Syria’s Bashar Assad Speaks to Western Press (video)
Syria’s President Bashar Assad Sets ABC News Senior Propagandist Barbra Walters Straight.
by Tony Cartalucci
Land Destroyer Report
December 11, 2011
Before watching this full 46 minute interview by ABC News with Syrian President Bashar Assad, and the disgraceful behavior of ABC’s Barbra Walters it would useful to note several facts completely dispelling the false premises from which Walters is operating from.
1. The UN human rights report on Syria consisted of no evidence, simply interviews of alleged witnesses produced by Syria’s opposition and interviewed in Geneva. The report itself was compiled in part by Karen Koning AbuZayd, a director of the US Washington-based corporate think-tank, Middle East Policy Council, that includes Exxon men, CIA agents, US military and government representatives, and even the president of the US-Qatar Business Council, which includes amongst its membership, AlJazeera, Chevron, Exxon, munitions manufacturer Raytheon (who supplied the opening salvos during NATO’s operations against Libya), and Boeing.
2. Violence amongst protests was confirmed and documented by even the mainstream press as early as April 2011, where protesters were committing arson on public buildings including administrative centers and police stations. Reports of snipers attacking protesters and troops simultaneously were also reported. These gunmen are now claimed to be working amongst the “Free Syrian Army.” As early as June, hundreds of Syrian troops had already been reported dead.
3. It is confirmed that Libya’s Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG, listed by the US State Department as a foreign terrorist organization, #26) led by Abdulhakim Belhaj is on the Turkey-Syrian border preparing militants to fight the Syrian government with the assistance of Turkey’s government. This hardly constitutes a “Syrian uprising,” but rather a foreign funded and facilitated invasion by proxy led by NATO and consisting of a very real terrorist threat.
4. Regime change in Syria was a foregone conclusion as early as 1991. General Wesley Clark in a 2007 speech in California relayed a 1991 conversation between himself and then Under Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz. Wolfowitz indicated that America had 5-10 years to clean up old Soviet “client regimes,” namely Syria, Iran, and Iraq, before the next super power rose up to challenge western hegemony.
5. The unrest in Syria from the beginning was entirely backed by Western corporate-financier interests and part of a long-planned agenda for region-wide regime change. Syria has been slated for regime change since as early as 1991. In 2002, then US Under Secretary of State John Bolton added Syria to the growing “Axis of Evil.” It would be later revealed that Bolton’s threats against Syria manifested themselves as covert funding and support for opposition groups inside of Syria spanning both the Bush and Obama administrations.
In an April 2011 CNN article, acting State Department spokesman Mark Toner stated, “We’re not working to undermine that [Syrian] government. What we are trying to do in Syria, through our civil society support, is to build the kind of democratic institutions, frankly, that we’re trying to do in countries around the globe. What’s different, I think, in this situation is that the Syrian government perceives this kind of assistance as a threat to its control over the Syrian people.”
Toner’s remarks came after the Washington Post released cables indicating the US has been funding Syrian opposition groups since at least 2005 and continued until today.
In an April AFP report, Michael Posner, the assistant US Secretary of State for Human Rights and Labor, stated that the “US government has budgeted $50 million in the last two years to develop new technologies to help activists protect themselves from arrest and prosecution by authoritarian governments.” The report went on to explain that the US “organized training sessions for 5,000 activists in different parts of the world. A session held in the Middle East about six weeks ago gathered activists from Tunisia, Egypt, Syria and Lebanon who returned to their countries with the aim of training their colleagues there.” Posner would add, “They went back and there’s a ripple effect.” That ripple effect of course is the “Arab Spring,” and in Syria’s case, the impetus for the current unrest threatening to unhinge the nation and invite in foreign intervention.
With these facts in mind, viewers can fully appreciate the frothing duplicity, discourtesy, and intellectual depravity displayed by Barbra Walters who “saw pictures,” read a fraudulent UN report written by authors with ties to US corporate-financier interests, and listened to an Obama speech and therefore is an expert on the premeditated, US-facilitated chaos sweeping across parts of Syria. And even as she sits in Syria’s calm capital of Damascus, invited in by Assad who has been accused of barring foreign reporters (foreign journalist Dr. Webster Tarpley’s interview while in Syria can be found here), she still insists the nation is in utter chaos, irrationally closing itself off from the world, and with a population completely turned against the Syrian government.
For the record: Assad’s reference (at 33:30) to the 1992 LA Riots and the US using troops to restore order, it should be noted that indeed the US Army and Marines were deployed, and between military and police, they killed 10 during operations to restore order throughout the city. Barbra Walters either out of ignorance or additional duplicity, claims the US didn’t kill anyone.
