How to put Iran out of business: http://www.oftwominds.com/blogjan12/put-.... by Charles Hugh Smith.

Yes this would cripple Iran's finances, but it might also make them more likely to use whatever arsenal (nuclear or otherwise) that they might have.

Michel Chossudovsky is a 911 Troofer


http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=....

President Iaamanutjob has indeed said "Death to Isreal" there's numerous you tube videos to support that.

The AP, which I suppose could be part of the NWO dominated propaganda machine, did indeed report that he said "Israel will disappear off the Map"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5hLDjGdJC....

Iamanutjob never gave a straight answer in this MSNBC interview when asked to clarify his remarks to the UN that the holocaust never happened.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ykd-syzZ4....

Karl is right, things aren't as they seem. It's never as simple as "The US is the dying empire trying to dominate the middle-east for the oil". We have meddled over there for 50+yrs and the conseqences will be felt for a long time. I don't understand why we don't drill our own oil.

However, You put Landsharks tag line together with my Kissinger quote, I think that pretty much says it all.

Are we, along with the Isrealis secretly planning to attack Iran or provoke them into attacking us? Maybe. I can tell you that I believe there is enough evidence that the Mullahs running things over there truly are bat**** crazy. They are not peaceful, even though I think the youth there want peace. The mullahs are worse than the people running North Korea. They want to restore the Persian empire. Someone's gonna shoot, no doubt about that.

I like Dogfarms nutshell scenario, except I think Obama will tell Bibi he needs time to think about itand Bibi is on his own cause the rest of the world hates Israel and Obama doesn't want the rest of the world to hate him too, even thought I believe they already do.

Maybe the Mayans are right. We are living the Chinese curse.

Quote:

It's never as simple as "The US is the dying empire trying to dominate the middle-east for the oil".

It also isn't as simple as US = good guys, Iran = bad guys, Iran is a threat to freedom and the US will defend itself against them.

Loves2Learn wrote..

I don't understand why we don't drill our own oil.

Bcos it costs a lot more to produce American oil than it does in the ME, Russia, etc. The cheap and easy oil in the US has already been exploited and while there is tons more it is more expensive to extract. So from a business point of view like doing your manufacturing in China, getting your oil "abroad" is the answer. I used the quotes bcos most of the imported oil we use does not come from ME, it comes from Canada, Mexico, Venezuela, Trinidad, etc. The Europeans and Asians predominantly use ME oil.

My $0.02 on the whole Iranian drama. The Mullahs want the nuke not to use against Israel or the US or Saudi. They want it to get R-E-S-P-E-C-T.

If they have a nuke, they will be the first in the region to have a deterrent to Israel's nukes. Pakistan's does not count since it is against India who is seen as a mild friend, definitely not a sworn enemy, by the people in the region. The fact that a Muslim country has the ability to provide a nuclear umbrella to the region against Israeli power would get them respect in all of the countries in the region, including the Sunni countries that normally hate them. It would also give them an Islamic boost against the Saudis who use their ownership of Mecca as some sort of special status in their religious hierarchy. That is partly why the Saudis are so upset about the Iranian nukes, it will undermine the one thing they had without working for it and now cannot counter it by getting their own nuke since it will not have the same cache.

Ultimately in a lot of these things it comes to ego. The Iranians are a lot saner than they are portrayed on US TV. They are brutal against dissent, but so is Saudi, so was Mubarak, etc who tend to be portrayed as "forces of stability" in the region.

Getting a nuke usually sobers people up. Obviously Israel and the US have to keep an eye on what's going on, but it is not the immediate threat to our existence that the feverish hype would lead us to believe. IMO of course.

EDIT: Another point - there is a tendency in the media to hype minor idiots to horrible conspirators and distract us from the real crooks who are running some clever conspiracies. The Iranian leadership is pretty weak in many respects and it gets weaker as your move down the hierarchy. The country survives like most dictatorships on the passivity and fatalism of the average citizen. These guys are no Japan, and that is not an insult to either country, just a statement of fact.

From ZH article: "Art Cashin Explains What is Really Happening in Iran"
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/art-cashin....

From the article, this quote is actually by Bob Hardy, of the GeoStrat blog:

Quote:

Despite all of the tough talk and threats coming out of Teheran as it wrapped up its ten day naval maneuvers, one only has to look at the dramatic fall in the black market value of the Iranian Rial versus the U.S. Dollar, to know that the country is under a tremendous amount of pressure. The leaders of this military dictatorship cloaked in a theocracy, may threaten to close the Strait of Hormuz if its oil is sanctioned or if it is attacked militarily. They may test fire new missiles and warn the U.S. to keep its aircraft carriers out of the Persian Gulf, but the people understand the risks, and they are voting with their money.

