts judged with “high confidence.”
In contrast, the highly-politicized IAEA report is a provocative document whose timing neatly corresponds with the imposition of a new round of economic sanctions meant to crater the Iranian economy. Never mind that even according to the IAEA’s own biased reporting, they could find no evidence that Iran had diverted nuclear materials from civilian programs (power generation, medical isotopes) to alleged military initiatives.
Indeed, with sinister allusions that hint darkly at “undeclared nuclear materials,” the agency fails to provide a single scrap of evidence that diverted stockpiles even exist.
Another key allegation made by the Agency that Iran had constructed an “explosives chamber to test components of a nuclear weapon and carry out a simulated nuclear explosion,” was denounced by former IAEA inspector Robert Kelley as “highly misleading,” according to anIPS report filed by investigative journalist Gareth Porter.
With “information provided by Member States,” presumably Israel and the United States, the IAEA said it “had ‘confirmed’ that a ‘large cylindrical object’ housed at the same complex had been ‘designed to contain the detonation of up to 70 kilograms of high explosives’. That amount of explosives, it said, would be ‘appropriate’ for testing a detonation system to trigger a nuclear weapon.”
“Kelley rejected the IAEA claim that the alleged cylindrical chamber was new evidence of an Iranian weapons programme,” Porter wrote. “We’ve been led by the nose to believe that this container is important, when in fact it’s not important at all,” the former nuclear inspector said.
But as Mark Twain famously wrote, “A lie can travel half way around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes.” This is certainly proving to be the case with the IAEA under Yukiya Amano.
Another player “solidly in the U.S. court” is David Albright, the director of the Institute for Science and International Security (ISIS), a Washington, D.C. “think tank” funded by the elitist Carnegie, Ford and Rockefeller Foundations.
In an earlier piece for IPS, Porter demolished Albright’s “sensational claim previously reported by news media all over the world that a former Soviet nuclear weapons scientist had helped Iran construct a detonation system that could be used for a nuclear weapon.”
“But it turns out that the foreign expert, who is not named in the IAEA report but was identified in news reports as Vyacheslav Danilenko, is not a nuclear weapons scientist but one of the top specialists in the world in the production of nanodiamonds by explosives,” Porter wrote.
“In fact,” Porter averred, “Danilenko, a Ukrainian, has worked solely on nanodiamonds from the beginning of his research career and is considered one of the pioneers in the development of nanodiamond technology, as published scientific papers confirm.”
“It now appears that the IAEA and David Albright … who was the source of the news reports about Danilenko, never bothered to check the accuracy of the original claim by an unnamed ‘Member State’ on which the IAEA based its assertion about his nuclear weapons background.”
It is no small irony, that Albright, corporate media’s go-to guy on all things nuclear, penned an alarmist screed in 2002 entitled, “Is the Activity at Al Qaim Related to Nuclear Efforts?”, an article which lent “scientific” credence to false claims made by the Bush White House against Iraq.
As investigative journalist Robert Parry pointed out on the Consortium News web site, “Albright’s nuclear warning about Iraq coincided with the start of the Bush administration’s propaganda campaign to rally Congress and the American people to war with talk about ‘the smoking gun in the form of a mushroom cloud’.”
“Yet,” Parry noted, “when the Washington Post cited Albright on Monday, as the key source of a front-page article about Iran’s supposed progress toward reaching ‘nuclear capability,’ all the history of Albright’s role in the Iraq fiasco disappeared.”
History be damned. Congressional warmongers and corporate media who cite these fraudulent claims, are “spurred by Israel’s whisper campaign to create a sense of urgency on Capitol Hill where the Israel lobby, acting mainly through the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, exerts its greatest influence,” as IPS noted, and punish Iran for the “crime” of opening its nuclear facilities to international inspection!
That “whisper campaign” has now bloomed into a full court press for war by “liberal” Democrats and “conservative” Republicans alike, even as public approval of Congress’s work by the American people tracks only slightly higher than the popularity enjoyed by child molesters or serial killers.
