The Israeli premier Ehud Olmert intends to visit Russia to foil a possible arms deal to Syria, according to Yediot Ahronot on Friday.
The paper said that Olmert threatened Syria that Israel will destroy any weapons they buy from Russia telling the Syrians that it would be a loss for Syria to pay money for arms that Israel will work to destroy.
These Israeli reaction were prompted by President Bashar al-Asad’s visit to Russia to express his support for the Russian government in the Caucuses conflict and a probable arms deal.
Israel and the USA have been angered by reports that Syria has accepted Russian deployment of Iskander missile system on its territories. Syria has officially said that there is no truth to such reports.
Olmert has pre-empted Asad’s visit by a phone call to Russia’s President, Dmitry Medvedev during which he urged President Medvedev not to sell weapons to Syria and tried to belittle the role of Israel in supplying the Georgian army with weapons.
For his part, the Israeli war minister, Ehud Barak, said that Israel is watching the results of Asad’s visit to Russia closely, in particular the negotiations to equip the Syrian army with better weapons.
The Israeli foreign minister Tzipi livni had earlier urged Russia not to conclude any arms deals with Syria and said that both Israel and Russia have interest in Syria not getting long range missiles.
Prime Minister Ehud Olmert intends to hand his resignation letter to President Shimon Peres the day after the September 17 Kadima primary and ask him to entrust the new party leader with forming a new government, Olmert’s associates said Wednesday night.
French President Nicolas Sarkozy has launched a new international body with 43 member nations aimed at ending conflict in the Middle East.
The Union for the Mediterranean will tackle issues such as regional unrest, immigration to pollution.
At the summit’s opening in Paris, Mr Sarkozy said its aim was to ensure the region’s people could love each other instead of making war.
Israeli and Palestinian leaders earlier expressed optimism about peace talks.
Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said Israel and the Palestinians have never been as close to a peace deal as they are now.
He was speaking after talks with Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas, who said both sides were serious and wanted to achieve peace.
Transform the region
Mr Sarkozy urged Middle Eastern countries involved in long-running conflicts to end the deadly spiral of war and violence, as European nations had done by making peace which each other during the 20th Century.
The US military has constructed four advanced bases 20 miles from Iraq’s border with Iran, a senior Iraqi police officer has announced.
The bases, equipped with missile launch pads, have been set up over the past four months on the Iraq-Iran border; Iraqi al-Noor newspaper quoted the official as saying.
He added that one of the bases has been located 30 km (20 miles) from the first border town with Iran and houses remote-controlled launching pads as well as radar systems similar to ones used in Kuwait during the first Persian Gulf war.
“The bases do not serve military intentions and its staff would not be military personnel.”
According to the official, the bases are only precautionary measures in case of a military strike against Israel by Iran.
Joint Chiefs Chairman Admiral Mike Mullen leaves Tuesday night on an overseas trip that will take him to Israel, reports CBS News national security correspondent David Martin. The trip has been scheduled for some time but U.S. officials say it comes just as the Israelis are mounting a full court press to get the Bush administration to strike Iran’s nuclear complex.
CBS consultant Michael Oren says Israel doesn’t want to wait for a new administration.
“The Israelis have been assured by the Bush administration that the Bush administration will not allow Iran to nuclearize,” Oren said. “Israelis are uncertain about what would be the policies of the next administration vis-à-vis Iran.”
Israel’s message is simple: If you don’t, we will. Israel held a dress rehearsal for a strike earlier this month, but military analysts say Israel can not do it alone.
“Keep in mind that Israel does not have strategic bombers,” Oren said. “The Israeli Air Force is not the American Air Force. Israel can not eliminate Iran’s nuclear program.”
The U.S. with its stealth bombers and cruise missiles has a much greater capability. Vice President Cheney is said to favor a strike, but both Mullen and Defense Secretary Gates are opposed to an attack which could touch off a third war in the region.
IRAN: American public won’t allow another war, Iranian foreign ministry spokesman says
Despite constant talk of war, U.S. officials have tried to reach out to the Iranian people in an attempt to get past the animosity between Washington and Tehran.
But Iranian officials have also been on a diplomatic offensive, reaching out to ordinary people in the Middle East as well as, more modestly, to Americans.
Known for his good looks, polite manners and kindly attitude toward the media, Iran’s silver-haired foreign ministry spokesman, Mohammed Ali Hosseini has emerged as a frequent public face on his government’s policies.
