Kissinger: Iraq Military Win Impossible
By TARIQ PANJA, Associated Press Writer
8:15 AM PST, November 19, 2006


LONDON -- Military victory is no longer possible in Iraq, former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger said in a television interview broadcast Sunday.

Kissinger presented a bleak vision of Iraq, saying the U.S. government must enter into dialogue with Iraq's regional neighbors -- including Iran -- if progress is to be made in the region.

"If you mean by 'military victory' an Iraqi government that can be established and whose writ runs across the whole country, that gets the civil war under control and sectarian violence under control in a time period that the political processes of the democracies will support, I don't believe that is possible," he told the British Broadcasting Corp.

But Kissinger, an architect of the Vietnam war who has advised President Bush about Iraq, warned against a rapid withdrawal of coalition troops, saying it could destabilize Iraq's neighbors and cause a long-lasting conflict.

"A dramatic collapse of Iraq -- whatever we think about how the situation was created -- would have disastrous consequences for which we would pay for many years and which would bring us back, one way or another, into the region," he said.

Kissinger, whose views have been sought by the Iraqi Study Group, led by former Secretary of State James Baker III, called for an international conference bringing together the permanent members of the United Nations Security Council, Iraq's neighbors -- including Iran -- and regional powers like India and Pakistan to work out a way forward for the region.

"I think we have to redefine the course, but I don't think that the alternative is between military victory, as defined previously, or total withdrawal," he said.
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Da gibt es ein Problem für Bush:

Bush kann die beiden folgenden Ziele nicht gleichzeitig erreichen:
a) Iran mit einem Luftangriff infrastrukturell um Jahre zurückzubomben einerseits
b) Irak-Rückzug der US-Truppen im Rahmen eines multilateralen Ansatzes, der moslemische Regionalmächte - einschließlich Iran - einbindet, andererseits.

Er kann auch kaum nacheinander zuerst a) und dann b) versuchen durchzuführen, weil b) nach einem a) nicht mehr funktioniert.

Bush wird sich entscheiden müssen, ob a) oder b) durch die USA angegangen werden sollen.

Wenn er sich nicht entscheidet und die Dinge treiben ließe, dann würde er nicht nur zu einer lahmen Ente, sondern zu einer traurigen Figur.

Option b) wäre für Bush eine dicke Kröte zum schlucken. Die USA müßten anerkennen, dass sie selber nicht mehr die omnipotente, unbesiegbare Hegemonialmacht sind, sondern nun tatsächlich in einem Schlamassel stecken, aus dem sie ohne Hilfe von muslemischen Staaten wie Syrien, Iran, Pakistan, Türkei etc. nicht mehr herauskommen. Wie demütigend! Die USA wären u. U. gezwungen, eine Irak-Lösung zu akzeptieren, die für viele US-Amerikaner einer Entwertung des US-Truppeneinsatzes im Irak gleichkäme - um nur die eigenen US-Soldaten da herauszuholen.

Die Sturheit Bush's könnte in der Tat bewirken, dass er sich durch den US-Geheimdienst irgend einen Vorwand konstruieren läßt, um sich für die Medien eine Legitimation zu einem US-Überfall auf Iran zurechtzuzimmern. Ich rede hier von einem "Bush-Gate", also einer bewußten Lügenkampagne eines US-Präsidenten gegen seine gesamte Bevölkerung.

Durch eine Schwächung der aufmüpfigen Regionalmacht Iran (die als potentielle echte Gefahr angesehen wird) die eigene Hegemonialmachtposition aufrecht erhalten - oder jedenfalls verlängern.

Vermutlich braucht er für so einen US-Überfall auf Iran nicht einmal eine Extraportion Geld - die würde er von dem neuen US-Kongress ohnehin nicht mehr bekommen. Irgend eine Gesetzeslücke, wie so ein Angriff auch ohne Kongress-Billigung durch Bush legitim befohlen werden kann, werden Bush's Juristen schon finden.

Keine guten Optionen erkennbar:

Iraq: Bad options all
The situation in Iraq has deteriorated to the point where only bad choices are available.