North Korea may soon be able to strike USA with ultimate doomsday weapon that deactivates (nearly) all electronics
by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger
Natural News
December 7, 2011
(NaturalNews) Obama administration officials have released new intelligence indicating North Korea is building mobile ICBMs that will soon be able to reach the United States. This was reported in the Washington Times, which states, “New intelligence indicates that North Korea is moving ahead with building its first road-mobile intercontinental ballistic missile, an easily hidden weapon capable of hitting the United States.” (http://www.washingtontimes.com/news…)
ICBMs typically carry nuclear warheads, and they can easily target cities on the West Coast such as Los Angeles or Seattle. But even this threat doesn’t compare to the “doomsday weapon” that China or Russia could almost certainly launch right now: A high-altitude EMP weapon (HEMP for short, and I’m not joking).
High-Altitude EMP could fry the USA back into the pre-industrial age
HEMP weapons are detonated in the high atmosphere, theoretically as high as 300 miles above the ground (well above the orbits of most satellites, even). Once detonated, the energy released by these weapons interacts with the Earth’s magnetic field, producing an extremely fast and powerful electromagnetic burst that rushes to the ground at 94% the speed of light, slamming everything on the ground with as much as 50,000 volts per square meter at high amps.
Not surprisingly, such a phenomenon would fry virtually every piece of electronics they touch, as today’s electronics are manufactured with delicate circuitry that simply cannot withstand such extreme voltage ranges.
Instantly taken out of service would be many automobiles, televisions, cell phones, air conditioners, airplanes, radios, military electronics, and many satellites. Even more worryingly, such an attack would also take out the backup generators and control electronics for active nuclear power plants, which as we’ve already reported here on NaturalNews, could unleash a wave of nuclear meltdowns across the USA (http://www.naturalnews.com/033564_s…).
As Duncan Long writes on a survival website:
“A major area of concern when it comes to EMP is nuclear reactors located in the US. Unfortunately, a little-known Federal dictum prohibits the NRC from requiring power plants to withstand the effects of a nuclear war. This means that, in the event of a nuclear war, many nuclear reactors’ control systems might will be damaged by an EMP surge. In such a case, the core-cooling controls might become inoperable and a core melt down and breaching of the containment vessel by radioactive materials into the surrounding area might well result.” (http://www.aussurvivalist.com/nucle…)
Extensively studied by the government
This is not science fiction. EMP blasts from nuclear weapons have been extensively studied from the very first nuclear tests in the 1940’s. Back then, the world didn’t have much in the way of electronics, so the early effects of EMP were barely noted. But throughout the 1960’s and 70’s, as more testing was done, it became apparent that the electromagnetic pulse effects of nuclear detonations could be devastating.
Today, with civilization running on computers, electronics, GPS units and mobile phones, such a blast could literally fry a modern nation back into the pre-industrial age.
Well, at least back to the 1800’s anyway, where the only tools you could really rely on were shovels, leather straps and shotguns. Firearms, you see, don’t have electronics, so they’ll be fully functional even after an EMP attack. Keep this in mind when you consider how to survive a post-EMP scenario.
Interestingly, governments openly admit that EMP attacks would wipe out all the electronics that keep modern civilization working. The Washington state Department of Health, Office of Radiation Protection explains:
When “detonated,” an EMP weapon produces a pulse of energy that creates a powerful electromagnetic field capable of short-circuiting a wide range of electronic equipment, particularly computers, satellites, radios, radar receivers and even civilian traffic lights. Since EMP is electromagnetic energy traveling at the speed of light, all of the vulnerable electronic equipment in the detonation zone could be affected simultaneously.
Society has entered the information age and is dependent on electronic systems that work with components that are very susceptible to excessive electric currents and voltages. Many of these electronic systems are controlled in some way by semiconductors. Semiconductor devices fail when they encounter an EMP because of the local heating that occurs. Failure of semi-conductive chips could destroy industrial processes, railway networks, power and phone systems, and access to water supplies.
Commercial computer equipment is particularly vulnerable to EMP effects. Computers used in data processing systems, communications systems, displays, industrial control applications, including road and rail signaling, and those embedded in military equipment, such as signal processors, electronic flight controls and digital engine control systems, are all potentially vulnerable to the EMP effect.
Other electronic devices and electrical equipment may also be destroyed by the EMP effect. Telecommunications equipment can be highly vulnerable and receivers of all varieties are particularly sensitive to EMP. Therefore radar and electronic warfare equipment, satellite, microwave, UHF, VHF, HF and low band communications equipment and television equipment are all potentially vulnerable to the EMP effect. Cars with electronic ignition systems/ and ignition chips are also vulnerable.
Source: http://www.doh.wa.gov/ehp/rp/factsh…
A single high-altitude detonation could reboot human civilization in North America
If you still think I’m making all this up, by the way, check out the entry on Wikipedia which explains all this in much more detail: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electr…
There, you’ll find a fascinating map which shows something rather horrifying: A single burst just 300 miles above the Earth would cover the entire United States (minus Hawaii and Alaska) while also nailing most of Canada and Mexico as well. See that graphic here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:E…
This map was created based on testimony given by Gary Smith to the US House National Security Committee on July 16, 1997.