In a lengthy interview in his office Wednesday, he described Americans as a peace-loving people who “hate violence” and are suffering because of the mistakes of their leaders. He said he believed economic pressures, the military entanglements in Iraq and Afghanistan, and American public opinion would prevent war from breaking out between Iran and the United States. “The U.S. and the Zionist regime, thanks to the increasing economic, political, security and military crises in which they are stuck, are not logically in a position to tolerate the expenses of another massive and far-reaching crisis,” Hosseini said.
He continued:
Public opinion in the world will not permit [President] Bush to exacerbate the pains and tragedies already inflicted on the nations of the region and the American people. Nowadays, the polling surveys carried out among U.S. elites, thinkers and, by and large, the American people, show they hate violence, further battles and anarchy. The surveys indicate that the Americans are seeking genuine peace, stability and security.
But he warned:
If there is a war against the Islamic Republic of Iran, it will be out of control and with unpredictable consequences. Thus, anyone with minimum rationality and political logic does not dare to step on this path.
Hosseini, 47, is a physicist by training and a career diplomat. A native of Tehran, he studied in India before joining Iran’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs 20 years ago. He’s a family man, with a wife and three children. He sat down for an exclusive and wide-ranging interview with the Los Angeles Times about Iran’s nuclear program, U.S. relations and turmoil in Iraq, Afghanistan, Lebanon and the Palestinian territories, which have became contested terrain in the Cold War between Washington and Tehran.
Israel carried out a major military exercise earlier this month that American officials say appeared to be a rehearsal for a potential bombing attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities.
Several American officials said the Israeli exercise appeared to be an effort to develop the military’s capacity to carry out long-range strikes and to demonstrate the seriousness with which Israel views Iran’s nuclear program.
More than 100 Israeli F-16 and F-15 fighters participated in the maneuvers, which were carried out over the eastern Mediterranean and over Greece during the first week of June, American officials said.
The exercise also included Israeli helicopters that could be used to rescue downed pilots. The helicopters and refueling tankers flew more than 900 miles, which is about the same distance between Israel and Iran’s uranium enrichment plant at Natanz, American officials said.
Israeli officials declined to discuss the details of the exercise. A spokesman for the Israeli military would say only that the country’s air force “regularly trains for various missions in order to confront and meet the challenges posed by the threats facing Israel.”
But the scope of the Israeli exercise virtually guaranteed that it would be noticed by American and other foreign intelligence agencies. A senior Pentagon official who has been briefed on the exercise, and who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the political delicacy of the matter, said the exercise appeared to serve multiple purposes.
One Israeli goal, the Pentagon official said, was to practice flight tactics, aerial refueling and all other details of a possible strike against Iran’s nuclear installations and its long-range conventional missiles.
A second, the official said, was to send a clear message to the United States and other countries that Israel was prepared to act militarily if diplomatic efforts to stop Iran from producing bomb-grade uranium continued to falter.
“They wanted us to know, they wanted the Europeans to know, and they wanted the Iranians to know,” the Pentagon official said. “There’s a lot of signaling going on at different levels.”
Several American officials said they did not believe that the Israeli government had concluded that it must attack Iran and did not think that such a strike was imminent.
Shaul Mofaz, a former Israeli defense minister who is now a deputy prime minister, warned in a recent interview with the Israeli newspaper Yediot Aharonot that Israel might have no choice but to attack. “If Iran continues with its program for developing nuclear weapons, we will attack,” Mofaz said in the interview published on June 6, the day after the unpublicized exercise ended. “Attacking Iran, in order to stop its nuclear plans, will be unavoidable.”
But Mofaz was criticized by other Israeli politicians as seeking to enhance his own standing as questions mount about whether the embattled Israeli prime minister, Ehud Olmert, can hang on to power.
Israeli officials have told their American counterparts that Mofaz’s statement does not represent official policy. But American officials were also told that Israel had prepared plans for striking nuclear targets in Iran and could carry them out if needed.
Iran has shown signs that it is taking the Israeli warnings seriously, by beefing up its air defenses in recent weeks, including increasing air patrols. In one instance, Iran scrambled F-4 jets to double-check an Iraqi civilian flight from Baghdad to Tehran.
“They are clearly nervous about this and have their air defense on guard,” a Bush administration official said of the Iranians.