Landshark posted:

Quote:

Who wants to "wipe Israel off the Map"? Tehran or Washington? Ahmadinejad or Obama?

If your post is accurate, what would Israel gain by participating?

Riceday, the author of the article is, I think, asking a rhetorical question to bring into focus the idea that Israel would be committing suicide by participating in military action against Iran.

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

"Presenting An Iran Attack Probability Timetable And A Complete Geopolitical Outlook For The Middle East"

the charles hugh smith was the dumbest ****ing article i have read in a long time. i want those 5 minutes back.

anyone who thinks ksa and the arab countries would let oil go to 25 pb for 6 months has no idea how the middle east works. the arab countries have a welfare system that makes the us welfare system look, well, look like its jewish (ie, stingy...i jest with my jewish readers)!

ksa and the arab countries need at least 80 usd pb crude to fund 1.) the lifestyles of their VIPs, sheikhs, princes and royal families and 2.) to fund the subsidies for food, medical and fuel and high paying government jobs of their populations. crude below 80 pb crushes all GCC budgets.

if the us tried to 'make' oil 25 pb for 6 months ksa would probably implode before iran! the iranians are tougher and smarter than most people give htem credit for! in fact, the saudis want their cake and they want to eat it to - get rid of iran, keep oil 100+ pb (but no more than 120), get american guns and planes, and buy all the real estate they can in london!

however, the opec producers are lovin the crude at 100+. the iranian saber rattling is icing on the cake. even with the oil embargo on at the end of january i dont think iran will 'close the strait'. they may harass the **** out of some people, fire a few missiles and do everything they can to DRIVE THE PRICE OF OIL UP because then when their last few remaining customers do buy oil (China and India) CI will need to pay a little more for their juice instead of asking for a disount as they are now.

iran doesn't want to close the strait. that hurts them in the pocket book as they need the money to fund the nuke problem. yes, what iran wants is a nuclear bomb so they get RESPECT. because right now, no one RESPECTS them and for a Persian, not getting your PROPER RESPECT is anathema. the end game for iran is not to control the strait or even the price of oil or even the US navy. the end game is to get a nuke and to do that they need money (hell ya muther****er). nothing else matters. with a nuke they control the middle east and all roads will then lead to tehran!

So let the rhetoric continue. don't get your panties in abundle. don't get freaked out. at the end of the day this is about money and respect.

now, when the israelis fire up their jets, that will be time to pay attention boys and girls. until then it is all theater.

also, i dont think oil can even go to 25 pb anymore? lot of hot money racing around the world chasing oil leaving aside the question of peak oil.

small player in a larger show. sucks to be him. i wonder if we already gave back the iranian fisherman the usn saved.

Iran death sentence for 'CIA spy' Amir Mirzai Hekmati
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-e....

Iranian officials said his cover was blown even before he had arrived in the country, because he had been spotted by Iranian agents at the US-run Bagram military air base in neighbouring Afghanistan.

From the NY Times - see bolded text.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/09/world/....

Iran Trumpets Nuclear Ability at a Second Location
By DAVID E. SANGER

CAIRO — Iran’s top nuclear official announced this weekend that the country was on the verge of starting production at its second major uranium enrichment site, in a defiant declaration that its nuclear program would continue despite new international sanctions restricting its oil revenue.

The announcement, made through official news media reports, came after a week of escalating confrontations between Washington and Tehran, including a threat that Iran would respond with military force if the United States tried to send an aircraft carrier strike group back into the Strait of Hormuz.

The imminent opening of the enrichment site — the Fordo plant, near the city of Qum — confronts the United States and its allies with difficult choices about how far to go to limit Iran’s nuclear abilities. The new facility is buried deep underground on a well-defended military site and is considered far more resistant to airstrikes than the existing enrichment site at Natanz, limiting what Israeli officials, in particular, consider an important deterrent to Iran’s nuclear aims.

When the existence of the Qum facility was first disclosed by President Obama and his counterparts in France and Britain in the fall of 2009, American officials expressed doubts that Iran would ever go forward with the facility. But once it goes into operation, the chances of disabling it, in the words of one former top Israeli official, “diminish very dramatically.”

The declaration that the facility was nearly ready came in an interview on Saturday with Fereydoon Abbasi, who was made the head of Iran’s Atomic Energy Organization shortly after surviving an assassination attempt in 2010. The official news agency Mehr quoted him as saying, “The Fordo site near Qum would soon be opened and become operational.” Iranian newspapers reported the development on Sunday.