That’s right: With one relatively small nuclear weapon detonated high above the Earth, an entire modern nation could be effectively destroyed. Why? Because without electronics, you get runaway starvation, riots, fires, and a complete breakdown of law and order.
A near-instant collapse of modern cities
Imagine Los Angeles, for example, if all the water pumps went out. Imagine Chicago if food deliveries stopped. Many of the rigs on the highway, you see, would be instantly shut down with an EMP burst. Every plane, train and automobile — except for those built pre-1980’s or so — might instantly become road kill.
Imagine police trying to function without police radios. Fire and other emergency services are wholly dependent on electronics. Deliveries of food, water, medical supplies and consumer goods are all dependent on electronics. Oil refineries, nuclear power plants, coal-fired power plants and even renewable energy systems are all entirely driven by complex electronics. All these electronics would be vaporized in a nanosecond.
And no, “surge protectors” cannot protect anything. The EMP wave moves far too fast for surge protectors to trip their own relays. So all the surge protectors get blown out before you can even blink an eye, and then the remainder of the pulse fries all the electronics that were supposed to be protected. Only those electronics specifically shielded against EMP attacks will be protected (and only the military bothers with such expensive retrofits).
As the next graphic shows (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:H…), such a weapon detonated even at just 100km above the surface of the planet would unleash anywhere from 10,000 to 50,000 volts per square meter. This chart doesn’t cite the amperage of the current, but military experiments have shown it is more than sufficient to fry all electronics that aren’t specifically shielded against EMP. If you happen to be underground at the moment the pulse hits (i.e. in a subway station), your cell phone may be spared, but the cell phone towers of course will all be kaput.
Both Russia and China probably already have these weapons
North Korea is undoubtedly working on developing such weapons as a way to bomb advanced nations back to the level of low technology found in North Korea itself. But the real worry here is that China and Russia probably already have such weapons and could launch them at any time.
“The non-lethal nature of electromagnetic weapons makes their use far less politically damaging than that of conventional munitions, and therefore broadens the range of military options available,” explains the Department of Health website for Washington state (http://www.doh.wa.gov/ehp/rp/factsh…). “Several nations, with United States at the forefront, are reported to have developed non-nuclear bombs capable of generating EMPs.”
This is a game-changer. In the “old” mode of thinking about nuclear war, bombs were unleashed on targeted cities, then calibrated to detonate just a mile or two above the city in order to maximize the intensity of the nuclear burst. But with the rise of electronics-driven societies, the real weakness becomes not the brick and mortar of buildings but the delicate electronic circuits that keep civilization humming. Take away the electronics, and an advanced nation is far worse off than if it were physically blasted by a high-yield weapon. After all, a physical city can be rebuilt as long as you have the electronics to coordinate rescue operations and shipments of materials to rebuild. But if you take away the electronics, the cities destroy themselves with riots, fires, starvation and disease.
Why America is unable to stop such an attack
No doubt the strategic thinkers at the Pentagon have already realized all this. They don’t talk about it much, and they certainly don’t make it public, because if the public really knew the seriousness of this threat, they might utterly freak out.
You see, America has no capability whatsoever to stop some other nation from launching a nuclear device into high orbit (300 miles, say) and detonating it over North America. There is simply no military capability to halt such a missile or to block the EMP effects. Ronald Reagan’s “Star Wars” defense system never became a reality.
The only real way to stop such an attack is to stop pissing off other nations, and of course America can’t even do that because it’s running around the world interfering in everyone’s business, running secret military ops in Iran right now (http://www.latimes.com/news/nationw…), overthrowing national governments with CIA-funded terrorist rebels (Libya, for example), unleashing economic hit men to enslave developing nations, and basically running around the global playground like a giant bully.
This is not a way to win friends. If anything, the USA has been building resentment among other powerful nations such as China, which not only holds a shockingly high percentage of the U.S. national debt, but also has advanced rocketry technology and an ability to launch nuclear missiles into high orbit.
Both Russia and China are fed up with the U.S. mucking around in the Middle East, and nearly everyone in the Middle East is fed up with U.S. support for Israel. What all this means is that America is making enemies, not friends, and some of those enemies no doubt have EMP technology already developed that could literally “bomb” America back into the pre-industrial era.
Why the real threats have little to do with individual terrorists
As you can tell if you’re getting all this, the real threats against America have almost nothing to do with lone terrorists trying to bomb a single airplane, for example. The TSA is a cruel joke. It will no more keep you safe than wishing for a magical unicorn to show up and whisk you away from danger.