The current Bush strategy is to shore up the Shi'ite-dominated government militarily , and that isn't working.
Bringing in more troops temporarily to stabilize the situation, then leaving - a plan originally endorsed by 2004 Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry - won't work, since the civil war has progressed to the point where even a million troops would not make a difference.
Partitioning Iraq into three entities - the Sunni center, the Shi'ite south, and the Kurdish north - will simply be a prelude to even greater conflict tying down more US troops.
Withdrawing to the bases or to the desert to avoid casualties will simply raise the question: Why keep troops there at all?

Getting Iran, Turkey and Syria to come in to create a diplomatic solution - one that the bipartisan Iraq Study Group headed by James Baker and Lee Hamilton may propose - is not going to work because no foreign-imposed settlement can counteract the deadly domestic dynamics of a sectarian conflict that has passed the point of no return.

Bush, of course , remains the boss when it comes to Iraq policy. It is not likely that this stubborn man has ceased to believe in victory, which he restated as his goal at the same press conference where he announced Donald Rumsfeld's resignation as secretary of defense.
The more Machiavellian Republican strategists such as Karl Rove will probably want to enmesh the Democrats in a protracted bipartisan exit strategy that will cost more Iraqi and American lives so that by the time the 2008 presidential elections come around, the mess in Iraq will be bipartisan as well.

Auszug aus: Democrats have no good options on Iraq
Nov 16, 2006, http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/HK16Ak01.html

05. Februar 2007

Irak, zum Zweiten
Von Georg Mascolo

Unbeirrt hält Präsident Bush am Kollisionskurs gegenüber dem Teheraner Mullah-Regime fest. Während selbst Parteifreunde ihn zum Dialog auffordern, beharrt er auf einem Regimewechsel in Iran und nimmt in Kauf, dass die Geschichte sich zu wiederholen scheint.

...

http://www.spiegel.de/spiegel/print/d-50424641.html

Ich kann mir nicht vorstellen das Bush das wirklich wagt - das ist glatter Selbstmord!
Wenn die USA wirklich den Iran angreifen würden, könnte das genug Blut fliessen lassen um auch die anderen arabischen Bluthunde loszujagen.......
Das kann die USA auch nicht schaffen, auch nicht mit Israel - da muss es schon eine ganze Kooperation geben zwischen den westlichen Mächten.....

The Pentagon plays war games with Iran
By Gareth Porter
Mar 2, 2007

WASHINGTON - Two weeks ago, Pentagon officials discussed a strategy to escalate US pressure on Iran with the intention of creating the impression that the United States is ready to go to war, according to an account by one of the participants.

A meeting at the Pentagon in mid-February was said by a participant to have revolved around a plan to ratchet up US rhetoric about an Iranian threat and make further military preparations for war in a way that would be reminiscent of what happened prior to the US invasion of Iraq in 2003. The account was described by a source outside the Pentagon who obtained it directly from the participant.

The description of Pentagon thinking suggests a strategy that is much more aggressive than the line represented by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice's announcement on Tuesday that the United States would participate in direct talks with Iran in the context of a conference to be convened by the Iraqi government.

According to the account provided by the participant, the US administration's decision last month to increase military strength in Iraq by at least 22,000 troops is related more to a strategy of increased pressure on Iran than to stabilizing the situation in Baghdad. The troop decision was described as putting the US military in a better position to respond to attacks by Shi'ite forces on US troops in retaliation against a possible strike against Iran.

That description is consistent with other indications that President George W Bush's decision on the troop "surge" was made primarily in the context of its strategy toward Iran. Immediately after Bush's January 10 speech announcing the additional troops, the National Broadcasting Co's Tim Russert reported that Bush and his top advisers had told a small group of journalists that the United States would not sit down with Iran until the US had gained "leverage".

That was the most direct indication from Bush administration officials that they believed the US could negotiate successfully with Iran once the administration had altered the bargaining relationship with Tehran.