Any Israeli attack against Iran’s nuclear facilities would confront a number of challenges. Many American experts say they believe that such an attack could delay but not eliminate Iran’s nuclear program. Much of the program’s infrastructure is buried under earth and concrete and installed in long tunnels or hallways, making precise targeting difficult. There is also concern that not all of the facilities have been detected. To inflict maximum damage, multiple attacks might be necessary, which many analysts say is beyond Israel’s ability at this time.
But waiting also entails risks for the Israelis. Israeli officials have repeatedly expressed fears that Iran will soon master the technology it needs to produce substantial quantities of highly enriched uranium for nuclear weapons.
Iran is also taking steps to better defend its nuclear facilities. Two sets of advance Russian-made radar systems were recently delivered to Iran. The radar will enhance Iran’s ability to detect planes flying at low altitude.
Mike McConnell, the director of national intelligence, said in February that Iran was close to acquiring Russian-produced SA-20 surface-to-air missiles. American military officials said that the deployment of such systems would hamper Israel’s attack planning, putting pressure on Israel to act before the missiles are fielded.
For both the United States and Israel, Iran’s nuclear program has been a persistent worry. A National Intelligence Estimate that was issued in December by American intelligence agencies asserted that Iran had suspended work on weapons design in late 2003. The report stated that it was unclear if that work had resumed. It also noted that Iran’s work on uranium enrichment and on missiles, two steps that Iran would need to take to field a nuclear weapon, had continued.
In late May, the International Atomic Energy Agency reported that Iran’s suspected work on nuclear matters was a “matter of serious concern” and that the Iranians owed the agency “substantial explanations.”
Over the past three decades, Israel has carried out two unilateral attacks against suspected nuclear sites in the Middle East. In 1981, Israeli jets conducted a raid against Iraq’s nuclear plant at Osirak after concluding that it was part of Saddam Hussein’s program to develop nuclear weapons. In September, Israeli aircraft bombed a structure in Syria that American officials said housed a nuclear reactor built with the aid of North Korea.
The United States protested the Israeli strike against Iraq in 1981, but its comments in recent months have amounted to an implicit endorsement of the Israeli strike in Syria.
Pentagon officials said that Israel’s air forces usually conducted a major early summer training exercise, often flying over the Mediterranean or training ranges in Turkey where they practice bombing runs and aerial refueling. But the exercise this month involved a larger number of aircraft than had been previously observed, and included a lengthy combat rescue mission.
Much of the planning appears to reflect a commitment by Israel’s military leaders to ensure that its armed forces are adequately equipped and trained, an imperative driven home by the difficulties the Israeli military encountered in its Lebanon operation against Hezbollah.
“They rehearse it, rehearse it and rehearse it, so if they actually have to do it, they’re ready,” the Pentagon official said. “They’re not taking any options off the table.”
ISRAEL’S Prime Minister, Ehud Olmert, has warned the radical Islamic movement Hamas that the truce due to take effect today is the last chance to avoid a massive military incursion into the Gaza Strip.
In an exclusive interview with the Herald – his first interview with the Australian media in four years – Mr Olmert said the people of Gaza were “pissed off with Hamas” and sick and tired of the years of violence.
Since Israel withdrew from Gaza three years ago, the 250,000 residents who surround Gaza have been subjected to almost daily rocket attacks from Palestinian militants.
“You think the people of Adelaide would put up with this?” demanded Mr Olmert. “Or the people of Brisbane?
“I think the strategy of Hamas, which does not want to recognise Israel’s right to exist in the first place, and the extremism, and the fanaticism, and the religious dogmatism is the enemy of peace. We are at the end of our tolerance with regard to terror in Gaza.”
Dismissing an escalating corruption investigation which looks certain to force either his resignation or fresh elections by November, Mr Olmert said he was “going nowhere” and did not rule out running again for the leadership of his Kadima party.
So certain is Mr Olmert of his political survival that he has already sent an invitation for Kevin Rudd to visit Israel later this year.
“I don’t know yet personally enough the new Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd, but I am very impressed with his friendship and his commitment to the well-being of the state of Israel,” Mr Olmert said.
The Greek Air Force says it partook in an Israeli military exercise which is regarded as a rehearsal for a potential attack on Iran.
Greek sources speaking on condition of anonymity confirmed a New York Times report that Israel’s military maneuvers which were carried out earlier this month off the southern Mediterranean island of Crete, were preparations for a future war with the Islamic Republic.