Even the events of 9/11 would pale in comparison to the total devastation unleashed by a high-altitude EMP device. Beyond a few skyscrapers being leveled, imagine entire cities being zapped into a state of instant electronic death. Such an act would transform cities into death zones from which few would escape alive. (Cities are not designed to sustain life without huge inputs from outside, including food, water, electricity, fuel, raw materials, and so on. Absent those inputs, they become concrete tombs…)
See, most of the U.S. government is wasting its time running roadside checkpoints and trying to entrap gullible teens into acting like terrorists (http://www.naturalnews.com/034325_F…). What the government should be doing is figuring out how to stop acting like the bully of the world and start making economic trading partners instead of making enemies everywhere.
Why international trade is crucial for halting war
The only way to stop Russia or China, for example, from frying North America with a HEMP weapon is to make it more painful for them to lose the USA than keep it around. And that means engaging in two-way trade to create win-win economic ties that would lose a lot of money for some very rich people if bombs started going off. This strategy has worked for China-Taiwan relations, by the way, where China-Taiwan investments are now so commonplace that the two nations are strongly economically dependent on each other. The best “defense” against a military invasion, it turns out, is to have strong economic trading partners who need your nation to stick around so they have viable trading partners.
It’s also effective to have your own HEMP weapons that you can unleash upon your neighbors, should they have any crazy thoughts about bombing you. “Mutually Assured Destruction,” believe it or not, is actually a very wise military tactic for self defense. People may bash the apparent insanity of the idea, but it is one of the things that has kept America relatively safe for generations. If we didn’t have nuclear weapons ready to be unleashed on other nations, do you really think we wouldn’t have already been bombed in the 1960’s during the Cuban Missile Crisis? I don’t have a lot of kind words for the military industrial complex, but at the end of the day, I must honestly acknowledge the fact that the U.S. military’s possession of nuclear weapons has effectively countered the nuclear arsenals of other nations.
In the same way, the most polite place in the world you will ever visit is a small town where everybody carries a concealed weapon. You’ll hear a lot of “sir” and “ma’am” in polite conversation. People tend to avoid arguments for precisely the reason you might imagine: Because they’re all armed. “Mutually Assured Destruction” is a deterrent to violence at both the local level and the global level. It may sound insane, but on a practical level, it prevents violence and helps keep the peace.
And that’s why the USA is no doubt also working on its own HEMP weapons. Even China is extremely vulnerable to the EMP destruction of electronics. It’s no longer a developing nation, you see. China left that in the dust decades ago. Today, China is a high-tech, electronically-organized nation in much the same way as the USA. Perhaps only Papua New Guinea would be completely immune to an EMP attack. Nearly all other nations (including North Korea) would be devastated by it.
Solutions: What can YOU do about this right now?
Okay, so if you’re convinced that the threat of EMP weapons looms over all advanced nations today, what exactly can you do about it?
I’ll answer it in three words: Go low tech.
In addition to your high-tech, electronically timed clothes dryer, have a clothesline outside so you can use the sun to dry your clothes.
In addition to your high-tech Toyota Prius that’s packed with high-density electronics, have an old “beater” wagon from the 1970’s sitting around in case you need it. Heck, you don’t even need to keep paying the license taxes on it if you don’t drive it day to day.
For every tool you have that’s electronic, have a hand-powered alternative standing by: Hand saws, hand drills and other hand-powered tools are easy to come by. Don’t rely entirely on electronics.
Think about low-tech items that reliably work. Duct tape. Scissors. Shovels. Quality cutlery in the kitchen. And if you can, find yourself one of those antique treadle sewing machines powered by your foot! (I’ve been trying to find one of these for months and can’t dig one up…)
How are you gonna write things down when the electronics are all melted? You’d be amazed how many people no longer have pencil and paper, especially among the younger generation which has entirely abandoned wristwatches, too. (Their mobile phones tell them the time, you see.) Have you ever tried to MAKE a pencil? You’d be amazed how difficult it is. It’s so much easier to just buy a bunch right now and have them stored away. They’re cheap, and for the moment, UPS trucks still operate just fine and they’ll bring these pencils right to your doorstep in a pretty brown box.
Getting back to basics
In a way, a world without electronics might actually be a far more “real” world than the one in which we live today. More peaceful… back to nature… a place where local community would mean something once again. But of course there would also be a huge price to pay for that transition in terms of lost lives in the cities where people are so disconnected from the real world that they are utterly unable to survive in it. Today’s teens are so addicted to texting devices that I’m pretty sure some of them would just flat-out drop dead within 24 hours if the cell towers stopped functioning.
The good news in all this is that getting back to basics is a wise strategy no matter what threats we may be facing in the near future: Nuclear war, police state tyranny, EMP weapons, natural disasters, Earth changes, and so on. The more you can rely on your own two hands — and simple tools that leverage your efforts — the more likely you are to survive the next decade.
