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POPSAhmadinejad: Israel Is Doomed Ahmadinejad used an Arabic word, ismihlal, that can also be translated as destruction, death and collapse. "Nations of the region hate this criminal fabricated regime (Israel) and will uproot this fabricated regime if the smallest and shortest opportunity is given to them," Ahmadinejad said Wednesday in an address broadcast live on state television. He spoke hours after President Bush arrived in Israel for the anniversary celebrations.
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POPSEurope's New Pro-American Direction Europe’s new political configuration has already partially manifested itself in NATO’s decision in Bucharest to support deployment of U.S. missile defense assets in Poland and the Czech Republic. Even the Bucharest Summit, however, reveals continuing problems, such as Europe’s reluctance to start Ukraine and Georgia on the path toward ultimate NATO membership. For both America and Europe’s leading nations, therefore, the diplomatic chances of preventing Iran from achieving its objectives are rapidly diminishing. Although tough sanctions are at this point almost certainly too late, they would at least demonstrate that Italy and other Europeans are preparing for the even more difficult step that may be required, namely changing the regime in Tehran, or, as a last resort, the targeted use of military force against Iran’s nuclear program.
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POPSManufactured Martyrdom - Iran "Kills" Aide to Muqtada al-Sadr It is significant Washington is being blamed and not the administration of Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki in Baghdad as Tehran is using this to inspire more hatred (attacks) against the foreign led occupation. It is also significant this took place in the religious center of Najaf which will inspire even more hatred. This comes right after Thursday's statement by the Sadr movement saying they were "under siege" and warned they will end the ceasefire they imposed last August. Tehran is setting the stage for more attacks against the remaining British-U. S. troops in the country, an offensive Iran will be entering at least by launching missiles from Iran at UK/US bases.
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POPSChina Has Provided IAEA With Intel On Iran's Nuke Program
VIENNA, Austria — China, an opponent of harsh U.N. Security Council sanctions against Iran, has nonetheless recently provided the International Atomic Energy Agency with intelligence linked to Tehran's alleged attempts to make nuclear arms, diplomats have told The Associated Press. In a summary recently forwarded to the AP, the National Council of Resistance of Iran, an opposition group that claims to have informants inside the Iranian government, identified three others as Revolutionary Guard commander Fereydoon Abbasi, Seyed Jaber Safdari and Mohammed Mehdi Nejad-Nouri. It said the three and others are involved in clandestine nuclear weapons-related research at three Iranian universities: Beheshti; Malek Ahstar and Imam Hossein. Asked for verification, a senior diplomat of an IAEA member state said that a fact check run by his country's relevant agency showed the claims to be generally accurate. Another senior diplomat also said the information appeared to be fairly reliabl
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POPS Q&A: Who is Moqtada al-Sadr? (continued)>>>Shi'ite guerrillas, who continued the insurgency. Where is he now? Sadr is believed to have moved to Tehran last year and is studying to become an ayatollah in the holy city of Qom. He is said to have married an Iranian woman. It is not clear how much control he exercises over the Mahdi army. A substantial part of the army still takes its orders from the Qods Force of Iran's Revolutionary Guards. The ceasefire has been repeatedly tested by the "special groups", but Sadr's call for a civil revolt appears to have been prompted by the necessity of surviving the most aggressive bid by Iraq's security forces to assert the state's authority in Basra. What happens next? The Iraqi army, despite its British and American training, does not have the organisation or discipline to drive his followers out of towns and cities. The best that can be hoped for is that Sadr supporters will acquiesce to a stronger security force and establish their support in provincial
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POPS ElBaradei's Real Agenda<>Middle East Forum Website On his watch, but undetected by his agency, Iran constructed its covert enrichment facilities and, according to the 2007 U.S. National nieIntelligence Estimate, engaged in covert nuclear-weapons design. India and Pakistan detonated nuclear devices. A.Q. Khan, the Pakistani nuclear godfather, exported nuclear technology around the world IAEA technical experts have complained anonymously to the press that the latest report on Iran was revamped to suit the director's political goals. In 2004, Mr. ElBaradei sought to purge mention of Iranian attempts to purchase beryllium metal, an important component in a nuclear charge, from IAEA documents. He also left unmentioned Tehran's refusal to grant IAEA inspectors access to the Parchin military complex, where satellite imagery showed a facility seemingly designed to test and produce nuclear weapon The IAEA director seems intent on undercutting Security Council diplomacy
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POPSGroup Claims Iran Speeding Up Nuke Plans The NCRI has at least twice given detailed information to the IAEA that IAEA inspectors later verified, including the original information that exposed Iran's uranium-enrichment program and the location of those facilities in 2002. On at least one other occasion, however, the IAEA was unable to verify information the NCRI provided. NCRI leaders said their latest effort to locate the alleged nuclear-warhead facility was triggered by the Dec. 3 release of a U.S. National Intelligence Estimate concluding that Iran halted its nuclear-weaponization efforts in 2003. The NCRI is eager to refute that finding. The report effectively ended speculation in Washington about a potential U.S. military strike against Iran to cripple its nuclear program. It also undercut U.S.-led efforts to pressure Iran to suspend its uranium enrichment program.
