Quote:

India and Pakistan have had them for years.

If I could wave my magic wand and take away the bomb from 1 country that has it now it would be Pakistan, and India? Yes there are muslims in india 13.4% of the population, but they don't run the country or have control of the bomb.

Quote:

Ahmadinejad is no saint, but he's hardly the nut job western media makes him out to be.

That's why he rights nots to the 12th imam and drops them into a well he thinks the imam has been hiding in, that's why he's had a major highway built from the small village the well is in to Tahran, That's why he starts all his major speachs and everyone of his speaches to the UN with "pray for the return of the Mahdi and hasten his return"
Is not just Ahmadinejad there are millions like him ready to take his place, and fundamentalist Islam and Islam at its core is FAR nuttier then western media makes it out to be. http://www.thereligionofpeace.com/

95% of the population in Pakistan is muslim, as is their government. Better go after their bombs.

Information Dissemination is a source to pay attention to: http://www.informationdissemination.net/....

Quote:

For years I've dismissed the topic of war with Iran. I just never thought it would happen, or at least knew we would see it coming so have repeatedly dismissed claims that war is near. We'll, this is the kind of movement I've been waiting to see happen before taking this too seriously as a legitimate possibility, rather than an implied one.

...

When the CNO tells Senators in a public hearing that the Navy is deploying four little 1300 ton minesweepers to the other side of the world, in any context that can be described as the US Navy preparing for war with Iran. Deploying minesweepers to the Persian Gulf isn't like a typical 6 month deployment of a Navy warship, because some big commercial vessel will almost certainly be chartered to carry the ships across the ocean. This is a big deal.

This is also what a naval buildup for war against Iran looks like.

Update: And here is the charter. Note the timeline. Basically we seem to be in a hurry to get everything in place by summertime.

Sigh... this isn't going to end well.

http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,....

Quote:

Mahmoud al-Zahar, Hamas Politburo's top delegate in Gaza Strip, is on an official visit in Iran, the Islamic Republic's IRNA news agency reported on Thursday.

Al-Zahar, who serves as Hamas' foreign minister, arrived in Tehran on Wednesday. He met with Supreme National Security Council Chief Saeed Jalili, Iran's Parliament Speaker Ali Larijani and Iran's Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi.

Now, this quote stood out to me:

Quote:

"The regional Islamic revolutions are all in line with strengthening the Islamic objectives, the upcoming victory of the Palestinian nation, and changing the power balance in the region," [Al-Zahar] said.

That's code for "Fulfilling Iran's objectives in the Middle East". Israel is (or should) going to pounce on this.

That informationdissemination.net looks like a good source Jeffrey_thomason, thanks.

Here it comes. Before summer kicks in, IMHO.

This is like The Drudge Report except it's all Iran all the time:
http://iranvajahan.net/english/

Better get the invasion started... got to get a central bank in there fast...

http://www.jpost.com/Headlines/Article.a....

Quote:

Hamas leader Khaled Mashaal arrived in Ankara for a meeting with Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, AFP quoted a close aide to Erdogan as saying.

According to the aide, the meeting was not on Erdogan's daily itinerary and information on the visit was not distributed to the press.

Things that make you go hmmmmm.

With The Enterprise Just 4 Days Away From Arrival, A SWIFT Cut Off Of Iran
Submitted by Tyler Durden 03/15/2012 11:27 -0400

Update: as we hit print, we see headlines that the UK will cooperate with the US on bilateral agreement to release oil stocks. Crude down big on the news, which is merely an advance move ahead of almost inevitable war with Iran, simply to make the spike more palatable.

The push to get Iran to do something terminally irrational (now that USS Enterprise in its final tour of duty is almost on location just [9] off the side of CVN-70 Lincoln and CVN-72 Vinson in the Arabian Sea, where the US will shortly have not one, not two, but three aircraft carriers) is now in its final stretch. As AP reported earlier, Iran has been now entirely cut off from the global financial system, as that anchor of international financial transactions, SWIFT, has just taken Iran off the grid. This leaves Iran with just three options for international trade: making gold into a fully convertible currency, barter, or exchanging Rials for Renminbi and other local currencies.

From the AP:
The SWIFT global financial transaction service said Thursday that it was cutting ties with Iranian banks that are subject to European Union sanctions aimed at discouraging the country from developing nuclear weapons.

The action effectively enforces EU sanction because the world's financial transactions are impossible without using SWIFT, and it will go a long way toward isolating Iran financially.

The company's name stands for Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication. It is a banking hub crucial to oil, financial transactions and other trades. In a statement, SWIFT said the EU decision "prohibits companies such as SWIFT to continue to provide specialized financial messaging services to EU-sanctioned banks."

"Disconnecting banks is an extraordinary and unprecedented step for SWIFT," Lazaro Campos, chief executive of SWIFT, said. "It is a direct result of international and multilateral action to intensify financial sanctions against Iran."