It also goes without saying that if EMP weapons are unleashed upon the world, the internet will be destroyed, meaning you won’t be able to search Google to find answers like “How do I grow tomatoes?” You’ll need to either have the knowledge in your head or have the physical books on your shelf which is one of the reasons why I still buy lots of physical books. They don’t break, and they never have to be rebooted.
If there’s one thing I’ve really learned in all these years of analyzing society, history and technology, it’s that technology is fragile, and so are civilizations. The society we take for granted today is far more fragile than you might imagine, and the whole thing could come tumbling down in a microsecond. It wouldn’t even take an act of war to make it happen: just one high-energy solar flare could accomplish much the same effect.
If you want your children to survive and prosper in our world, teach ’em the basics: How to grow gardens. How to care for animals. How to think for themselves, live off the land and resist buying into the bull being spewed by technocrats. When the electronic heartbeat of modern civilization comes to a screeching halt, all the circuit boards in the world won’t help you in any way whatsoever. You’ll have to save yourself. And you’d better have a little bit of gold, silver, ammo and garden tools packed away if you hope to have any real chance of making it through the transition.
Learn the skills (and gather the goods) while you still can.
If you want some real skills, here’s an online video course I recently filmed with Daniel Vitalis, called “Surthrival” :
http://premium.naturalnews.tv/Surth…
Learn more about EMP weapons and protection methods at:
http://www.futurescience.com/emp/em…
http://empcommission.org/
Read the Critical National Infrastructures Report at:
http://empcommission.org/docs/A2473…
Editor’s note:There is a lot of information about EMPs on the internet, and much of it is flatly false. Beware of all sorts of myths that say things like EMP blasts will “fry your brain” (they won’t) or that you can put your electronic gear in a microwave oven and cut off the cord, making it function like a small Faraday cage. That doesn’t work, as you can clearly test yourself by tossing your cell phone into a microwave and then calling it from another phone. Some people say you can build your own home-made Faraday protection devices by placing cardboard boxes inside galvanized trash cans, but looking around the ‘net, there is a lot of conflicting information on whether this really works. Overall, there isn’t much reliable, proven information on the ‘net about how to actually protect valuable electronics from EMP attacks. One of the reasons for this is because virtually no one living today has personally experienced an EMP attack, so practically nothing has been tested against it.
US Special Forces Mass On Syrian Border
Troops airlifted out of Iraq to face Assad’s forces
by Paul Joseph Watson
Infowars.com
December 13, 2011
Following similar reports by former FBI translator Sibel Edmonds, Israeli intelligence sources confirm that US Special Forces are massing in Jordan on the Syrian border having been transferred from Iraq.
On Sunday Edmonds reported that hundreds of foreign troops were witnessed near the Jordanian border village of Al-Mafraq, having moved back and forth between King Hussein Air Base of al-Mafraq and villages adjacent to the Syrian border.After interviewing an employee in the London-based office of Royal Jordanian Airlines, Nizar Nayouf also reported that, “At least one US aircraft carrying military personnel landed in the Prince Hassan Air base located about 100 km to the east of the city of Al-Mafraq.”
According to Edmonds, the mainstream media has been eager to keep the movement of the troops under wraps, with one journalist from a major publication being told by his editor that there would be no coverage of the story.
The Israeli intelligence outlet DebkaFile has now backed these reports, stating that, “American special forces troops have been diverted to positions in Jordan opposite a Syrian tank concentration building up across the kingdom’s northern border.”
US troops were airlifted out of the Ain al-Assad air base in Iraq to take up positions in Jordan from Thursday onwards, according to the report.
Instead of returning to military bases in Europe or the Persian Gulf, the troops have lined up directly opposite Assad’s forces 10 kilometers from the Syrian border and have constructed “surveillance towers and army posts in the Jordanian villages of Albaej, Zubaydiah and al-Nahdah.”
NATO powers are preparing a new “humanitarian intervention” on the back of disputed reports that the Assad regime has killed 5,000 pro-democracy demonstrators. Skeptical voices have pointed out that, just like Libya, the so-called protesters are in fact militants attempting to overthrow the government in the course of a civil war.
Just as Al-Qaeda terrorists were used to oust Gaddafi, hundreds of Libyan rebels were airlifted into Syria to aid the opposition in carrying out attacks against government forces.
As we reported last week, the United States has deployed a total of three warships to the Middle East, along with several other attack boats, as tensions in the region escalate. Russia has denied reports that warships it sent to Syrian territorial waters last month were for the purpose of discouraging any potential military strike on the country.
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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.
