Wednesday September 30, 2009Obama's Announcement About Iran's Secret Enrichment Facility
Friday’s announcement by President Barack Obama and his French and British counterparts about Iran’s covert nuclear activities had all the ingredients of a blockbuster – three heads of state, the international press corps, a dramatic revelation, and stark warnings about the consequences facing Tehran. Indeed, the President’s disclosure that Iran has constructed a covert uranium enrichment facility represented a dramatic effort to increase the pressure on Iranian leaders on the eve of highly anticipated talks between the Islamic state and major world powers on the nuclear issue. But where Iran is concerned, actions often have an equally thorny reaction. While the Presidential press briefing succeeded in gaining headlines, it is hardly certain that it will have the intended impact on next week’s talks between Iran and the P5+1 in Geneva. Rather than unnervering Tehran and inducing a more cooperative approach to the nuclear negotiations, today’s blockbuster may only further entrench the regime’s recalcitrance – and leave Washington with no more viable alternatives for curbing Iran’s nuclear ambitions.
At first glance, the timing of the announcement may seem like an ideal way to force Tehran’s hand. But in reality, the decision to go public today was prompted by the Iranians themselves, who provided a belated and incomplete disclosure earlier this week to the International Atomic Energy Agency after learning of its discovery. That was the first step in Tehran’s damage control efforts, but surely not the last. Expect the Iranians to parse any legal technicalities they can muster to justify their violation
By the time next week’s talks begin, whatever apprehension the Iranian leadership may have felt about the world’s discovery of their latest nuclear deception may well be replaced by a more familiar Iranian emotion – defiance. When backed into a corner, Tehran tends to lash out. Today’s splashy public announcement was an impressive American power play, but subtler, more Machiavellian tactics of communicating our capacity to uncover all of Iran’s tricks might have gone further toward influencing Iran’s current hard-line leadership. The Obama Administration should gain some boost for its public diplomacy efforts to persuade skeptical governments and the international community more broadly of the dangerous nature of Iran’s nuclear program. But here too, there is probably less than meets the eye; at this late date in the debate, the Iranian regime has relatively few defenders, and anyone who still needing convincing that Iran’s massive, frantic nuclear investments involved something more worrisome than civilian power generation probably will find a way to disregard this latest evidence.Beyond next week’s negotiations, the real question about today’s announcement is its impact on decision-makers in Moscow and Beijing, whose posture will make or break any efforts to impose rigorous sanctions on Iran. Here too, it would be a mistake to leap to optimistic conclusions. Washington reportedly has known of the facility’s existence for years, and if this information was shared with the other members of the P5+1, then its existence has not yet persuaded their capitals to support serious sanctions. More to the point, the difficulty with assembling international support for robust economic measures against Iran has never involved doubt over Iran’s intentions or differences over the desirability of preventing Iran from crossing the nuclear threshold. Rather, the long track record of Russia and China on this issue has made it clear that neither capital will fully jettison its strategically and economically valuable relationship with Tehran in order to curtail Iran’s nuclear ambitions. Despite the hoopla in Pittsburgh, it seems overly sanguine to presume that today’s announcement will transform that calculus.
September 29, 2009
Flashback: Brookings Publication Mentions Possibility of ‘Horrific Provocation’ to Trigger Iran Invasion
Editor’s note: The following article first appeared on Prison Planet on June 29, 2009.
In a recent policy paper published by the influential Brookings Institute, the authors propose almost anything to guarantee dominance of Persia by the new world order, including bribery, lying, cheating and mass murdering by an all-out military assault on Iran. The paper ‘Which path to Persia: Options for a New American Strategy toward Iran’ is just one of many recent and not so recent examples of the firm intent of the globalists to engage Iran militarily and acquire its natural resources in the same effort. 
Reminiscent of the Pearl Harbor-quote by raving neocons pre-9/11, the authors continue imagining how excellent it would be to have an Iranian-sponsored terror attack within the US to trigger war and march off toward Iran.
The group of authors — a cozy little convergence of globalists — contemplate four separate options on ‘how to deal with Iran’ in the cold bureaucratic language that poses as scientific but really amounts to nothing more than the intelligent musings of a calculating psychopath. The first option, ‘Dissuading Tehran’ through diplomatic means is being discussed as something tried, tested and discarded. The second option, ‘Disarming Tehran’ covers several ways of rallying the ‘international community’ around the globalists’ intentions. In the third part, ‘Toppling Tehran’, the warmongering increases as the writers contemplate both covert and overt military action against the Islamic Republic of Iran. In the fourth and last section, ‘Deterring Tehran’ the option of ‘containment’ is elaborated upon. The proposed final strategy predictably involves all of the above mentioned options, in roughly the same order of appearance.
To ensure the cooperation of surrounding countries, the authors propose bribery as an effective tool. After the authors assert that ‘it may be necessary to cut some deals in order to secure Moscow’s support for a tougher Iran policy’, the authors continue with their ‘brainstorming’, advising a widespread bribery campaign in order to ensure international cooperation in regards to Iran:
‘Other countries also will want payoffs from the United States in return for their assistance on Iran. Such deals may be distasteful, but many will be unavoidable if the Persuasion approach is to have a reasonable chance of succeeding.’ And further on: ‘To be successful, a Persuasion approach would invariably require unpleasant compromises with third-party countries to secure their cooperation against Iran.’