In other words: Iran, please do your worst. And just to make it easier, the US has now stacked an entire armada of easy targets in close vicinity, which not even a naive fool can mistake anymore for prewar preparations.

Here is what the naval picture in the Arabian Sea looked like most recently, where courtesy of Stratfor [10]we can see that not only is CVN-65 full steam ahead to its final date with history somewhere off the shores of Iran, but that LHD8 Makin Island crossed the Straits of Hormuz recently. Just because.

Virtually the entire non-parked naval fleet will be in the Arabian Sea and Persian Gulf in the next 4-6 days, where 3 aircraft carriers and one big-deck amphibious warfare ship are just waiting for the order.




http://www.zerohedge.com/news/enterprise....

Published 14:40 15.03.12
Latest update 14:40 15.03.12
http://www.haaretz.com/news/diplomacy-de....

Netanyahu is preparing Israeli public opinion for a war on Iran

In response to Netanyahu's AIPAC speech, Haaretz's editor-in-chief says that what looks like a preparation for war, acts like a preparation for war, and quacks like a preparation for war, is a preparation for war.
By Aluf Benn

Since his return from Washington, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has mainly been preoccupied with one thing: Preparing public opinion for war against Iran.

Get all the latest updats on Haaretz.com's official Facebook page

Netanyahu is attempting to convince the Israeli public that the Iranian threat is a tangible and existential one, and that there is only one effective way to stop it and prevent a "second Holocaust": An Israeli military attack on Iran's nuclear infrastructure, which is buried deep underground.

In his speech before the Knesset on Wednesday, Netanyahu urged his colleagues to reject claims that Israel is too weak to go it alone in a war against a regional power such as Iran and therefore needs to rely on the United States, which has much greater military capabilities, to do the job and remove the threat.

According to polls published last week, this is the position of most of the Israeli public, which supports a U.S. strike on Iran, but is wary of sending the IDF to the task without the backing of the friendly superpower.

Netanyahu presented three examples in which his predecessors broke the American directive and made crucial decisions regarding the future of Israel: the declaration of independence in 1948, starting the Six Day War in 1967 and the bombing of the nuclear reactor in Iraq in 1981.

The lesson was clear: Just as David Ben-Gurion, Levi Eshkol and Menachem Begin said "no" to the White House, Netanyahu also needs not be alarmed by President Obama's opposition to an attack on Iran. Netanyahu believes that, as in the previous incidents, the U.S. may grumble at first, but will then quickly adopt the Israeli position and provide Israel with support and backing in the international community.

If Netanyahu had submitted his speech as a term paper to his father the history professor, he would have received a very poor grade. In 1948, the U.S. State Department, headed by George Marshall, opposed the declaration of independence and supported a United Nations trusteeship for Palestine. But President Truman had other considerations.

Like Obama today, Truman was also a democratic president contending for his reelection, who needed the support of the Jewish voters and donors. Under those circumstances, Truman rejected Marshall's advice, and listened to his political adviser Clark Clifford, who pressured him to recognize the Zionist state. And indeed, Truman sent a telegram with an official recognition of Israel just 11 minutes after Ben-Gurion finished reading the Scroll of Independence. The U.S. opposition to the recognition of Israel was halted at the desk of the president, who repelled the explanations by the Secretary of State and the "Arabists" in his office.

In 1967, the official U.S. position called on Israel to hold back and refrain from going to war, but a different message was passing through the secret channels: go "bomb Nasser," reported Levi Eshkol's envoys to Washington, Meir Amit and Avraham Harman. This message tipped the scales in favor of going to war. In 1981, Begin did not bother asking the Americans their opinion before attacking Iraq, but lulled them to sleep and launched a surprise attack.

In these past incidents, Israel acted against the U.S. position formally, but made sure that the Americans will accept the results of the action and support it in retrospect. And indeed, the U.S. recognized Israel in 1948, allowed it to control the territories annexed in 1967, and made do with weak condemnations of the attack on the Iraq nuclear reactor in 1981.

That being the case, then Netanyahu is hinting that in his Washington visit, he received Obama's tacit approval for an Israeli attack against Iran – under the guise of opposition. Obama will speak out against it but act for it,just as the past U.S. administrations speak against the settlements in the territories but allow their expansion. And in this manner Netanyahu summarized the visit: "I presented before my hosts the examples that I just noted before you, and I believe that the first objective that I presented – to fortify the recognition of Israel's right to defend itself – I think that objective has been achieved."