As tensions are dialed up, the United States is spearheading a relentless drive to throttle Iran’s economy. The New York Times reported that “major Western powers took significant steps on Monday to cut Iran off from the international financial system, announcing coordinated sanctions aimed at its central bank and commercial banks.”
A strict sanctions regime was also imposed on Iran’s “petrochemical and oil industries, adding to existing measures that seek to weaken the Iranian government by depriving it of its ability to refine gasoline or invest in its petroleum industry,” the Times reported.
In a move which signals that even-more stringent sanctions are on the horizon, the U.S. Treasury Department “named the Central Bank of Iran and the entire Iranian banking system as a ‘primary money laundering concern’.”
That’s rather rich coming from an administration which slapped Wachovia Bank on the wrist after that corrupt financial institution, now owned by Wells Fargo Bank, pleaded guilty to laundering as much as $378 billion for Mexico’s notorious drug cartels as Bloomberg Markets Magazine reported last year!
Going a step further, France’s President Nicolas Sarkozy called on the major imperialist powers “to freeze the assets of the central bank and suspend purchases of Iranian oil.”
The Guardian reported that Britain “went the furthest by, for the first time, cutting an entire country’s banking system off from London’s financial sector.”
Playing catch-up with war-hungry Democrats and Republicans, President Obama stated that the “new sanctions target for the first time Iran’s petrochemical sector, prohibiting the provision of goods, services and technology to this sector and authorizing penalties against any person or entity that engages in such activity.”
“They expand energy sanctions, making it more difficult for Iran to operate, maintain, and modernize its oil and gas sector,” Obama said.
“As long as Iran continues down this dangerous path, the United States will continue to find ways, both in concert with our partners and through our own actions, to isolate and increase the pressure upon the Iranian regime.”
Last summer, Rep. Brad Sherman (D-CA), a strong backer of punishing sanctions, echoed Richard Nixon’s vow to “make the economy scream” prior to the CIA’s overthrow of Chile’s democratically-elected socialist president, Salvador Allende, and wrote in The Hill that “critics … argued that these measures will hurt the Iranian people. Quite frankly, we need to do just that.”
With a new round of crippling economic sanctions on tap from the West, “liberal” Democrat Sherman might just get his wish.
Targeting Civilian Infrastructure
While the Obama administration claims that their aggressive stance towards Iran is meant to promote “peace” and “help” the Iranian people achieve a “democratic transformation,” ubiquitous facts on the ground betray a far different, and uglier, reality.
Anonymous U.S. “intelligence officials” told The Daily Beast “that any Israeli attack on hardened nuclear sites in Iran would go far beyond airstrikes from F-15 and F-16 fighter planes and likely include electronic warfare against Iran’s electric grid, Internet, cellphone network, and emergency frequencies for firemen and police officers.”
According to Newsweek national security correspondent Eli Lake, “Israel has developed a weapon capable of mimicking a maintenance cellphone signal that commands a cell network to ‘sleep,’ effectively stopping transmissions, officials confirmed. The Israelis also have jammers capable of creating interference within Iran’s emergency frequencies for first responders.”
But Israel isn’t the only nation capable of launching high-tech attacks or, borrowing the Pentagon’s euphemistic language, conduct “Information Operations” (IO).
The U.S. Air Force Cyberspace & Information Operations Study Center (CIOSC) describe IO as “The integrated employment of the core capabilities of electronic warfare, computer network operations, psychological operations, military deception and operations security, in concert with specified supporting and related capabilities, to influence, disrupt, corrupt or usurp adversarial human and automated decision making while protecting our own.”
In this light, The Daily Beast disclosed that “Israel also likely would exploit a vulnerability that U.S. officials detected two years ago in Iran’s big-city electric grids, which are not ‘air-gapped’–meaning they are connected to the Internet and therefore vulnerable to a Stuxnet-style cyberattack–officials say.”