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Vet Says Soldiers Are Starting to Wake Up to Gov’t Lies (video)
YouTube – SmokinJoeTrainer
December 8, 2011
(hat tip: Activist Post)
Bullets & bombs ‘humanitarian aid’ to help Syria? (video)
RT
December 12, 2011
In Syria, violence intensifies as clashes between government forces and army defectors spread. This Sunday, 23 people have reportedly been killed in battles in the south of the country, and new fights have erupted in the northwest. To discuss the ongoing violence in Syria, RT joined live from Beirut by Dr. Rania Masri who’s a professor at the University of Balamand.
Lindsey Williams: The Devil’s Messiah (video)
The Alex Jones Show
December 9, 2011
On the Friday edition of the Alex Jones Show, Lindsey Williams provides a follow-up on Iran, oil and the globalists’ plan for war on the Islamic nation.
THE CLOCK IS TICKING: “Shadow War” Heating Up. War With Iran: A Provocation Away?
by Tom Burghardt
Global Research
December 5, 2011
Amid conflicting reports that a huge explosion at Iran’s uranium conversion facility in Isfahan occurred last week, speculation was rife that Israel and the United States were stepping-up covert attacks against defense and nuclear installations.
The Isfahan complex transforms mined uranium into uranium fluoride gas which is then “spun” by centrifuges that enrich it into usable products for medical research and for Iran’s civilian nuclear energy program.
While Iranian officials sought to distance themselves from initial reporting by the semi-official Fars news agency that a “loud explosion” was heard across the city, but that “the sound of the explosion was from [a] military exercise,” has been contradicted by several sources.
Indeed, some Iranian officials have denied that an explosion even took place.
On Tuesday however, The Times reported that “satellite imagery … confirmed that a blast that rocked the city of Isfahan on Monday struck the uranium enrichment facility there, despite denials by Tehran.”
“The images,” Times reporter Sheera Frenkel averred, “clearly showed billowing smoke and destruction, negating Iranian claims yesterday that no such explosion had taken place. Israeli intelligence officials told The Times that there was ‘no doubt’ that the blast struck the nuclear facilities at Isfahan and that it was ‘no accident’.”
Despite clear evidence that Israel and the United States have stepped-up their shadow war against the Islamic Republic, Defense Minister Ehud Barak “played down speculation on Saturday that Israel and U.S.-led allies were waging clandestine war on Iran, saying sanctions and the threat of military strikes were still the way to curb its nuclear program,” Reuters reported.
Proverbial “facts on the ground” however, tell a different tale.
The latest attack on Iran’s civilian nuclear program followed a blast two weeks ago at the sprawling Bid Ganeh missile base 25 miles west of Tehran.
That blast killed upwards of 30 members of the Iran Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), including Major General Hassan Moqqadam, a senior leader of Iran’s missile program.
Satellite imagery shows much of the base in ruins. The attack was described by Time Magazine as the work “of Israel’s external intelligence service, Mossad.”
In a backhanded confirmation that Monday’s blast was the handiwork of Mossad and their terrorist proxies, the Mojahedin-e Khalq (MEK), Frenkel wrote that “Dan Meridor, the Israeli Intelligence Minister, said: ‘There are countries who impose economic sanctions and there are countries who act in other ways in dealing with the Iranian nuclear threat’.”
Frenkel reported that “Major-General Giora Eiland, Israel’s former director of national security told Israel’s army radio that the Isfahan blast was no accident. ‘There aren’t many coincidences, and when there are so many events there is probably some sort of guiding hand, though perhaps it’s the hand of God’,” Eiland said.
The Isfahan blast, as with other recent attacks, were allegedly in response to allegations made last month in a report filed by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) that Iran may be seeking to develop nuclear weapons.
However, while the “Agency continues to verify the non-diversion of declared nuclear material at the nuclear facilities,” the ginned-up report relied on information provided by “Member states,” presumably Israel and United States in the form of forged computer laptop documents and other “intelligence sources.”
The Agency claims they were “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.”
Black operations targeting the Islamic Republic aren’t solely the province of America’s “stationary aircraft carrier in the Middle East,” Israel. As Seymour Hersh reported last spring in The New Yorker: “In the past six years, soldiers from the Joint Special Operations Force, working with Iranian intelligence assets, put in place cutting-edge surveillance techniques, according to two former intelligence officers.”
In 2007, ABC News disclosed that “the CIA has received secret presidential approval to mount a covert ‘black’ operation to destabilize the Iranian government.”
Unnamed sources told ABC News that President Bush signed a presidential finding “that puts into motion a CIA plan that reportedly includes a coordinated campaign of propaganda, disinformation and manipulation of Iran’s currency and international financial transactions.”
Congress has appropriated some $300 million for the CIA and the Pentagon’s covert war.
In the intervening years, those programs have turned lethal. Widely applauded by “liberal” Democrats and “conservative” Republicans alike, these programs have continued, indeed expanded under Barack Obama’s “progressive” Democratic administration.