In that same briefing for reporters, according to Russert, the officials indicated that one of the administration objectives was to achieve a situation in which Washington would not have to "go to Syria and Iran" and "ask for anything". That was an indirect reference to the bargaining leverage that Iran was believed to have derived from the widely shared belief that the US would need Iran's help to stabilize the situation in Iraq.

Bush was apparently convinced that the troop increase would convince Iran that the US would not have to rely on Iranian influence in Iraq to deal with Shi'ite opposition to the occupation.

But the troop-surge decision was also linked to another aspect of the US-Iran bargaining relationship. It had been widely speculated that the vulnerability of the US to retaliatory attacks in Iraq added to Tehran's leverage by restraining the Bush administration from waging a preemptive war against Iran.

The briefing before Bush's January 10 speech also provided a key piece of evidence that the Bush strategy would involve increasing pressure on Iran by framing the issue of US policy in terms of new military threats from Iran toward US and allied interests in the Middle East. Russert reported that administration officials had tipped off journalists that Iran would soon be raised as a major issue in what Russert called "a very acute way".

The January speech was followed by a carefully orchestrated campaign of administration statements and leaks alleging official Iranian involvement in providing armor-penetrating weapons to Shi'ite militias in Iraq. The administration admitted in a briefing in Baghdad aimed at bolstering that charge that it was based on "inference" rather than actual evidence.

To increase the sense of heightened tension with Iran and suggest momentum toward a military confrontation, the administration had already moved an additional aircraft-carrier task force into the Persian Gulf.

Another move in the increased pressure on Iran, according to the same source, is that refueling assets are now being flown into the US base at Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean. "You can't launch air strikes against Iran without refueling assets being there," the source observed.

High administration officials have used carefully chosen words in recent weeks to suggest that they are planning for war against Iran even as press leaks about a possible attack multiplied. On February 15, Defense Secretary Robert Gates said, "We are not looking for an excuse to go to war with Iran ...We are not planning a war with Iran."

Meanwhile, however, the administration maintains the position that the option of a military strike against Iran remains as its last resort if Iran does not agree to US terms for negotiations.

After the administration failed to produce evidence of Iranian government involvement in exporting weapons to the Shi'ites in a Baghdad press conference on February 11, it introduced a new line on an alleged Iranian threat.

Vice Admiral Patrick Walsh, who is leaving his position as commander of Naval Forces Central Command, told reporters on February 19 that the Iranian military conducts exercises in the Strait of Hormuz, suggesting that it could use mines to close the narrow strait linking the Persian Gulf to the Gulf of Oman and, thence, the Indian Ocean. Walsh called mines "an offensive terrorist type of weapon".

Iranian officials have always placed their threats to close the Strait of Hormuz explicitly in the context of retaliation for a strike by the US against Iran.

"The question is not what the Americans are planning," Walsh said, "but what the Iranians are planning." That statement indicates that the US is designing a new campaign to portray Iran's military posture as threatening to US allies and security in the Middle East.

The participant's account of the Pentagon meeting did not indicate any timetable for the sequence of steps or what the climactic move in the campaign would be. Nor did it suggest that a decision had been made by the White House to launch air strikes against Iran. However, the moves now planned would increase the likelihood of war in the event that Washington's escalatory moves fail to sway Iran's leaders.

A former assistant secretary of defense in the administration of US president Bill Clinton, Charles Freeman, who was also ambassador to Saudi Arabia, calls Bush's escalation of military pressure "brinkmanship" - a term recalling the practice by president Dwight D Eisenhower and his secretary of state John Foster Dulles of threatening war against China over Korea and the Taiwan Strait.

"By deploying forces to add credibility to the threat," Freeman told Inter Press Service. "You increase the risk of military conflict, which is [in] fact what is intended."

Gareth Porter is an investigative historian and journalist specializing in US national-security policy. His latest book, Perils of Dominance: Imbalance of Power and the Road to War in Vietnam, was published in June 2005.
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/IC02Ak07.html

Three US reasons to attack Iran
By Michael T Klare
Feb 27, 2007

Some time this spring or summer, barring an unexpected turnaround by Tehran, US President George W Bush is likely to go on national television and announce that he has ordered US ships and aircraft to strike at military targets inside Iran.