The anonymous officials cited by Lake informed us that “a highly secretive research lab attached to the U.S. joint staff and combatant commands, known as the Joint Warfare Analysis Center (JWAC), discovered the weakness in Iran’s electrical grid in 2009,” the same period when Stuxnet was launched, and that Israeli and Pentagon cyberwarriors “have the capability to bring a denial-of-service attack to nodes of Iran’s command and control system that rely on the Internet.”
But as Ralph Langer, the industrial controls systems expert who first identified the Stuxnet virus warned in an interview with The Christian Science Monitor, the deployment of military-grade malicious code is a “game changer” that has “opened Pandora’s box.”
Among a host of troubling questions posed by Stuxnet, Langer said: “It raises, for one, the question of how to apply cyberwar as a political decision. Is the US really willing to take down the power grid of another nation when that might mainly affect civilians?”
But as we have seen, most recently during the punishing air campaign that helped “liberate” Libya–from their petrochemical resources–the U.S. and their partners are capable of doing that and more.
Future targeting of Iran’s civilian infrastructure may in fact have been one of the tasks of the recently-discovered Duqu Trojan, which Israeli and U.S. “boutique arms dealers” are suspected of designing for their respective governments.
And whom, pray tell, has the means, motives and expertise to design weaponized computer code?
As BusinessWeek disclosed in July, when one of America’s cyber merchants of death, Endgame Systems, pitch their products they “bring up maps of airports, parliament buildings, and corporate offices. The executives then create a list of the computers running inside the facilities, including what software the computers run, and a menu of attacks that could work against those particular systems.”
According to BusinessWeek, “Endgame weaponry comes customized by region–the Middle East, Russia, Latin America, and China–with manuals, testing software, and ‘demo instructions’.”
“A government or other entity,” journalists Michael Riley and Ashlee Vance revealed, “could launch sophisticated attacks against just about any adversary anywhere in the world for a grand total of $6 million. Ease of use is a premium. It’s cyber warfare in a box.”
Kaspersky Lab analyst Ryan Naraine, writing on the Duqu FAQ blog averred that Duqu’s “main purpose is to act as a backdoor into the system and facilitate the theft of private information. This is the main difference when compared to Stuxnet, which was created to conduct industrial sabotage.”
In other words, unlike Stuxnet, Duqu is an espionage tool which can smooth the way for future attacks such as those described by The Daily Beast.
As The Washington Post disclosed last May, while the military “needs presidential authorization to penetrate a foreign computer network and leave a cyber-virus that can be activated later,” it does not need such authorization “to penetrate foreign networks for a variety of other activities.”
According to the Post, these activities include “studying the cyber-capabilities of adversaries or examining how power plants or other networks operate,” and can “leave beacons to mark spots for later targeting by viruses.”
Or more likely given escalating tensions, Iranian air defenses and that nation’s power and electronic communications grid which include “emergency frequencies for firemen and police officers” who would respond to devastating air and missile attacks.
Countdown to War
We can conclude that Israel, NATO and the United States are doing far more than placing “all options on the table” with respect to the Islamic Republic of Iran.
Along with ratcheting-up bellicose rhetoric, moves to collapse the economy, an assassination and sabotage campaign targeting Iranian scientists and military installations, cyberwarriors are infecting computer networks with viruses and “beacons” that will be used to attack air defense systems and civilian infrastructure.
After all, as Dave Aitel, the founder of the computer security firm Immunity told BusinessWeek, “nothing says you’ve lost like a starving city.”
As Global Research analyst Michel Chossudovsky warned last year, now confirmed by CIA and Pentagon leaks to corporate media: “It is highly unlikely that the bombings, if they were to be implemented, would be circumscribed to Iran’s nuclear facilities as claimed by US-NATO official statements. What is more probable is an all out air attack on both military and civilian infrastructure, transport systems, factories, public buildings.”
With the global economy in deep crisis as a result of capitalism’s economic meltdown, and as the first, but certainly not the last political actions by the working class threaten the financial elite’s stranglehold on power, the ruling class may very well gamble that a war with Iran is a risk worth taking.