Despite the fact that there “is also constant satellite coverage of major suspect areas in Iran,” The New Yorker reported “that nothing significantly new had been learned to suggest that Iran is pursuing a nuclear weapon.”
‘Shadow War’ Heating Up
Iran’s intelligence services haven’t been sitting idly by watching American, British, and Israeli terror operations.
On Sunday, Al Jazeera reported that the Iranian armed forces “brought down an unmanned US spy plane.”
“Iran’s military has downed an intruding RQ-170 American drone in eastern Iran,” Iran’s Arabic-language Al Alam state television network quoted an unnamed source as saying on Sunday.”
“The semiofficial Fars news agency,” Al Jazeera averred, said “that the plane is now in the possession of Iran’s armed forces. The Fars news agency is close to the powerful Revolutionary Guard.”
“Fars reported that the drone had been brought down through a combined effort by Iran’s armed forces, air defence forces and its electronic warfare unit after the plane briefly violated the country’s airspace at its eastern border.”
An unnamed source, according to AFP, warned that Iran’s armed response would “not be limited to our country’s borders” for the “blatant territorial violation.”
AFP also reported that in June, “Brigadier General Amir-Ali Hajizadeh, the commander of the Guards’ aerospace unit, said Iran had shown Russian experts the US drones in its possession.
“‘Russian experts requested to see these drones and they looked at both the downed drones and the models made by the Guards through reverse engineering,’ he said.”
In a further sign that the “shadow war” is heating up, last week’s occupation of the British embassy in Tehran may have been a warning to the U.K. over sanctioned leaks by the British defense establishment to The Guardian which suggested that “Britain’s armed forces are stepping up their contingency planning for potential military action against Iran.”
“In anticipation of a potential attack,” The Guardian disclosed that “British military planners are examining where best to deploy Royal Navy ships and submarines equipped with Tomahawk cruise missiles over the coming months as part of what would be an air and sea campaign.
The embassy occupation and subsequent downgrade of diplomatic relations between Britain and Iran mean these threats are being taken very seriously indeed.
Asia Times Online reported that Iran’s claim “to have arrested 12 spies working for the United States Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) is potentially a major blow to American intelligence-gathering efforts in Iran and to American intelligence generally.”
Following closely on the heels of last month’s arrest in Lebanon of some 30 CIA operatives by Hezbollah “is suggestive of a major American intelligence defeat, if not a full-blown disaster,” Asia Times analyst Mahan Abedin wrote.
Far from being a high-quality intelligence operation, Abedin averred that the “CIA is operating a lower threshold of quality control in terms of agent recruitment and management” and that this reflects “a scatter-gun approach by the CIA inasmuch as the agency is targeting virtually any Iranian citizen it believes could potentially provide useful information on the CIA’s target set.”
According to Abedin’s Iranian sources, the CIA’s team of “operatives and analysts” appears to have been “embedded within numerous official and unofficial American organizations, including US embassies, multinational corporations, medium-sized commercial organizations, recruitment consultancies, immigration and wider legal services, academic and quasi-academic institutions and reputable (i.e. longstanding) as well as newly set up think tanks.”
In other words, as many researchers have amply documented, efforts by the U.S. secret state to subvert a target nation’s internal defenses prior to full-on “regime change” either through direct warfare (Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, now Syria) or via an American-brokered “color revolution” (Yugoslavia, Venezuela, Ukraine, Georgia) are not about “freedom and democracy” but to achieve Washington’s geopolitical goals: total economic and political domination.
“But despite clear improvements in counter-espionage capabilities and protective security measures,” Abedin writes, “Iran is still some way away from making it prohibitively costly for Western agencies to operate inside the country. Indeed, all the major West European, North American and Israeli intelligence services are either active inside Iran or work closely with some elements of the Iranian diaspora.”
Describing the “psychological warfare” dimensions of a looming confrontation, Abedin wrote in a subsequent Asia Times Online piece that the covert war operates on two fronts, “one visible and rhetorical and conducted through official and unofficial media and the other secret and centered on sabotage.”
“In so far as the former is concerned Iran has risen to the challenge by superseding tough American and Israeli rhetoric with even tougher rhetoric.”
“However,” Abedin averred, “it is on the sabotage front–where Iran appears to be under attack from several directions–that the Islamic Republic is raising eyebrows even amongst its hardcore supporters by displaying remarkable tolerance in the face of intolerable provocations.”
“More broadly, the Iranians are not paying sufficient attention to the long-term consequences of military confrontation with the United States and her allies.”
That the “long-term consequences” of a Western-led attack will be an unmitigated disaster for the Iranian people, indeed for people across the entire region and for world peace and stability as a whole, doesn’t mean that Washington won’t gamble that a “limited war” could be “contained.”