The Greek source, however, assured that no terrestrial targets were involved as the operation was mainly aimed at personnel training.
According to a New York Times report, more than 100 Israeli F-16 and F-15 fighters participated in the military drills which involved simulated aerial combat, attacks on terrestrial targets, aerial refueling, and search and rescue missions.
President Bush said Wednesday that his first choice is to solve a nuclear standoff with Iran by using diplomacy, but “all options are on the table.”
The president reinforced the possibility of military strike against Iran, even as a last resort, during a news conference with German Chancellor Angela Merkel. Bush warned that a nuclear-armed Iran would be a danger to world peace, and he is rallying European allies to back sanctions.
The president is pushing Iran to halt its uranium enrichment in a verifiable way. Iran insists it is enriching only for peaceful purposes.
Bush said, “I told the chancellor my first choice, of course, is to solve this diplomatically.” He quickly added, “all options are on the table.”
Merkel said if Iran does not agree to suspend its enrichment program, additional sanctions would be needed.
“The offer has been put on the table to Iran, but … if Iran does not meet its commitments, then further sanctions will simply have to follow,” she said.
Europeans want to wait on stiffer sanctions until after the European Union’s foreign policy chief, Javier Solana, visits Tehran to present a package of incentives in exchange for stopping its enrichment program. The offer, an updated version of one that Iran ignored a few years ago, was developed by the United States, along with Germany, Britain, France, Russia and China.
The diplomatic pressure came as Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on Wednesday said Bush’s era “has come to an end” and he has failed in his goals to attack Iran and stop its nuclear program.
Ahmadinejad said pressures and sanctions won’t succeed in forcing Iran to halt its uranium enrichment program. “If the enemy thinks they can break the Iranian nation with pressure, they are wrong,” he said.
Bush, in the midst of a farewell trip through Europe, visited with Merkel and addressed reporters in another session dominated by Iran.
The U.N. Security Council has imposed three sets of limited sanctions against Iran for refusing to halt uranium enrichment, a technology that can be used to produce nuclear fuel or materials for bomb. Iran continues to defy them.
Bush on Tuesday won new European promises to tighten pressure on Tehran, possibly with new sanctions. The president had not mentioned the prospect of “all options” on Tuesday in Slovenia when discussing Iran, although he has before.
“Our position is that we ought to enforce the sanctions in place and we ought to work with our allies to levy additional sanctions if they choose — if the Iranians choose to continue to ignore the demands of the free world,” Bush said.
Merkel said she favors having sanctions decided through the U.N. Security Council, but that doesn’t preclude any discussion within the European Union about whether there are other punitive measures, perhaps in the banking sector.
Addressing opponents of taking certain sanctions, Merkel said “Let us think of the people in Iran. This is what is essential. I think these people deserve a better outlook. … And we would hope that the leadership in Iran would finally see reason.”
Bush also was asked about the war in Iraq, and he said the U.S.-led invasion in 2003 was the right decision:
Israel has reportedly started to set up an ‘Iran Command’ within its air force as part of preparations for a possible war against Iran.
According to reports by unnamed Israeli military sources, the regime’s air force has launched ‘Iran Command’ to coordinate operations to ‘confront the growing threat from Tehran’.
The command’s operations are aimed at improving coordination among Israeli ballistic missiles and air and missile brigades which deploy the Arrow and Patriot missile systems.
The report comes amid ramped up Israeli rhetoric against Iran over the country’s nuclear program.
Earlier this week, Israeli deputy prime minister Shaoul Mofaz accused Iran of running a nuclear weapons program and threatened to launch a military strike on Iran with the help of US if Tehran continues with its nuclear program.
This is while Iran insists that it is conducting its nuclear program under the regulations of the UN nuclear watchdog and insists that its program is aimed at generating electricity for a growing population.
Israel, believed to be the sole possessor of ‘at least 150 nuclear warheads’ in the Middle East, seeks to persuade US President George W. Bush to halt Iran’s nuclear program by military rather than diplomatic means before the end of his term in office.
An Israeli attack on Iranian nuclear sites looks “unavoidable” given the apparent failure of sanctions to deny Tehran technology with bomb-making potential, one of Prime Minister Ehud Olmert’s deputies said on Friday.
“If Iran continues with its programme for developing nuclear weapons, we will attack it. The sanctions are ineffective,” Transport Minister Shaul Mofaz told the mass-circulation Yedioth Ahronoth newspaper.