While Iran has often exaggerated its abilities, nuclear experts say this claim is plausible. In December, inspectors for the International Atomic Energy Agency reported that during a visit to the plant they saw the finishing touches put on enrichment centrifuges and said they expected the facility to be operating soon.

Iran says its nuclear program is critical to its national security — not because it is seeking weapons, but because it wants an alternative energy source to oil and is seeking to refuel a reactor that makes medical isotopes.

Four years of sanctions have deeply hurt Iran’s economy, but have not changed its nuclear strategy. But the new American sanctions, along with an oil embargo under discussion in Europe, aim to undercut the government by squeezing its most important source of revenue: oil sales. In response, Iran has clearly signaled that the sanctions have only hardened its determination to proceed. On Sunday, for instance, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad began a highly publicized series of visits to South American leaders that have been critical of the United States, starting with President Hugo Chávez of Venezuela.

More troublingly, Iran threatened early last week to close off shipping in the Strait of Hormuz, an action that analysts say could send global oil prices soaring. Iran conducted military exercises in the waterway, and then said it would use force to bar any re-entry of the United States aircraft carrier John C. Stennis and its escort ships.

While American officials and outside experts have dismissed the threat as hyperbole, and say they have every intention of patrolling the area with a carrier, there is broad concern that the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Navy could harass oil tankers passing through the narrow strait or lay mines that could create significant risks to shipping.

The opening of the plant does not significantly affect estimates of how long it could take Iran to produce a nuclear weapon, if that is its true intention. The new facility has been inspected regularly, and unless the Iranians barred inspectors or managed to deceive them, any effort to produce uranium at bomb-grade levels would most likely be detected. American officials have estimated that they would have six months to a year to react, if needed, before the enrichment was completed.

But should it come to that, the Fordo plant site itself would greatly complicate any military action. Satellite photographs show it is surrounded by antiaircraft guns, and the mountainous setting was designed to make a bombing campaign nearly impossible. Mr. Abbasi said Saturday that the plant would house a new generation of centrifuges — the machines that spin at supersonic speeds to enrich the purity of uranium — though inspectors largely saw older, far less efficient models at the plant.

“No one has a full sense of the Iranian production plan there,” said one diplomat who has studied the few details Iran has shared about the plant. “And I think that’s the point.”

Already Iran has produced enough fuel to manufacture about four weapons, but only if the fuel goes through further enrichment, nuclear experts say. Some of the fuel at Fordo, Mr. Abbasi said, would be enriched to 20 percent purity for use in a research reactor in Tehran; because of the oddities about how uranium is enriched, those batches would be the easiest to convert for use in weapons.

It is that ability that has Israel most concerned. So Israeli officials were relieved in December when Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta, speaking at a conference in Washington, strongly suggested that the United States was determined to stop not only a weapon, but the ability to produce one.

But on Sunday, appearing on CBS’s “Face the Nation,” Mr. Panetta was less specific about how close to the line Iran would be allowed to go. Sanctions and separate embargoes against Iran were “working to put pressure on them, to make them understand that they cannot continue to do what they’re doing,” Mr. Panetta said, in comments that were taped before Mr. Abbasi’s announcement. “Are they trying to develop a nuclear weapon? No. But we know that they’re trying to develop a nuclear capability. And that’s what concerns us. And our red line to Iran is: do not develop a nuclear weapon. That’s a red line for us.”

In saying that the United States did not have any evidence that Iran was seeking to develop a nuclear weapon, Mr. Panetta was hewing closely to the conclusions the often fractious American intelligence agencies agreed upon in 2007 and again in 2010. Two National Intelligence Estimates, designed to reflect the consensus of the intelligence community, concluded that Iranian leaders had made no political decision yet to build an actual weapon. Instead, they described a series of steps that would take Iran right up to that line — and position it to assemble a weapon fairly quickly if a decision to do so were made.

When asked on “Face the Nation” about the how difficult it would be to take out Iran’s nuclear ability in a military strike, Gen. Martin Dempsey, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said: “Well, I would rather not discuss the degree of difficulty and in any way encourage them to read anything into that. But I will say that my responsibility is to encourage the right degree of planning, to understand the risks associated with any kind of military option, in some cases to position assets, to provide those options in a timely fashion. And all those activities are going on.”

From ZH:

Hyperinflation has struck again, this time at ground zero of the most sensitive geopolitical conflict in ages: Iran. EA WorldView reports:

An EA source reports that a relative in Tehran ordered a washing machine for 400,000 Toman (about $240) this week. When he went to the shop the next day, he was told that --- amidst the currency crisis and rising import costs --- the price was now 800,000 Toman (about $480). Another EA source says that the price of an item of software for a laptop computer has tripled from 50,000 Toman to 150,000 Toman within days.