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POPS BBC:Syria 'To Name Mughniyeh Killer' 'Secret investigation' Damascus has already solved the crime and will present 'irrefutable proof'; "As a state, we will irrefutably prove the party involved in this crime and who stands behind it. An investigation is ongoing." That's some speedy 'secret investigating', and yet, the parties behind the assassination of Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri after three years of NO secret investigations, remains unsolved. Three years ago today, former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri was brutally assassinated in a massive bombing in downtown Beirut. One month later, on March 14, 2005, the Lebanese people took to the streets to demand Syria's withdrawal from Lebanon. Tehran is bent on avenging the death of its top terror tactician Imad Mughniyeh who was struck down in Damascur. Even before the high-ranking Iranian military investigation team, chief of the IRGC’s al Qods Brigades, began a rush job the next day, Israel was singled out as the target for punishment by Iran, Hizballah an
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POPSWho Hijacked The Primaries And What We MUST Do! This is our party, not John McCain’s or Mel Martinez's, or Lindsay Graham’s. The Republican Party is THE conservative party dammit. Let’s admit it and take it back. RINOS and Liberals have taken the GOP plane hostage, and its time for us passengers to revolt…and do what has to be done -- "Let’s Roll" Sadly these 4 states have done more than set the tone for the other 46 -- they’ve dictated terms. Frankly I could extend the analogy to include Nevada, which is down to about 13% native -- but why beat a dead horse. What we have is the sick and twisted dreams of Pinch Sulzberger, Don Imus, Maureen Dowd, Keith Olbermann and Chris Matthews come true: the GOP has been forced to choose a nominee designed to cause the base to retch, and thereby not vote. Guaranteeing 4 years of Clinton score settling or Obama socializing entire corporate sectors
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POPSBush Insists Iran Biggest Terror Sponsor Abu Dhabi Bush said Iran funds militant groups such as Hamas, Hezbollah and Islamic Jihad and sends arms to the Taliban in Afghanistan and Shiite extremists in Iraq. "The other major cause of instability is the extremists embodied by al-Qaida and its affiliates," His words brought a stern response from Iran's foreign minister, Manouchehr Mottaki, to end what he called U.S. meddling. "Mr. Bush has tried unsuccessfully to undermine our relations with the countries of the region. We believe his mission has totally failed. We have making strides in building ties with the region, politically, economically and even in security," Mottaki told Al-Jazeera television. "It is much better if the Americans had stopped intervening in the region's affair." Cosgriff told Bush that he took it "deadly seriously" when an Iranian fleet of high-speed boats charged at and threatened to blow up a three-ship U.S. Navy convoy passing near Iranian waters. The American ship commanders were preparing to open fire
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POPS Ahmadinejad.......U.S. Declaration Of Surrender Iran regularly calls for a change in behavior from the United States, which cut diplomatic ties with Iran in 1980 after radical students seized the U.S. embassy and took diplomats hostage during the 1979 Islamic revolution.
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POPS NIE "Clean Bill Of Health" Delights Tehran The CIA has been in semi-open revolt against the Bush administration for years now. I may be an old-fashioned sort of a fellow but it has always seemed to me that an American citizen had two alternatives in life. Either he could campaign publicly against the president, or he could be a secret intelligence officer. The CIA has apparently decided you can do both, simultaneously. Imagine the outcry if there were a liberal Democrat president and right-wing elements of the intelligence community were constantly leaking and briefing against the administration. Bush has been personally humiliated, exactly at a time when he has been regathering his international authority. France's Nicolas Sarkozy and British and German leaders, who had worked to build international diplomatic pressure on Iran, are also humiliated. Russia and China, just about convinced of the need for sanctions on Iran to stop uranium enrichment, are now dancing away, entirely off the hook of responsibility.