As Chossudovsky warned in a subsequent Global Research report, “there are indications that Washington might envisage the option of an initial (US backed) attack by Israel rather than an outright US-led military operation directed against Iran.”
“The Israeli attack–although led in close liaison with the Pentagon and NATO–would be presented to public opinion as a unilateral decision by Tel Aviv. It would then be used by Washington to justify, in the eyes of world opinion,” Chossudovsky wrote, “a military intervention of the US and NATO with a view to ‘defending Israel’, rather than attacking Iran. Under existing military cooperation agreements, both the US and NATO would be ‘obligated’ to ‘defend Israel’ against Iran and Syria.”
This prescient analysis has been borne out by events. As regional tensions escalate, the USS George H.W. Bush, “the Navy’s newest aircraft carrier, has reportedly parked off the Syrian coast,” The Daily Caller reported.
Earlier this week, the financial news service Zero Hedge disclosed that “the Arab League (with European and US support) are preparing to institute a no fly zone over Syria.”
“But probably the most damning evidence that the ‘western world’ is about to do the unthinkable and invade Syria,” analyst Tyler Durden wrote, “and in the process force Iran to retaliate, is the weekly naval update from Stratfor.”
According to Zero Hedge, “CVN 77 George H.W. Bush has left its traditional theater of operations just off the Straits of Hormuz, a critical choke point, where it traditionally accompanies the Stennis, and has parked… right next to Syria.”
In an earlier report, citing Kuwait’s Al Rai daily, Zero Hedge warned that “Arab jet fighters, and possibly Turkish warplanes, backed by American logistic support will implement a no fly zone in Syria’s skies, after the Arab League will issue a decision, under its Charter, calling for the protection of Syrian civilians.”
The BBC reports that the Arab League “has warned Syria it has one day to sign a deal allowing the deployment of observers or it will face economic sanctions.”
“Meanwhile,” BBC averred, “France has suggested that some sort of humanitarian protection zones,” à la Libya, “be created inside Syria.”
American moves towards Syria are fraught with dangerous implications for international peace and stability. As analyst Pepe Escobar disclosed in Asia Times Online the Arab League, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Saudi Arabia and repressive Gulf emirates, dances to Washington’s tune.
“Syria is Iran’s undisputed key ally in the Arab world–while Russia, alongside China, are the key geopolitical allies. China, for the moment, is making it clear that any solution for Syria must be negotiated,” Escobar wrote.
“Russia’s one and only naval base in the Mediterranean is at the Syrian port of Tartus. Not by accident,” Escobar notes, “Russia has installed its S-300 air defense system–one of the best all-altitude surface-to-air missile systems in the world, comparable to the American Patriot–in Tartus. The update to the even more sophisticated S-400 system is imminent.”
“From Moscow’s–as well as Tehran’s–perspective, regime change in Damascus is a no-no. It will mean virtual expulsion of the Russian and Iranian navies from the Mediterranean.”
“In other words,” Zero Hedge warned, “if indeed Europe and the Western world is dead set upon an aerial campaign above Syria, then all eyes turn to the East, and specifically Russia and China, which have made it very clear they will not tolerate any intervention. And naturally the biggest unknown of all is Iran, which has said than any invasion of Syria will be dealt with swiftly and severely.”
Despite, or possibly because no credible evidence exists that Iran is building a nuclear bomb as a hedge against “regime change,” belligerent rhetoric and regional military moves targeting Syria and Iran simultaneously are danger signs that imperialism’s manufactured “nuclear crisis” is a cynical pretext for war.
Tom Burghardt : A researcher and activist based in the San Francisco Bay Area. In addition to publishing in Covert Action Quarterly, Love & Rage and Antifa Forum, he is the editor of Police State America: U.S. Military “Civil Disturbance” Planning, distributed by AK Press. http://www.antifascist-calling.blogspot.com/
All-out US-China nuclear war, looming, to wipe out one-fourths of the earth. 