Showing posts with label ayatollah. Show all posts
Showing posts with label ayatollah. Show all posts

Saturday, May 2, 2015

Israel will attack Iran soon

From the Warning Signs of Alan Caruba at Facts-not-Fantasy

The Israelis will destroy several Iranian nuclear facilities and my educated guess is that they will do so before the end of this year.

Israel has no margin of error when it comes to nuclear reactors in nations that threaten its existence. While President Obama does everything in his power to enable Iran to create its own nuclear weapons, it is a good idea to recall that in June 1981 the Israelis destroyed a reactor in Iraq. It was the first air strike against such a facility. In September 2007, the Israelis destroyed a Syrian reactor. There was no reprisal in either case.

From Wednesday, April 22 to Friday April 24 the Israelis struck Hizbollah and Syrian military targets in the Walamoun Mountains on the Syrian-Lebanese border. The calculations were that the location, a site for long-range missiles, would be safer from the Israelis. They were wrong.

In September 2014, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu addressed the United Nations General Assembly warning “don’t be fooled by Iran’s manipulative charm offensive. It’s designed for one purpose and for one purpose only. To lift the sanctions and remove the obstacles to Iran’s path to the bomb.”

“Once Iran produces atomic bombs, all the charm and all the smiles will suddenly disappear. They’ll just vanish. It’s then that the ayatollahs will show their true face and unleash their aggressive fanaticism on the entire world.” He offered a comparable message to a joint meeting of Congress in March of this year.

Is anyone listening? Not President Obama. On April 25, writing in The Wall Street Journal, Mortimer Zuckerman, the chairman and editor in chief of the U.S. News and World Report, said “President Obama has been chasing a rainbow in his negotiations with Iran. He has forsaken decades of pledges to the civilized world from presidents of both parties. He has misled the American people in repeatedly affirming that the U.S. would never allow revolutionary Iran to acquire nuclear weapons.”

It’s bad enough when you can’t trust your nation’s enemies, but when you cannot trust your own President you have a very big problem because Iran is not just a threat to America and Israel, but to the entire world.

Obama’s anti-Semitism is obvious to anyone paying the least attention. He particularly loathes Israel. In early April the White House let its unhappiness be known that Netanyahu had, in its words, failed to tone down “hostile and aggressive language” of the Passover religious service. What were those words? “Next year in Jerusalem.”

This is an ancient Jewish prayer that sustained generations of Jews over the course of two millennia, expressing their hope to return to their homeland. To the White House, however, it was “affront to the Palestinians, not to mention a slap in the face to President Obama himself who has worked tirelessly for peace despite Israeli intransigence.” The Jews returned to Israel, declared its independence in 1948, and have had the support of every President since until Obama.

The Israelis know this. Since their independence the Israelis have fought seven recognized wars, two Palestinian intifadas, and a series of armed conflicts in the broader Arab-Israeli conflict. Most recently they put down Hamas in the Gaza once again for its repeated rocketing.

Despite or because of this, the Israelis have sought to demonstrate good will toward their Arab neighbors. There is an untold story of the December 2014 meeting of six Gulf Cooperation Council rulers in the Qatari capital of Doha to discuss steps to respond to challenges that include Iranian aggression and clamping down on the Muslim Brotherhood.

Sources close to event report that Netanyahu has achieved close coordination with the most important Arab leaders that include Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates. Other members of the Council include Kuwait, Bahrain, Oman, and the United Arab Emirates.

The Israelis have no choice, nor do I anticipate that Iran will do much, if anything, to respond in the wake of the ashes of those facilities. No other nation will come to their aid.
______________________________________________

Become a Truth Serum Partner Now

Sunday, March 22, 2015

Middle East: One big happy family

From the art studios of Dan Youra at Utoons.com

Get a Daily Dose of Humor from Dan Youra at Utoons.com

Dan Youra is one of the outstanding conservative cartoonists in the trade today who follows in the footsteps of the great political cartoon masters, whose quotes inspire a new generation of followers.
"Outside of basic intelligence, there is nothing more important to a good political cartoonist than ill will." ~ Jules Feiffer, Pulitzer Prize winning cartoonist.
"Too many of today's artists regard editorial cartooning as a trade instead of a profession. They try not to be too offensive. The hell with that. We need more stirrer-uppers." ~ Bill Mauldin.
Youra was one of the first recipients of a Fulbright Scholarship and worked in Latin America. He served as an editor of Current Thought on Peace and War at the United Nations in New York.

"As long as there are politicians who continue to try and fool the voters, there is no chance of ever running out of material to work with because they create it themselves and about themselves," says Dan Youra.