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POPS Tehran Calls Iranian Kurds "Terrorists" In an exclusive interview with Newsmax recently in Berlin, Ahmadi says that Iran was now working hand-in-glove with Turkey to get PJAK labeled as a terrorist organization. “Iran knows they can’t make trouble for us directly because they have such bad relations with Europe. That’s why they are going through Turkey.” The Iranian regime has been telling journalists and diplomats that PJAK and the PKK (the Kurdistan Workers Party) are the same. “But we are an Iranian party, and have nothing to do with Turkey,” he says. PJAK has become a serious threat to the regime in Tehran because it is fighting to overthrow the clerical regime in favor of a secular republic and because it favors equality between men and women, Ahmadi asserts. The group has around 2,500 armed guerilla fighters, 40 percent of whom are women.
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POPS "Ahmadi-Pinochet, Iran Will Not Become Chile!" A new demonstration at Tehran University on Sunday, damaging the main gate to allow outsiders into the campus and denouncing President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, news agencies reported. The protesters chanted slogans against the president and carried banners calling for the release of three fellow students who have been held since May in a high-profile case, the Fars news agency state-run IRNA reported. Arabshahi said the protest lasted for more than two hours after starting at 12:00 pm (0830 GMT) and that it was peaceful. "We are gathered here to say students are alive and are critical of wrong polices," IRNA quoted another unnamed student as saying. The demonstration came a day after the intelligence ministry said it had arrested an unspecified number of people using "fake student cards to hold an illegal demonstration" at Tehran University. The timing of those arrests was not given, but it is likely that they took place before Friday which was annual students' day in Iran
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POPS 300,000 Iraqi's Sign Petition Condemning Iran "The most poisonous dagger stabbed in us, the Iraqi Shi'ites, is the (Iranian) regime shamefully exploiting the Shi'ite sect to implement its evil goals," the statement said. The statement said that besides 600 Shi'ite tribal leaders, the petition was signed by a number of lawyers, engineers, doctors and university professors. "They have targeted our national interests and began planning to divide Iraq and to separate the southern provinces from Iraq." Iran routinely pledges its support for a stable Iraq, and political leaders from Baghdad regularly visit Tehran.
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POPS Iran’s Secret Nuclear Arms Activities The White House hopes thereby to compel Tehran to level on its military nuclear program, whose existence it has so far denied, and demonstrate the failure of the international nuclear watchdog’s director, Mohammed ElBaradei and his vast inspection organization, to uncover the underhand nuclear activities in progress in Iran and Syria. Washington hopes that once the real facts are in the open, Russia and China, which back ElBaradei, will endorse a third round of UN Security Council sanctions, tough enough to progressively place Iran under economic siege. European companies, especially in Germany, fear that their economic boycott of trade with Iran will create a gap into which Russia and China will eagerly step. The failure of the Russian president’s talks in Tehran last month left him more amenable to an accommodation with Bush than before. His cooperation in the Bush strategy would leave China as the only standout DEBKAfile Exclusive Report
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POPS Warhead Built Within A Year UN's Nuclear Watchdog Russian officials yesterday called for patience, insisting Iran could still clinch a deal with the international community in the next few weeks. They pointed to other parts of the IAEA report showing Tehran had been cooperating with the agency's inspectors on other nuclear issues. "We are most concerned to prevent Iran being cornered so that they walk out of the Non Proliferation Treaty, and break relations with the IAEA," one Russian source said. He said Chinese officials were stepping up diplomatic pressure on Iran, with Moscow, to avert a collision. "They are on high alert that something has to be done quickly," the source said
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POPS Iran's Blueprints For Nuclear Warheads Governors of the IAEA meet in Vienna next week to discuss the latest report on Iran by the agency's chief Mohamed ElBaradei. While the inspectors had been allowed to examine them in the country, Teheran had up to now refused to let the IAEA have a copy for closer perusal. Diplomats at the International Atomic Energy Agency said the apparent concession was intended to head off the threat of new UN sanctions.