And so the opportunity cost for the Ahmedinejad regime to preserve its status quo gradually grinds to zero, as the entire economy implodes (courtesy of a few strategic financially isolating decisions) making further escalation virtually inevitable, in a 100% replica of the US-planned Japanese escalation that led to the Pearl Harbor attack, and gave America the green light to enter the war.

‘US builds hospitals in Georgia, readies for war with Iran’
Published: 10 January, 2012, 14:23
Edited: 10 January, 2012, 14:23

http://rt.com/politics/us-georgia-iran-w....

The United States is sponsoring the construction of facilities in Georgia on the threshold of a military conflict in Iran, a member of Georgian opposition movement Public Assembly, Elizbar Javelidze has stated.

According to the academician, that explains why President Mikhail Saakashvili is roaming the republic opening new hospitals in its regions.

“These are 20-bed hospitals…It’s an American project. A big war between the US and Iran is beginning in the Persian Gulf. $5 billion was allocated for the construction of these 20-bed military hospitals,” Javelidze said in an interview with Georgian paper Kviris Kronika (News of the Week), as cited by Newsgeorgia website.

The opposition member stated that the construction is mainly paid from the American pocket.

In addition, airports are being briskly built in Georgia and there are talks of constructing a port for underwater vessels in Kulevi on the eastern Black Sea coast in Georgia.

Javelidze believes that it is all linked to the deployment of US military bases on the Georgian soil. Lazika – one of Saakashvili’s mega-projects, a new city that will be built from a scratch – will be “an American military town”. According to the politician, “a secret airdrome” has already been erected in the town of Marneuli, southern Georgia.

The opposition member wondered who would protect Georgia in case if Iran fires its missiles against US military facilities on the territory of the Caucasian state.

All in all, about 30 new hospitals and medical centers were opened in the former Soviet republic in December last year. The plan is to build over a hundred more.

As for Lazika, the Georgian president announced his ambitious idea to build a second-largest city in Georgia, its western economic and trade center, at the end of 2011. According to the plan – which was slammed by his opponents and many analysts – Saakashvili’s dream-town will become home to at least half a million people within a decade.

The tension and violence in the Caucasus definitely has escalated in recent days.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Insurgency_....

Can't imagine a favorable reaction from Putin on this one

imho Saakashvili wants to be American, that's all this is. Georgia got some USAID dollars to help enrich the politician who owns the construction company. RT is not a reliable source....along lines of Pravda. nothing new here.

the US will not be sending troops to Iran anytime soon - at least not until it is bombed back to the time of Pharoh.

besides, the US sends most of its injured to Germany - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Landstuhl_R....

i have been to the hospital in russia....if Georgian hospitals are of a slightly lower quality than that... man that would be some scary ****. your average US field hospital is probably better equipped than any of these Georgian hospitals.

Iran claiming assassination of scientist with ties to the Nuclear program:

http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-202_162-5735....

Not sure whose government is less credible, ours or theirs

"RT is not a reliable source"

Then I would ask: "What are reliable sources??"

Eo: Your eyeballs - usually.

I guess RT is a source in the stylebook but i am always skeptical....really a mouth piece for russian government in my opinion.

with regards to pearl harbor, i think the iranian issue is really much more complex than pearl harbor at a geopolitical level. also new war equipment calls for new strategies and tactics. finally, throw in the global economy issue...still, it's been about 80 years since the world had a good fight.

yeah, someone made a good point....maybe Obama won't bail out Israel if they make an overt attack? the question is how would it impact his presidential campaign? i guess that is the answer.

btw - a friend of mine tells me they are sending containers of used motorcycles (dirt bikes) to Iran these days. apparently as gasoline becomes an issue there is an increasing demand for motorcycles in Tehran. needless to say Mossad probably has their own requirements for their dirt bikes:

ran nuclear scientist killed in car bombing (#4)
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/....

i actually might drive down to the strait (Musandam) this weekend and go for a swim and eat some fish. this is how i am learning to love the bomb.

From ZH

"2nd Carrier Arrives: CVN 70 Carl Vinson Joins CVN 74 Stennis In Arabian Sea, Off Straits Of Hormuz"
01/11/2012
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2nd-carrie....

The premise that it was a bad idea to get involved in a war against the axis is wrong from the start.

Uh huh.

Do note that the Germans were working on an atomic weapon. Had we not gotten involved it is a near-certainty they would have completed it, as they were not that far from it when we beat them.

Now I wonder, had they "won" and taken over the Continent, where they might have used such a device.....

^ German car parts would still be just as expensive