This morning, the editor-in-chief of the Israel Hayom newspaper, Amos Regev, published on his front page an enthusiastic op-ed in support of a war against Iran. Regev writes what Netanyahu cannot say in his speeches: that we cannot rely on Obama – who wasn't even a mechanic in the armored corps - but only on ourselves. "Difficult, daring, but possible," Regev promised. We need not be alarmed by the Iranian response: the arrow would take down the Shahab missiles, and Hezbollah and Hamas would hesitate about entering a war. The damage would be reminiscent of the Iraqi scuds in the 1991 Gulf War - unpleasant, but definitely not too bad. The analysts are weak, but the soldiers and the residents of the Home Front have motivation. So onward, to battle!

To use Netanyahu's "duck allegory", what looks like a preparation for war, acts like a preparation for war, and quacks like a preparation for war, is a preparation for war, and not just a "bluff" or a diversion tactic. Until his trip to Washington, Netanyahu and his supporters in the media refrained from such explicit wording and made do with hints. But since he's been back, Netanyahu has issued an emergency call-up for himself and the Israeli public.

US Navy in military build-up to battle Strait of Hormuz 'blockade'
Published: 16 March, 2012, 16:09
Edited: 16 March, 2012, 19:56
http://rt.com/news/us-minesweepers-hormu....

The US Navy has confirmed it is doubling the number of minesweepers in the Persian Gulf in an apparent move to prepare for a possible standoff with Iran over the crucial oil export route.

An additional four minesweeper and four minesweeping helicopters will join the four ships already patrolling the Persian Gulf.

The overall number of US minesweepers in the region will total eight, America’s head of naval operations Admiral Jonathan Greenert reported.

While saying sanctions and political measures are preferable to respond to Iran’s controversial nuclear program, looks like the US is getting ready for plan B.

The US has been working of an array of military measures to counteract Iran, with President Obama saying “no options are off the table.”

The Pentagon has recently asked for an additional $100 million dollars to beef up its military presence in the Persian Gulf.

About one fifth of the world’s oil passes through The Strait of Hormuz.

Earlier Tehran promised to block the primary route of oil exports from the region in retaliation to new US and EU-backed sanctions against the Islamic Republic.

In January, General Martin Dempsey, the Chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, confirmed Iran indeed has the ability to block the Strait of Hormuz “for a period of time,” and the US must get ready to reopen it in case of a blockade.

Israeli cabinet votes 8 vs 6 in favor of military action on Iran. Good luck getting this to happen after november Oblama

ER-link?

Via ZeroHedge

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/brent-126-....

Holy **** look at crude! edit it's brent at $126, it jumped but it's been high awhile.

It's important to note that there wasn't an explicit vote on attacking Iran, this is just a measure of "support" of military action (if necessary). ZH's headline is needlessly hyperbolic.

The actual article linked by ZH says:

Quote:

According to estimates, at this stage tend to support Netanyahu and Barak's approach eight ministers, and six against it (including the traditional opponents octet: Moshe Ya'alon, Dan Meridor, Benny Begin and Eli Yishai).

It should be noted that the Cabinet has not yet convened a crucial topic for discussion and evaluation of forces based on secret talks held between Prime Minister to his ministers, and separately.

No where in the original translation is the word "vote" used. Same as the initial reports yesterday evening.

Good example of why verifying original sources is so very important.

Thanks Jeff, but you can bet on it, it's coming. For it or against it, know it's coming. 1 year max. might be 1 day, or 1 week or 3 months from now.

RDML Scorby's message on Solid Curtain-Citadel Shield 2012

Hmm... http://www.news4jax.com/news/Something-s....

Interesting... http://www.jpost.com/MiddleEast/Article.....

Quote:

Iran is funding some Hamas leaders in the Gaza Strip to encourage them to thwart efforts to achieve reconciliation with Fatah, Azzam al-Ahmed, member of the Fatah Central Committee, said Saturday.

...

"Iran does not want the Palestinians to end their divisions," Ahmed told the Lebanese newspaper Al-Mustaqbal. "Iran is responsible for foiling attempts to achieve reconciliation between Hamas and Fatah."

...

"Iran has apparently played a role in inciting Hamas leaders against the reconciliation agreement," he charged. "Iran is playing a negative role with regards to the Fatah-Hamas reconciliation."

Quote:

That's why he rights nots to the 12th imam and drops them into a well he thinks the imam has been hiding in, that's why he's had a major highway built from the small village the well is in to Tahran, That's why he starts all his major speachs and everyone of his speaches to the UN with "pray for the return of the Mahdi and hasten his return"
Is not just Ahmadinejad there are millions like him ready to take his place, and fundamentalist Islam and Islam at its core is FAR nuttier then western media makes it out to be. http://www.thereligionofpeace.com/

Boy that almost sounds as silly as a 2000 year old dead man coming back to life after a temple is built in Jerusalem by the hands of a certain type of people, and only those type. You know, the same temple our entire foriegn policy seems to based on protecting the people who would be building it.


Get a ****in grip. Better yet, go fight radical islam your ****ing self if you are so worried. Don't send my little brother.