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POPS President Putin:: Found Iran's Leaders 'Bizarre' "This was the first time that Putin was talking to senior Islamic Republic leaders in a substantive and focused way," says a senior Russian official familiar with what happened. "The president found his Iranian interlocutor weird, to say the least. The Iranians mouthed a lot of eschatological nonsense and came close to urging Putin to convert to Islam. It was clear they lived in a world of their own." Ahmadinejad gave the impression he sought neither advice nor support from the Russians. All he wanted was to project the Islamic Republic as the regional superpower and invite Putin to acknowledge its new status. "It was as if Russia needed Iran, not the other way round," says the Russian source. "Putin was taken aback. He had not expected what he heard." "The Iranians think they have already won," reports one Russian source who witnessed the visit. "So intoxicated they appeared with hubris that they did not even ask Putin to help them ward off further United Nations sanctions."
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POPSChina's Betrayal Of Israel:Fighter Jets Sale To Iran At a time when U.S. and Israeli officials are increasingly considering the heavy burden of having to attack Iran’s nuclear weapons related facilities, China’s sale of the J-10 to Iran may signal the beginning of a deeper Chinese effort to protect Iran’s nuclear aspirations, much as it has ensured North Korea’s nuclear weapons development. The J-10’s defensive capabilities would be formidable, as would its ability to perform all-weather strikes with new precision guided weapons against Israeli or U.S. targets. For Israel a J-10 sale to Iran would mark a sobering betrayal of Israel’s considerable efforts to help China’s military modernization, to include its substantial help with the J-10 program, and one of its air-to-air missiles, both of which may apparently arm Iran.
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POPS Bahrain's Crown Prince Accuses Iran “While they don’t have the bomb yet, they are developing it, or the capability for it,” he said – the first time one of Iran’s Gulf neighbours effectively has accused it of lying about its nuclear programme. It is not a position from which to mince words. In an interview with The Times the Crown Prince has become the first Arab leader to jettison the language of diplomacy and directly accuse Tehran of seeking nuclear weapons. The US Fifth Fleet is based here, its main carrier battle group tasked with securing the Strait of Hormuz. The King Fahd causeway to Khobar makes Bahrain a gateway to the richest oil reserves on Earth in eastern Saudi Arabia. There is no suggestion – yet – of an Iranian invasion of Bahrain. But even as the kingdom throws up skyscrapers to compete with Dubai and Abu Dhabi for regional financial dominance, its security forces are on high alert for evidence of Iranian-backed “sleeper cells” that could bring them all tumbling down.
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POPSIranians Study Nuclear Physics In U.K. Universities Last week America intensified its economic sanctions against Tehran because of the refusal of President Mahmoud Ahmadine-jad to comply with international demands to open the country’s nuclear programme to inspection. Iran insists its uranium enrichment is for peaceful purposes. In the Commons last week Gordon Brown indicated that tougher sanctions by Britain were a possibility. European Union leaders are due to meet within two weeks to discuss whether to strengthen sanctions against Iran. Currently, vetting is done only when a university voluntarily informs the government that a candidate from outside the EU has been offered a place to study a sensitive subject. This creates a potential loophole. Under the new online system overseen by the security services, universities will be obliged to inform the government if any nonEuropean intends to take a course in such subjects. They will also be required to give details about what is included in the course.
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POPS Ahmadinejad Pushing Iran Into Future Trouble It could be a risky bet. Ahmadinejad's main vulnerability is domestic: rising criticism from a public angry over the country's poor economy and from politicians disillusioned by what they call his mismanagement. Even some conservatives have expressed fears Ahmadinejad is pushing Iran into future trouble over the nuclear issue Further sanctions, even unilateral ones from the U.S., could hurt the economy more by further isolating it from international finance—and Iranians were already expressing worries over the new measures. Ahmadinejad, who faces elections in 2009, knows "jobless and poor people will not vote for him if his policies bring them more difficulties," said Ahmad Bakhshayesh, a political science professor at Tehran's Azad University. But he believes "unilateral economic sanctions by Washington are not strong enough (to hurt Iran) due to Iran's widespread economic relations with the world."