We must still sit through several months of soap opera at the United Nations in New York and assorted foreign capitals before this comes to pass, and it is always possible that a diplomatic breakthrough will occur - let it be so! - but I am convinced that
Bush has already decided an attack is his only option and the rest is a charade he must go through to satisfy his European allies.

The proof of this, I believe, lies half-hidden in recent public statements of his, which, if pieced together, provide a casus belli, or formal list of justifications, for going to war.

Three of his statements, in particular, contained the essence of this justification: his January 10 televised speech on his plan for a troop "surge" in Iraq, his State of the Union address of January 23, and his first televised press conference of the year on February 14. None of these was primarily focused on Iran, but Bush used each of them to warn of the extraordinary dangers that country poses to the United States and to hint at severe US reprisals if the Iranians did not desist from "harming US troops".

In each, moreover, he laid out various parts of the overall argument he will certainly use to justify an attack on Iran. String these together in one place and you can almost anticipate what Bush's speechwriters will concoct before he addresses the American people from the Oval Office some time this year. Think of them as talking points for the next war.

The first of these revealing statements was Bush's January 10 televised address on Iraq. This speech was supposedly intended to rally public and congressional support behind his plan to send 21,500 additional US troops into the Iraqi capital and al-Anbar province, the heartland of the Sunni insurgency.

But his presentation that night was so uninspired, so lacking in conviction, that - according to media commentary and polling data - few, if any, Americans were persuaded by his arguments. Only once that evening did Bush visibly come alive: when he spoke about the threat to Iraq supposedly posed by Iran.

"Succeeding in Iraq also requires defending its territorial integrity and stabilizing the region in the face of extremist challenges," he declared, which meant, he assured his audience, addressing the problem of Iran. That country, he asserted, "is providing material support for attacks on American troops". (This support was later identified as advanced improvised explosive devices - IEDs or roadside bombs - given to anti-American Shi'ite militias.)

Then followed an unambiguous warning: "We will disrupt the attacks on our forces ... And we will seek out and destroy the networks providing advanced weaponry and training to our enemies in Iraq."

Consider this Item 1 in his casus belli: because Iran is aiding and abetting the United States' enemies in Iraq, the US is justified in attacking Iran as a matter of self-defense.

Bush put it this way in an interview with Juan Williams of National Public Radio on January 29: "If Iran escalates its military action in Iraq to the detriment of our troops and/or innocent Iraqi people, we will respond firmly ... It makes common sense for the commander-in-chief to say to our troops and the Iraqi people - and the Iraqi government - that we will help you defend yourself from people that want to sow discord and harm."

In his January 10 address, Bush went on to fill in a second item in any future casus belli: Iran is seeking nuclear weapons to dominate the Middle East to the detriment of the United States' friends in the region - a goal that it simply cannot be allowed to achieve.

In response to such a possibility, Bush declared, "We're also taking other steps to bolster the security of Iraq and protect American interests in the Middle East." These include deploying a second US aircraft-carrier battle group to the Persian Gulf region, consisting of the USS John C Stennis and a flotilla of cruisers, destroyers and submarines (presumably to provide additional air and missile assets for strikes on Iran), along with additional Patriot anti-missile batteries (presumably to shoot down any Iranian missiles that might be fired in retaliation for an air attack on the country and its nuclear facilities). "And," Bush added, "we will work with others to prevent Iran from gaining nuclear weapons and dominating the region."

Bush added a third item to the casus belli in his State of the Union address on January 23. After years of describing Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda as the greatest threats to US interests in the Middle East, he now introduced a new menace: the resurgent Shi'ite branch of Islam led by Iran.

Aside from al-Qaeda and other Sunni extremists, he explained, "It has also become clear that we face an escalating danger from Shi'ite extremists who are just as hostile to America, and are also determined to dominate the Middle East." Many of these extremists, he noted, "are known to take direction from the regime in Iran", including the Hezbollah movement in Lebanon.