“Attacking Iran, in order to stop its nuclear plans, will be unavoidable,” said the former army chief who has also been defence minister.
It was the most explicit threat yet against Iran from a member of Olmert’s government, which, like the Bush administration, has preferred to hint at force as a last resort should U.N. Security Council sanctions be deemed a dead end.
Gaza Holocaust: 118 Palestinians Dead from Military Strikes
The massacre continues. Now 118 people have been brutally murdered including 22 children by Israel in the last 4 days with over 60 dead Saturday alone:
Israeli forces on Monday killed seven Palestinians and wounded dozens in al-Shijaeya neighborhood, al-Nusaerat refugee camp and Jabalya refugee camp, northern Gaza Strip. Palestinian security sources said that Israeli warplanes fired a missile against a group of Hamas activists in Baghdad street, eastern al-Shijaeya neighborhood, killing one and wounding others, some critically.
Medics affirmed to WAFA that Ramzi Khwayter was killed. His dead body was shattered into pieces, reports said. Shortly later, Israeli warplanes targeted another group of activists at al-Sika street in the neighbourhood, killing three.
Also in the Gaza Strip, another military raid was launched in al-Tufah neighborhood, killing two Palestinians and wounding two others, one critically. In al-Nusaerat refugee camp, central Gaza Strip, an Israeli raid was launched killing a man and wounding three others, one critically.
In Jabalya refugee camp, after Israeli ground forces withdrew from the area, rescue teams managed to get three dead bodies from under the wreckage. Later, medics declared that a man died of wounds he sustained during the recent Israeli assault against Jabalya refugee camp.
Thus, according to the Palestinian Ministry of Health (MOH) the death toll following the Israeli assault against Gaza Strip since last Wednesday has mounted to 118, a third of which are children while more than 350 were wounded.
In the West Bank, Israeli occupation troops on Monday shot dead a Palestinian teenager north of Ramallah during a demonstration protesting the killings in the Gaza Strip. Local sources said that students of the Mazra Al-Gharbia village organized a protest rally that headed towards a nearby settlement but were met with live bullets by soldiers and guards of that settlement.
The demonstrators threw stones at the soldiers and the Israelis retaliated by firing bullets that hit and killed Mohammed Saleh Shreiteh, 18.
Yesterday, Friday, 29 February 2008, Israel’s deputy defense minister Matan Vilnai threatened Palestinians in Gaza with a “holocaust,” telling the Israeli Army Radio: “The more Qassam fire intensifies and the rockets reach a longer range, [the Palestinians] will bring upon themselves a bigger holocaust because we will use all our might to defend ourselves.” [1] This date will go down in history as the beginning of a new phase in the colonial conflict between Israel and the Palestinians, whereby a senior Israeli leader, a “leftist” for that matter, has publicly revealed the genocidal plans Israel is considering to implement against Palestinians under its military occupation, if they do not cease to resist its dictates. It will also mark the first time since World War II that any state has relentlessly — and on live TV — terrorized a civilian population with acts of slow, or low-intensity, genocide, with one of its senior government officials overtly inciting to a full-blown “Holocaust,” while the world stood by, watching in utter apathy, or in glee, as in the case of leading western leaders.
An Israeli airstrike aimed at the ministry of interior building in Gaza City also destroyed the nearby Palestinian Medical Relief Society (PMRS) head office in Gaza and killed a 5-month-old baby in a residential building in the same area.
The PMRS head office was housing the main PMRS clinic in the Gaza Strip, the main pharmacy, an ambulance, a loan centre for equipment for handicapped people and all the administrative offices. The ambulance, all the medicine and most of the equipment have been destroyed. The building itself is badly damaged and cannot be used again without extensive repairs.
The attack also hit a nearby residential building, killing Mohammad Nasser Al-Borey, 5 months, in his family home.
Dr. Mustafa Barghouthi MP, president of PMRS, declared “the collective punishment of Palestinians in Gaza has reached unbearable levels. This latest attack destroyed a key part of the already badly hit Gazan health system. Israel has lost all sense of humanity, and the silence of the international community enables its murderous escalation against a people imprisoned in a giant jail. These relentless violations of international law must be put to an end. It is a war crime under the Geneva Convention to target medical personnel. Regional organisations and individual States have to take actions to protect the Palestinian people from Israel. This must stop, now”.