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POPS Syria And Iran Manipulating Turkey On Iraq? Instead of playing charms with Tehran and Damascus, the Kurdestan city of Soleimaniye must reinforce its own deterring force and maintain stability and peace on its northern border with Turkey. Knowing all too well that the new Islamist Government in Ankara is shifting the grounds inside the modernist Kemalist Republic, Iraq’s Kurdish leadership mustn’t offer any reason for a Turkish adventure in their areas. Hence, it is recommended that the Kurdish leaders of Iraq be the ones to reign in the PKK to avoid having the Turkish Army crossing the borders. The US can – and should - broker arrangements between the Iraqi Kurds and the Turkish military to avoid the rise of an anti-Kurdish Triangle in the region.
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POPS United Nations Gallery Of Despots And Dictators Why are we funding the U.N.'s "human rights" nonsense? When President Bush told the United Nations General Assembly this week "the American people are disappointed by the failures of the Human Rights Council," his words could not have been more timely or deserved. He pointed out "This body has been silent on repression by regimes from Havana to Caracas to Pyongyang and Tehran - while focusing its criticism excessively on Israel." On Friday, the Council piled the dung heap higher. It wrapped up another session in Geneva by adopting two more resolutions against Israel and no resolutions critical of the human-rights record of any of the other 191 U.N. member states.
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POPS Tehran’s Atomic Ayatollahs Can Iran spark global conflict? Yes, but so can other nations, some of them far less dangerous than the regime run by Tehran’s atomic ayatollahs. It’s not only Mahmoud Ahmadinejad about whom we should be worried. Unfortunately, the international system is so fragile that almost any autocrat can commit the act that brings about global conflagration. Today, we see the same conditions that existed before World Wars I and II.
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POPS Assassination Plot In Tehran Mr. Putin, in the first visit by a Russian leader to Iran since Josef Stalin met with President Roosevelt and Prime Minister Churchill in Tehran in 1943, has cast himself as the go-between, siding with America until now in an effort to bring Iran into line with the demands of the U.N. Security Council. In his final months as president, Mr. Putin is seeking to pull off a diplomatic coup in Tehran that would settle the Caspian dispute in Iran's favor in exchange for Iran being more open to the world about its nuclear plants. Mr. Putin appears to be hoping that a pacified Iran might allow NATO to postpone or even abandon its plan to site missile shield technology in European states bordering Russia, ostensibly to intercept an Iranian missile attack on Europe, an issue that has angered him. Iran is relying on the Russian leader, in concert with the Chinese communist leadership, to prevent the adoption of sterner American proposals.
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POPS Iraqi Shiite Leaders Seeks US-Iran Talks "We will do our best not to allow a permanent (foreign) military base on our land," al-Hakim told hundreds of supporters gathered outside the party's headquarters in Baghdad's Jadriyah district. In the sermon, al-Hakim also urged the region's Arab countries to support the political process in Iraq by opening diplomatic missions here and he appealed on "other nearby Islamic countries" -- a reference to Iran -- to support Iraq and its people.
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POPS Iran 'Lying' About Nukes Says Rice "There is an Iranian history of obfuscation and, indeed, lying to the IAEA," she said, referring to the International Atomic Energy Agency. U.S. officials have long accused Iran of trying to develop nuclear weapons behind the facade of a civil atomic energy program, charges that Tehran denies. But Rice's strong words, including the blunt reference to Iranian "lying," come at a critical time in dealing with the matter. She also noted that Russia had in the past demonstrated its concern about Iran's program by limiting its cooperation to prevent Tehran from acquiring a full nuclear fuel cycle that could be used to produce weapons-grade material. "That concern was seen very clearly in Russia's offer to Iran to enrich and reprocess in a joint venture and to bring back any spent fuel so that the fuel cycle wouldn't be available to Iran," she said. "I think there is a reason for that and that is suspicion about Iran's intentions."
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POPS Strike On Iran? The Khorramshar News Agency, which is published by the ethnic Arab underground of Iran’s oil-rich Khuzestan, reported early Oct. 1 that the entire staff of Russian nuclear engineers and experts employed in building the nuclear reactor at Bushehr had abruptly packed their bags Friday, Sept. 28, and flew back to Russia. The agency’s one-liner offers no source or explanation. DEBKAfile have obtained no corroboration of its report from any other source
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POPSFreedoms Watch Ad Rips Columbia Freedom of speech is not a guaranteed, absolute right to a dictator who doesn�t give the same rights to his people. Iranian dissidents are imprisoned, tortured and sometimes, publicly executed.
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