As if to nail down this point, he offered some hair-raising imagery right out of the Left Behind best-selling book series so beloved of Christian evangelicals and their neo-conservative allies: "If American forces step back [from Iraq] before Baghdad is secure, the Iraqi government would be overrun by extremists on all sides. We could expect an epic battle between Shi'ite extremists backed by Iran, and Sunni extremists backed by al-Qaeda and supporters of the old regime. A contagion of violence could spill across the country, and in time the entire region could be drawn into the conflict. For America, this is a nightmare scenario. For the enemy, this is the objective."

As refined by Bush speechwriters, this, then, is the third item in his casus belli for attacking Iran: to prevent a "nightmare scenario" in which the Shi'ite leaders of Iran might emerge as the grandmasters of regional instability, using such proxies as Hezbollah to imperil Israel and pro-American regimes in Jordan, Bahrain and Saudi Arabia - with potentially catastrophic consequences for the safety of Middle Eastern oil supplies. You can be sure of what Bush will say to this in his future address: no US president would ever allow such a scenario to come to pass.

Many of these themes were reiterated in Bush's White House Valentine's Day (February 14) press conference. Once again, Iraq was meant to be the main story, but Iran captured all the headlines.

Bush's most widely cited comments on Iran focused on claims of Iranian involvement in the delivery of sophisticated versions of the roadside IEDs that have been responsible for many of the US casualties in recent months. Just a few days earlier, unidentified US military officials in Baghdad had declared that elements of the Iranian military - specifically, the Quds Force of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards - were supplying the deadly devices to Shi'ite militias in Iraq, and that high-ranking Iranian government officials were aware of the deliveries.

These claims were contested by other US officials and members of Congress who expressed doubt about the reliability of the evidence and the intelligence work behind it, but Bush evinced no such uncertainty: "What we do know is that the Quds Force was instrumental in providing these deadly IEDs to networks inside of Iraq. We know that. And we also know that the Quds Force is a part of the Iranian government. That's a known."

What is not known, he continued, is just how high up in the Iranian government went the decision-making that led such IEDs to be delivered to the Shi'ite militias in Iraq. But that doesn't matter, he explained. "What matters is, is that they're there ... We know they're there, and we're going to protect our troops." As commander-in-chief, he insisted, he would "do what is necessary to protect our soldiers in harm's way".

He then went on to indicate that "the biggest problem I see is the Iranians' desire to have a nuclear weapon". He expressed his wish that this problem can be "dealt with" in a peaceful way - by the Iranians voluntarily agreeing to cease their program to enrich uranium to weapons-grade levels. But he also made it clear that the onus was purely on Tehran to take the necessary action to avoid unspecified harm: "I would like to be at the ... have been given a chance for us to explain that we have no desire to harm the Iranian people."

No reporters at the press conference asked him to explain this odd twist of phrase, delivered in the past tense, about his regret that he was unable to explain to the Iranian people why he had meant them no harm - presumably after the fact. However, if you view this as the Bush version of a Freudian slip, one obvious conclusion can be drawn: that Bush has already made the decision to begin the countdown for an attack on Iran, and only total capitulation by the Iranians could possibly bring the process to a halt.

Further evidence for this conclusion is provided by Bush's repeated reference to Chapter 7 of the United Nations Charter. On three separate occasions during the press conference he praised Russia, China and the "EU3" - the United Kingdom, France and Germany - for framing the December 23 UN Security Council resolution condemning Iran's nuclear activities and imposing economic sanctions on Iran in the context of Chapter 7 - that is, of "Action with Respect to Threats to the Peace, Breaches of the Peace and Acts of Aggression".

This sets the stage for the international community, under UN leadership, to take such steps as may be deemed necessary "to maintain or restore international peace and stability", ranging from mild economic sanctions to full-scale war (steps that are described in Articles 39-51). But the December 23 resolution was specifically framed under Article 41, which entails "measures not involving the use of armed force", a stipulation demanded by China and Russia, which have categorically ruled out the use of military force to resolve the nuclear dispute with Iran.