Dr. Abdel Hadi Abu Khussa, director of PMRS in the Gaza Strip, declared that “the destruction of the main clinic, pharmacy, office and one ambulance are a terrible blow to PMRS activities and will increase the suffering of the people of Gaza. We are victims of Israeli collective punishment”.
Palestinian exodus into the Egyptian side of the Rafah
Tens of thousands of Palestinians on foot and on donkey carts poured into Egypt from Gaza Wednesday after masked gunmen used land mines to blast down a seven-mile barrier dividing the border town of Rafah.
The border breach was a dramatic protest against the closure of the impoverished Palestinian territory imposed last week by Israel.
Jubilant men and women crossed unhindered by border controls over the toppled corrugated metal along sections of the barrier, carrying goats, chickens and crates of Coca-Cola. Some brought back televisions, car tires and cigarettes and one man even bought a motorcycle. Vendors sold soft drinks and baked goods to the crowds.
They were stocking up on goods made scarce by the Israeli blockade and within hours, shops on the Egyptian side of Rafah had run out of stock. The border fence had divided the Rafah into two halves, one on the Egyptian side and one in southern Gazan.
Ibrahim Abu Taha, 45, a Palestinian father of seven, was in the Egyptian section of Rafah with his two brothers and $185 in his pocket.
“We want to buy food, we want to buy rice and sugar, milk and wheat and some cheese,” Abu Taha said, adding that he would also buy cheap Egyptian cigarettes.
Abu Taha said he could get the basic foods in Gaza, but at three times the cost.
Police from the militant Islamic group Hamas, which controls Gaza, directed the traffic. Egyptian border guards took no action, imposing no border controls for those who crossed.
“Freedom is good. We need no border after today,” said unemployed 29-year-old Mohammed Abu Ghazal.
Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak told reporters in Cairo his border guards originally had forced back the Gazans on Tuesday.
“But today a great number of them came back because the Palestinians in Gaza are starving due to the Israeli siege,” he said.
No starvation has been reported in Gaza. But many of the 1.5 million residents have faced critical shortages of electricity, fuel and other supplies over months because Gaza has been virtually sealed since Hamas seized control of the territory by force in June.
“I told them to let them come in and eat and buy food and then return them later as long as they were not carrying weapons,” Mubarak said.
Former US ambassador to the United Nations John Bolton said on Monday that Israel may have to take military action to prevent its archfoe Iran from acquiring an atomic bomb. Bolton also said that further UN sanctions against the Islamic republic will be ineffective in stopping Iran’s controversial nuclear programme which Israel and the US believe is aimed at developing a bomb — a claim denied by Tehran. “One can say with some assurance that in the next year the use of force by the United States is highly unlikely,” Bolton told AFP on the sidelines of the Herzliya conference on the balance of Israel’s national security. “That increases the pressure on Israel in that period of time… if it feels Iran is on the verge of acquiring that capability, it brings the decision point home to use force,” he said.
The hawkish former diplomat said that after a US intelligence report published late last year that claimed Iran had suspended a nuclear weapons programme in 2003, the US was unlikely to take military action against it.
“The pressure is on Israel now after the National Intelligence Estimate because, I think, the likelihood of American use of force has been dramatically reduced,” he said.
Widely considered the Middle East’s sole if undeclared nuclear power, Israel considers Iran its number one enemy following repeated statements by President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad for the Jewish state to be wiped off the map.
Bolton said that military action against Iran should be taken before Tehran acquires a bomb.
“The calculus in the region changes dramatically once Iran has nuclear capability, meaning the preemptive use of force or the overthrow of the Iranian regime has to come before they get the weapon,” Bolton said.
“If you are worried about an Iran with nuclear weapons and an extreme theological regime in power, the time to take the plan of action is before Iran acquires the weapons.
“Once it acquires the weapons there is a risk of retaliation with nuclear capability and that’s why Israel is in danger — it is a very small country and two or three nuclear weapons (and) there is no more country. The pressure to act is intensive and the window of time available is narrow.”
Bolton also said that despite Iranian threats to hit hard if it is attacked, “their response will be a lot more measured than people think.”
Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert last week said that all options were on the table to prevent an Iranian bomb. The Israeli military last week also successfully test-fired a ballistic missile said to be able to carry a non-conventional warhead.