Dan is the small business owner and operator of the Youra Studios located in the State of Washington.

Visit the Youra Studios at Utoons.com
_____________________________

Become a Truth Serum Partner Now

Sunday, November 23, 2014

Iran will negotiate until it's a nuclear power

Iran will negotiate until it becomes a nuclear power from the Warning Signs of Alan Caruba at Facts-not-Fantasy

Know the Alan Caruba Warning Signs
Monday, November 24, is the deadline for the negotiations between Iran and the United States, Britain, France, Germany, Russia and China regarding its program to build its own nuclear weapons to conclude. At this writing, whether the negotiations will be extended or not is unknown, but it seems unlikely.

President Obama has been obsessed with Iran, seeking to change its hostility by finding an answer to the problem its nuclear weapon program represents. That is typical of his “magical thinking” whereby something he wants is automatically assumed to be accessible. In the case of Iran, it has been hostile to the U.S. since its revolution in 1979 and remains so today.

Confirmed Sites
Iran has cause. As Marin Katusa, a leading energy investor, explains in his book, “The Colder War”, the U.S. was instrumental in overthrowing Mohammad Mosaddegh, an Iranian prime minister who set about nationalizing its oil industry. The U.S. stagied a coup in 1953 and reinstated the pro-U.S. shah. “Post-coup, the shah grew increasingly authoritarian and, in 1979, the Iranian revolution forced him to flee.”

Katusa reports what followed: “The U.S. government judged it futile to try to reinstate a pro-Western regime. So it turned its back on the shah and encouraged an invasion of Iran by Iraq. Saddam Hussein, the secular Iraqi dictator, went to war against his neighbor, supported by money and weapons courtesy of the United States.” The war last eight futile years and cost both nations hundreds of thousands of lives. No need to wonder why Iran hates and distrusts the U.S.

The essential problem of a nuclear Iran is that it has been an extremely aggressive nation since 1979. Iran is widely regarded as the primary supporter of terror in the Middle East. It sponsors two Palestinian organizations, Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in Gaza. Iran’s support for bombings and other acts of terror would fill a book.

Even if the current negotiations come to an end, Iran still has friends. Two of the nations involved in the negotiations are an example. Iran is allied with Russia in supporting the civil war to overthrow Syria’s Assad regime. China is a major customer for Iran’s oil.

“Though Iran may be isolated from the United States and Western Europe,” says Katusa, “Tehran still has allies. Venezuela has advanced $4 billion for joint projects, including a bank. India has pledged to continue buying Iran oil…Greece opposed the European Union sanctions because Iran was one of very few suppliers willing to sell oil to the bankrupt Greeks on credit…South Korea and Japan are pleading with the United States for exemptions (to the sanctions) because of their reliance on Iranian oil.”

“Economic ties between Russia and Iran have gotten stronger every year since Putin became president in 1999,” notes Katusa. “Finally, there’s China. Iran’s energy resources are a matter of national security for China, as Iran supplies 15 percent of China’s oil and natural gas.”

Writing in The Washington Times on November 19, Clifford D. May, president of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, took note of the November 24 conclusion date for the negotiations and asked, “What are the odds they will end with Iran’s rulers agreeing to verifiably dismantle their illicit nuclear weapons program? I’d wager 100 to one against that outcome, but I doubt I’d find a bookie willing to take my bet.”

May suggested that there may be “a ‘framework agreement’, a statement of principles that will be the subject of another round of talks. Such a deal could include another sweetener, e.g., billions of dollars of additional sanctions relief for Iran.”

If the U.S. and co-negotiators arrive at a deal that allows Iran to become a nuclear power it will lose the trust of important Middle Eastern nations such as Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates who already feel threatened by Iran.

Ultimately it does not matter how long the negotiations continue or not. Only one man in Iran will decide how they end and that is the Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and there is no indication he wants anything less than Iran’s ability to manufacture its own nuclear weapons to put on its missiles or as bombs. Among Iran’s neighbors are Russia, China, India and Pakistan, all of whom have nuclear weapons. Israel too.

The Iranians have been negotiating a very long time and a recent statement by an Iranian official sums up what they have been saying for years. “We need more time to resolve technical issues and don’t forget that the time frame for lifting sanctions is still a huge dispute.” The longer they negotiate, the closer they get to having the nuclear weapons they want.

If the negotiations continue, it will be because the negotiators have once again caved into Iran and there will be no surprise about that. The real surprise will be the announcement that Iran has tested a nuclear weapon and, in the end, that should not be a surprise.
_____________________________

Become a Truth Serum Partner Now