This means the US will have to cut all kinds of deals with dictators, bloodthirsty local tyrants and other corrupt kings of Arabia- even facilitating them with weapons. Besides rallying the ‘international community’ around the Anglo-American establishment with the help of these ‘unpleasant compromises’, the paper stresses it will also be necessary to persuade the Iranians themselves to topple their government (page 39):
‘Inciting regime change in Iran would be greatly assisted by convincing the Iranian people that their government is so ideologically blinkered that it refuses to do what is best for the people and instead clings to a policy that could only bring ruin on the country.’
But the authors underline the necessity of creating a favourable climate for the transnationalists in which to operate.
Any military operation against Iran will likely be very unpopular around the world and require the proper international context. The best way to minimize international opprobrium and maximize support (however, grudging or covert) is to strike only when there is a widespread conviction that the Iranians were given but then rejected a superb offer- one so good that only a regime determined to acquire nuclear weapons and acquire them for the wrong reasons would turn it down. Under those circumstances, the United States (or Israel) could portray its operations as taken in sorrow, not anger, and at least some in the international community would conclude that the Iranians “brought it on themselves” by refusing a very good deal.’
Here the authors seem to abandon even the facade of civility as they proceed. Even though the authors put these vile warmongering words in quotes, they cannot mask the mindset. They mean to rally the ‘international community’ through bribery and deceit- as a steppingstone towards military strikes. The path toward such military strikes will be made smooth by economically strong-holding surrounding countries, forcing them to accept western military action as well as the justifications for it without question.
Military action. This is as acutely on the mind of the current chickenhawks, as the invasion of Iraq was on that of the neocons in the last couple of decades. Apparently, the authors feel compelled to give a justification for the bravura that’s dripping from their manuscript.
‘We chose to consider this extreme and highly unpopular option partly for the sake of analytical rigor and partly because if Iran responded to a confrontational American policy — such as an airstrike, harsh new sanctions, or efforts to foment regime change — with a major escalation of terrorist attacks (or more dire moves against Israel and other American allies), invasion could become a very “live” option.’
As the geopolitical feeding frenzy increases, the authors clearly begin to lose their cool as they begin to talk about the real plan behind all this elaborate brainstorming, reflecting the long-term agenda of the globalists for whom they work:
‘Like Iraq’, the authors state, ‘Iran is too intrinsically and strategically important a country for the United States to be able to march in, overthrow its government, and then march out, leaving chaos in its wake … Iran exports about 2.5 million barrels per day of oil and, with the right technology, it could produce even more. It also has one of the largest reserves of natural gas in the world. These resources make Iran an important supplier of the energy needs of the global economy. Iran does not border Saudi Arabia — the lynchpin of the oil market — or Kuwait, but it does border Iraq, another major oil producer and a country where the United States now has a great deal at stake.’
And exactly in line with their masters tendency of using false flags, they allow themselves the luxury of speculating openly about a possible ‘provocation’ to escalate things to the point of armed conflict.
It is not impossible that Tehran might take some action that would justify an American invasion. And it is certainly the case that if Washington sought such a provocation, it could take actions that might make it more likely that Tehran would do so (although being too obvious about this could nullify the provocation). However, since it would be up to Iran to make the provocation move, the United States would never know for sure when it would get the requisite Iranian provocation. In fact, it might never come at all.’
Now that would be a great disappointment, wouldn’t it. Under the headline ‘The Question of a Provocation’ on page 66, the authors press the point even further:
‘With provocation, the international diplomatic and domestic political requirements of an invasion would be mitigated, and the more outrageous the Iranian provocation (and the less that the United States is seen to be goading Iran), the more these challenges would be diminished. In the absence of a sufficiently horrific provocation, meeting these requirements would be daunting.’
Reminiscent of the Pearl Harbor-quote by raving neocons pre-9/11, the authors continue imagining how excellent it would be to have an Iranian-sponsored terror attack within the US to trigger war and march off toward Iran. During all this, the authors are aware how unlikely it is that Iran would actually commit such an attack on American soil (probably because they know who is usually responsible for such mass terror attacks):
‘Something on the order of an Iranian-backed 9/11, in which the plane wore Iranian markings and Tehran boasted about its sponsorship.(…). The entire question of “options” become irrelevant at that point: what American president could refrain from an invasion after the Iranians had just killed several thousand American civilians in an attack in the United States itself?’
Regarding the question of international support for an US invasion of the Islamic Republic, the Brookings people lament:
‘Other than a Tehran-sponsored 9/11, it is hard to imagine what would change their minds.’
The same goes for their plans in regards to that old favorite of the elite, covert psychological warfare, in order to subdue a sovereign nation. In chapter 7 of the manuscript, called ‘Inspiring an Insurgency’, it examines the possibility of propagandizing the Iranian people into helping out the globalists loot their nation:
The core concept lying at the heart of this option would be for the United States to identify one or more Iranian opposition groups and support them as it did other insurgencies in Afghanistan, Nicaragua, Kurdistan, Angola, and dozens of other locales since the Second World War. The United States would provide arms, money, training, and organizational assistance to help the groups develop and extend their reach. U.S. media and propaganda outlets could highlight group grievances and showcase rival leaders.
Isn’t that a familiar sight? Could one way to ‘highlight’ group grievances be to mass distribute the death of a poor woman and then claim it’s all thanks to Twitter?
All this hinting at another false-flag attack underway and prepping the international community for a future invasion of Iran is becoming increasingly serious as the warmongering is being stepped up. This is the time to fix our eyes upon these globalists and their think tanks. If their blatant arrogance permits them to openly publish their bloodthirsty musings, we should be vigilant enough to pass this knowledge around lest we have another 9/11 on our hands.
Source:
**Minimizing Potential Threats from Iran: Assessing Sanctions and Other U.S. Policy Options
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