The one who’s bluffing is Iran, which is trying to play with cards they don’t have. All the bravado that we see and the testing and the very dangerous and harsh rhetoric is hiding a lot of weaknesses.
If Iranian behavior and conduct continues as they have exhibited so far, it is obvious that their intentions are only to buy time and procrastinate.
Just one question: if Teheran is bluffing over its nuclear programme, then what exactly is Tel Aviv attacking?
I also wanted to take this opportunity to express my appreciation for the president’s ongoing efforts to stop Iran from acquiring nuclear military capability.
I think that the proposal the president made in Geneva, to have Iran withdraw its enriched uranium – a portion of it – outside Iran is a positive first step in that direction.
Hmm….Only days ago Israeli officials were declaring their opposition to any thought of enrichment of Iran’s uranium, inside or outside the country.
So why the change in attitude? Step up all those who think Israel now believes the talks on enrichment will fail. Once the prospect of agreement is gone, Tel Aviv can pose as a supporter of engagement while heaping blame on Iran for its devious and manipulative approach to all peaceful, freedom-loving nations.
On Tuesday, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates spoke to Al Jazeera on a range of issues including the situation in Iraq, the Iran nuclear progamme, the “necessary war” in Afghanistan, the role of Pakistan in the region, and the ties of United States with Latin America.
The most critical point Gates made was on the Iranian pursuit of uranium enrichment. It appears that the US is trying to neutralise Israeli opposition to a peace process with the “threat” of Palestine by offering an incentive of dealing with the greater “threat” from Iran. Washington will lead a political campaign rallying Arab states against Tehran’s ambitions if Israel in turn meets some of the Arab concerns by engaging in genuine discussions with the Palestinian Authority:
I think there’s a central question or a central point here to be made and it has to do both with our friends and allies in the region, our Arab allies, as well as the Iranian nuclear programme, and that is one of the pathways, to get the Iranians to change their approach on the nuclear issue, is to persuade them that moving down that path will actually jeopardise their security, not enhance it.
So the more that our Arab friends and allies can straighten their security capabilities, the more they can strengthen their co-operation, both with each other and with us, I think sends the signal to the Iranians that this path they’re on is not going to advance Iranian security but in fact could weaken it.
Sorry. I should be fair: if the speech was meant as a statement of US strategy, it was awful. Perhaps, however, that was not its intent.
Perhaps, for example, the speech was to given Clinton a bureaucratic boost in an increasingly tense conflict with other Executive agencies. For example, the National Security Council and the State Department have been sniping at each other for weeks. Last month, National Security James Jones went on an embarrassingly unsubtle media tour to prove he was very relevant. This, however, only angered Clinton’s people; have a look at columnist/lackey Jim Hoagland in the Washington Post last weekend to get a flavour of the bitterness.
Ostensibly, however, Clinton didn’t show up at the CFR to big herself up in the contest to be first after President Obama. Instead, she went on and on about how America would lead the world in the 21st century through “smart power”.
The concept isn’t new: it was coined in a Center for Strategic and International Studies report in 2007. And it’s not a strategy. It’s an approach, or rather a series of approaches, linked to an assertion of abstract values: “liberty, democracy, justice, and opportunity”. It has the merit, in contrast to the unipolar folly of the Bush Administration, of recognising that the US might need to consult and work with other countries and groups. On its own, however, “smart power” offers little in specific action to deal with cases of concern. Read the rest of this entry »
It has been a near-open secret that the source for allegations of Iran’s continuing programme for nuclear weapons is a mysterious Iranian laptop supposedly obtained by US officials in 2004.
This article by investigative journalist Gareth Porter goes further. Putting together reports and interviews, he claims that Israeli intelligence played a key role in assembling the “laptop documents” and then feeding them to Washington.
And, as Porter notes, this is an ongoing story. For despite the lack of any additional evidence — laptop or other — for an imminent Iranian nuclear weapon — Israel’s covert operators continue to get this tale into the US Congress and thus the American press.
It took less than a day after Pyongyang’s second nuclear test on 25 May for Israel to identify the real significance: Iran.
Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman stated that the international community had to do everything to prevent Iran and North Korea from acquiring nuclear weapons. He told Army Radio: “To our regret we see a mad arms race…..Everything must be done in order thwart their attempts to reach a nuclear capability.” Lieberman added:
Up until today there were neither sanctions against Iran nor against North Korea. They need to be completely closed in terms of financial activities; the two states need to understand they are dependent on the supply of petrol because they have no refineries.
This, however, was far from Israel’s most ambitious attempt to put Iran at the centre of a global anti-Israel nuclear conspiracy. For that, we have to go to Latin America.
On Friday, Israel’s Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon told Sky News that Israel was “not bluffing in its threats to to attack Iran:
On Friday 
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