One suspects that Bush has Chapter 7 on the brain, because he now intends to ask for a new resolution under Article 42, which allows the use of military force to restore international peace and stability. But it is nearly inconceivable that Russia and China will approve such a resolution. Such approval would also be tantamount to acknowledging US hegemony worldwide, and this is something they are simply unwilling to do.

So we can expect several months of fruitless diplomacy at the United Nations in which the United States may achieve slightly more severe economic sanctions under Chapter 41 but not approval for military action under Chapter 42. Bush knows that this is the inevitable outcome, and so I am convinced that, in his various speeches and meetings with reporters, he is already preparing the way for a future address to the nation.

In it, he will speak somberly of a tireless US effort to secure a meaningful resolution from the United Nations on Iran with real teeth in it and his deep disappointment that no such resolution has been not forthcoming. He will also point out that, despite the heroic efforts of American diplomats as well as military commanders in Iraq, Iran continues to pose a vital and unchecked threat to US security in Iraq, in the region, and even - via its nuclear program - in the wider world.

Further diplomacy, he will insist, appears futile and yet Iran must be stopped. Hence, he will say, "I have made the unavoidable decision to eliminate this vital threat through direct military action," and will announce - in language eerily reminiscent of his address to the nation on March 19, 2003, that a massive air offensive against Iran has already been under way for several hours.

Michael T Klare is a professor of peace and world security studies at Hampshire College and the defense correspondent of The Nation magazine. He is the author, most recently, of Blood and Oil: The Dangers and Consequences of America's Growing Dependence on Imported Petroleum (Owl Books).

(Copyright 2007 Michael T Klare.)
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/IB27Ak01.html

An ill wind in Iran
By Pepe Escobar
Mar 2, 2007

As the dogs of war ominously circle the Persian Gulf, regime change in Iran could become a distinct possibility - but not exactly according to the desires of US Vice President Dick "all options are on the table" Cheney, whose supreme obsessions are oil, war and their mutual intersection.

A leading Western energy consultant, who prefers to remain anonymous, went to Tehran in early February and personally met with President Mahmud Ahmadinejad. He tells Asia Times Online
that according to his assessment, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei "has a couple of months at most - prostate cancer ".

On this extremely sensitive matter, he is contradicted by a Western-educated political analyst in Tehran, who for security reasons also prefers to remain anonymous: "There is no consistent proof that Khamenei's cancer is serious and he is dying." In Iranian state media, this topic is taboo.

The Western consultant's top sources also told him the Supreme Leader "will not be replaced, but a triumvirate/council will replace him, consisting of Khatami, Rafsanjani and Kharroubi". Former president Mohammad Khatami is a reformist. Mehdi Kharroubi - the Majlis (parliament) Speaker - is a moderate. And former president Hashemi Rafsanjani, a Machiavellian pragmatist, is in fact the next notable in the line of succession, according to the current rules (he would be chosen by the Council of Experts, of which he is the top member).

Were such a triumvirate to become a reality, it would represent a constitutional nightmare. According to the Iranian political analyst, "It would require an amendment to the constitution. The talk of a council replacing the leader is not new but it is chock full of legal and religious issues."

The whole arrangement, nonetheless, is feasible. Khamenei rose to power basically because of an unconstitutional white coup after ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini's death in 1989. The new "coup" would in fact extinguish fears among the Iranian elite that wily Rafsanjani - even though he is correctly positioned from a legal point of view - could be allowed the same overarching position as Khomeini, the father of the Islamic Revolution in 1979. Rafsanjani is overwhelmingly regarded by the clerical establishment as not exactly a paragon of virtue.

The key merit of the triumvirate solution would be the isolation of Ahmadinejad. Khatami coined the "dialogue of civilizations" and Rafsanjani is in favor of normalization of relations with the United States. In the Western consultant's assessment, "only a wave of populism caused by a US attack can rescue Ahmadinejad from being chucked out pretty soon".