Bolton said that a new round of United Nations Security Council sanctions against Iran was “unlikely” and that Tehran would not be deterred by further diplomatic sanctions.
“Maybe there will be another resolution but it will be even more toothless than the previous two sanction resolutions… International pressure through diplomacy of sanction has no chance of shifting Iran’s policies over the next year.”
A senior Israeli security official said in reaction that “one should listen very closely to what Bolton has to say.”
Israel cuts power to 1.5 million people in Gaza, 5 hospital patients die, food shortages a distinct possibility
Day after Gaza blackout, PM says ‘Gazans can walk’
Prime Minister Ehud Olmert pledged Monday that Israel would not allow the Gaza Strip to slide into a humanitarian crisis in the wake of the decision to halt fuel supplies over ongoing rocket fire on the Negev, but later said that gas-deprived Gaza residents “can walk.”
“As far as I’m concerned, all the residents of Gaza can walk and have no fuel for their cars, because they have a murderous terrorist regime that doesn’t allow people in the south of Israel to live in peace,” the prime minister said in broadcast remarks.
Also Monday, a Qassam rocket struck the western Negev. Southern Israel absorbed more than a hundred rockets fired from Gaza last week, but the weekend marked a significant drop in Qassam attacks with only five fired on Sunday.
Olmert made the pledge to prevent a humanitarian crisis in separate talks with Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak and Dutch Foreign Minister Maxime Verhagen. Mubarak called Olmert on Monday to express his concern over the deteriorating situation in Gaza.
“We will not allow a humanitarian crisis in the Strip,” Olmert told both leaders.
“We will provide the population with everything needed to prevent a crisis, but we will not supply luxuries that would make life more comfortable,” he added.
Olmert also told Verhagen that 75 percent of children in the Negev suffer from anxiety as a result of the daily rocket attacks.
“Israel does not want to use the same means and shoot without aim,” he said. “We are trying to attack terrorists, but we also show the population that it cannot shed itself of responsibility for the situation. We won’t allow the Palestinians to fire on us and destroy life in Sderot, while in Gaza life is going on as usual.”
The European Union, Israel’s largest trade partner in the world, is watching by as Israel tightens its barbaric siege on Gaza, collectively punishing 1.5 million Palestinian civilians, condemning them to devastation, and visiting imminent death upon hundreds of kidney dialysis and heart patients, prematurely born babies, and all others dependent on electric power for their very survival.
By freezing fuel and electric power supplies to Gaza, Israel, the occupying power, is essentially guaranteeing that “clean” water — only by name, as Gaza’s water is perhaps the most polluted in the whole region, after decades of Israeli theft and abuse — will not be pumped out and properly distributed to homes and institutions; hospitals will not be able to function adequately, leading to the eventual death of many, particularly the most vulnerable; whatever factories that are still working despite the siege will now be forced to close, pushing the already extremely high unemployment rate even higher; sewage treatment will come to a halt, further polluting Gaza’s precious little water supply; academic institutions and schools will not be able to provide their usual services; and the lives of all civilians will be severely disrupted, if not irreversibly damaged. And Europe is apathetically watching.
Princeton academic Richard Falk considered Israel’s siege a “prelude to genocide,” even before this latest crime of altogether cutting off energy supplies. Now, Israel’s crimes in Gaza can accurately be categorized as acts of genocide, albeit slow. According to Article II of the 1948 UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, the term is defined as:
“[A]ny of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:
(a) Killing members of the group;
(b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
(c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; …”
Clearly, Israel’s hermetic siege of Gaza, designed to kill, cause serious bodily and mental harm, and deliberately inflict conditions of life calculated to bring about partial and gradual physical destruction, qualifies as an act of genocide, if not all-out genocide yet. And the EU is suspiciously silent.
A respected American Journalist has accused a Pentagon spokesman of falsifying events surrounding the recent encounter between Iranian patrol boats and a US navy vessel in the Strait of Hormuz, which was eventually labeled a “provocation” by the White House.
Gareth Porter, a journalist who previously broke a story regarding a secret Iranian peace overture to the Bush Administration in 2006, writing for the Asia Times states that the event was hyped up into a major incident after the original press release described the event as somewhat routine and did not refer to any threat to “explode” US ships or any similar confrontation.
the release reported that the Iranian “small boats” had “maneuvered aggressively in close proximity of [sic] the Hopper [the lead ship of the three-ship convoy]. But it did not suggest that the Iranian boats had threatened the boats or that it had nearly resulted in firing on the Iranian boats.