As analyst William Blum wrote in his Anti-Empire Report: “The secret to understanding US foreign policy is that there is no secret. Principally, one must come to the realization that the United States strives to dominate the world. Once one understands that, much of the apparent confusion, contradiction, and ambiguity surrounding Washington’s policies fades away.”
“Examine a map,” Blum observed. “Iran sits directly between two of the United States’ great obsessions–Iraq and Afghanistan … directly between two of the world’s greatest oil regions–the Persian Gulf and Caspian Sea areas … it’s part of the encirclement of the two leading potential threats to American world domination–Russia and China … Tehran will never be a client state or obedient poodle to Washington. How could any good, self-respecting Washington imperialist resist such a target? Bombs Away!”
Commenting on the Isfahan attack which described Israeli “black ops” as a “route to war,” left-wing analyst Richard Silverstein wrote on the Tikun Olam web site, that “the tragedy of this black ops program is that it will not rattle or deter Iran, as Israeli intelligence believes.”
“Contrary to what Israeli generals believe,” Silverstein wrote, “the Iranians are not pushovers, they can’t be intimidated. They’re willing to die for their country even more than Israelis. They’ve fought defensive wars going back decades and lost millions in conflict. A few explosions, assassinations, and computer viruses will not spook them.”
The drift towards war, which include moves to strangle Iran’s economy prior to a strike, has gained traction on multiple fronts.
On Friday, the U.S. Senate unanimously passed legislation as part of the $644. 3 billion 2012 Defense Authorization Act that “would give the president the power starting July 1 to bar foreign financial institutions that do business with Iran’s central bank from having correspondent bank accounts in the U.S.,” Bloomberg BusinessWeek reported.
Coupled with reports that Germany and other EU member states will “considerably strengthen” sanctions against Iran, the leftist publication German Foreign Policy disclosed that “Berlin is participating in the intensification of western pressure on Teheran.”
Rejecting NATO rhetoric that new punitive economic measures are over “the so-called nuclear dispute,” GFP’s analyst correctly states that the “conflict is, in fact, over hegemony, with the West seeking to defend at all costs its predominance in the Middle Eastern resource-rich regions.”
While “Berlin’s politicians are still divided over Iran … Transatlantic oriented forces are preparing the public for possible military strikes.”
Regarding the strengthening of the West’s sanctions regime, the World Socialist Web Site reported that the EU has “agreed to sanction some 200 Iranian companies, individuals and organisations. European Council President Herman Van Rompuy met with Obama on Monday and issued a joint statement expressing ‘deep concern’ over Iran’s nuclear program, raising the possibility of ‘additional measures’ against the Iranian regime.”
“France,” left-wing critic Oliver Campbell noted, “which is not a major importer of Iranian oil, issued a statement calling for ‘new sanctions on an unprecedented scale,’ including freezing the assets of the Iranian central bank and putting an embargo on Iranian oil.”
“Russia, which has acquiesced in imposing previous sanctions on Iran, has bluntly opposed further punitive measures. Russian foreign ministry spokesman Alexander Lukashevich denounced the latest sanctions as ‘unacceptable’ and ‘contradictory to international law.’ China and Turkey have also opposed additional UN penalties.”
There are new signs that this sharply escalating crisis is fraught with peril.
Last week, Russia Today reported that “Moscow is deploying warships at its base in the Syrian port of Tartus. The long-planned mission comes, providentially, at the very moment when it could help prevent a potential conflict in the strategically important Middle Eastern country.
”The Russian battle group will consist of three vessels led by the heavy aircraft-carrying missile cruiser, Admiral Kuznetsov.”
“Of course, the Russian naval forces in the Mediterranean will be incommensurate with those of the US 6th Fleet, which includes one or two aircraft carriers and several escort ships,” former Chief of Naval Staff Admiral Viktor Kravchenko told Russia Today.
Pointedly, Kravchenko warned, “today, no one talks about possible military clashes, since an attack on any Russian ship would be regarded as a declaration of war with all the consequences.”
Richard Silverstein grimly observed “that Israel knows that black ops will turn Iran more intransigent. It welcomes such Iranian rigidity because it means the day is closer when it will be set loose on the Iranians. Israel’s policy toward Iran is scorched earth.”
The clock is ticking…
Tom Burghardt is a researcher and activist based in the San Francisco Bay Area. In addition to publishing in Covert Action Quarterly and Global Research, he is a Contributing Editor with Cyrano’s Journal Today. His articles can be read on Dissident Voice, The Intelligence Daily, Pacific Free Press, Uncommon Thought Journal, and the whistleblowing website WikiLeaks. He is the editor of Police State America: U.S. Military “Civil Disturbance” Planning, distributed by AK Press and has contributed to the new book from Global Research, The Global Economic Crisis: The Great Depression of the XXI Century.
Tom Burghardt is a frequent contributor to Global Research. Global Research Articles by Tom Burghardt