The Western consultant corroborates insistent speculation in sectors of the Iranian press, and already reported by Asia Times Online (see Ahmadinejad be damned, January 19), according to which Ahmadinejad has fallen from favor among the ruling elites. The last straw was the US sanctions on operations involving Iranian banks and companies (Washington is pressing the European Union and the United Nations Security Council to adopt this escalation as punishment for Iran's nuclear program).

Tehran did not expect these sanctions, which have taken a toll. "The bottom line is that the elite are seriously worried about the flow of oil money into their accounts and the restricted uses to which they can now be put," said the consultant.

"They've made alternative arrangements for sure, by moving accounts into euros and opening new ones with Malaysian and Indonesian banks in particular, but being frozen out of the Western financial system is in fact the only sanction that works, and the elite is basically pissed off because of this."

At the same time, with an insider's knowledge of Iran's nuclear dossier since the Khatami presidency, the Western consultant said, "Iran's nuclear capability is to all intents and purposes non-existent due - as I am painfully aware - to a management deficiency of cosmic proportions." The Russians, as the builders of the Bushehr nuclear plant, are also aware of this "cosmic" deficiency. So much for Israeli assertions that Iran's bomb is just around the corner.

As to speculation that Ahmadinejad and his Republican Guard allies are betting on a US preemptive strike so the whole country will be united under his presidency, the Iranian political analyst insisted, "Neither the president nor the Republican Guards want an American attack. What Ahmadinejad wants is to come out of this as the man who stood up to the Americans and made them back down."

The bottom line in all this is that Iran will not suspend uranium enrichment under pressure - especially when totally encircled by US troops, military bases and aircraft-carrier battle groups as well as being infiltrated by US special forces east (Sistan-Balochistan) and west (Khuzestan). Respected former chief UN weapons inspector Hans Blix, at a recent conference on international security in New York, has laid down the law: "To sit down with them in a direct talk rather than saying to them, 'You do this, thereafter we will sit down at a table and tell you what you get for it.' That's getting away from a humiliating neo-colonial attitude to a more normal [one]."

But as the diplomatic neo-colonial ballet at the UN drags on, a deadly quartet, in parallel, develops a covert agenda. The quartet consists of
- Cheney;
- Deputy National Security Adviser Elliott Abrams;
- former ambassador to Kabul and Baghdad Zalmay Khalilzad; and
- Prince Bandar bin Sultan, Saudi national security adviser and ambassador to the US for 22 years.
Their objective: the destabilization and fragmentation of Iran.

A new variable - the Supreme Leader's health - is now introduced. The next true deciders may be much more amenable to serious discussion. But will regime change in Iran - not provoked by bombs but by natural causes - be enough to quench the United States' war thirst?

es scheint, als ob ein militärschlag gegen den iran immer näher rückt.
wie dem artikel in der welt zu entnehmen ist, bringt gerade der druck der bevorstehenden wahlen in den usa eine gewisse kriegsgefahr. sowohl demokraten, als auch republikaner wollen die jüdische wählerschaft vereinnahmen.

es wird wohl so sein, dass das bevorsetehende auslaufen des flugzeugträger nimitz zeigen wird, ob der krieg kommt.

http://www.welt.de/politik/article77...mt_danach.html

Man sollte den Bush elemenieren, ins Irrenhaus einliefern am besten :confused:

Aber vorher bitte noch den iranischen Präsidenten!

wie sich in der weiteren berichterstattung zeigt, wollen die iraner tatsächlich den austausch der briten gegen die von den usa gefangenen iranischen diplomaten.
ich bin gespannt, wer hier einlenkt?

Einverstanden, am liebsten in eine Doppelzelle :D

Wieso nicht gleich gemeinsam in ne Gummizelle sperren? :D

ich denke da könnten dann noch ein paar mehr spezis einwandern. :rolleyes:

Nachdem wir uns im Dax-thread mit dem Thema befassen, habe ich im Netz etwas nachgelesen und bin auf einen Artikel gestoßen, der zwar schon 1 Jahr alt ist, aber nicht unspannend zu lesen:

http://www.heise.de/tp/r4/artikel/21/21802/1.html