On the contrary, the release made the US warships handling of the incident sound almost routine,” Porter adds. “‘Following standard procedures,’ the release said, “Hopper issued warnings, attempted to establish communications with the small boats and conducted evasive maneuvering.’
The release did not refer to a US ship being close to firing on the Iranian boats, or to a call threatening that US ships would “explode in a few minutes”, as later stories would report, or to the dropping of objects into the path of a US ship as a potential danger.
That press release was ignored by the news media, however, because later that Monday morning, the Pentagon provided correspondents with a very different account of the episode.
The fact that several mainstream reports then emerged at the same time all carrying almost identical accounts of the incident, including the details of threats to explode vessels and dropping white boxes, can be traced back to a press briefing by a top Pentagon official in charge of media relations, Porter divulges.
He identifies Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman’s off the record comments to journalists as the catalyst for the ensuing pandemonium. Porter states that Whitman hadn’t wished to be identified as the source:
In an apparent slip-up, however, an Associated Press story that morning cited Whitman as the source for the statement that US ships were about to fire when the Iranian boats turned and moved away – a part of the story that other correspondents had attributed to an unnamed Pentagon official.
Three days later, at the height of the hype, the Pentagon released a video of the incident into which had been inserted audio of a strange voice threatening to “explode” the US vessel.
Porter reveals that according to Lieutenant Colonel Mark Ballesteros of the Pentagon’s Public Affairs Office the decision on what to include in the video was “a collaborative effort of leadership here, the Central Command and navy leadership in the field”. Porter also reveals that according to an official in the US Navy Office of Information in Washington, who asked not to be identified, the decision was made in the office of the Secretary of Defense.
Shortly after Iranian officials had denounced the video as a fake and had released alternative footage of their boats in contact with the US warship, it became apparent that the audio spliced into the video had not originated from the boats themselves but must have instead come from hecklers, often referred to as the “Filipino Monkey”, who cut in on VHF ship-to-ship radios and make rude comments or threats.
The Pentagon then backed away from claims that it knew the source of the audio or had ever known the source.
By January 11, Pentagon spokesman Geoff Morrell was already disavowing the story that Whitman had been instrumental in creating only four days earlier. “No one in the military has said that the transmission emanated from those boats,” said Morrell.
No one said it but that doesn’t excuse the fact that they spliced the audio into the video of an unrelated incident!
The story then essentially fell apart altogether and dropped off the radar as Navy officials began to discredit the rest of the distortions perpetuated by the Pentagon.
Porter also spoke to a Pentagon consultant who asked not to be identified who told him that many officers have experienced similar encounters with small Iranian boats throughout the 1990s, and that such incidents are “just not a major threat to the US Navy by any stretch of the imagination”.
These revelations show just how easy it is for a non event to be hyped to serve an agenda and how the mainstream media is eager to swallow whole whatever the government feeds them.
The event mirrors that of the August 1964 Gulf of Tonkin incident, where an attack on US warships by North Vietnamese PT Boats, was cited by President Johnson as a legitimate provocation mandating U.S. escalation in Vietnam. However Tonkin was revealed as a staged charade that never took place. Declassified LBJ presidential tapes featured discussions on how to spin the non-event to escalate it as justification for air strikes. In addition, the NSA faked intelligence data to make it appear as if two US ships had been lost. This information was again reiterated in a report released last week.
Fox News Reverses Course After Initially Calling For U.S. Navy To Blow Iran Boats ‘Out Of The Water’
On January 7, the media reported that five Iranian speedboats had harassed three U.S. warships in the Strait of Hormuz, almost instigating a military confrontation. The next day, Fox News anchor Brian Kilmeade angrily claimed the Navy should have blown the Iranian boats out of the water. Speaking on the morning show Fox & Friends, Kilmeade said the following:
KILMEADE: Was this a mistake not to blow these other Iranian speedboats out of the water? […] Why did we not destroy these speedboats? […] We had an opportunity to send a message to a nation that has been needling us for 20 years.
Today, a week after his call for war with Iran, Brian Kilmeade was forced to concede that the verbal threats made against the U.S. ships are “a possible hoax from a man called the ‘Filipino Monkey.'” Kilmeade’s co-host Gretchen Carlson claimed that she knew it all along. “I remember sitting in my office thinking, you gotta be kidding me? That voice does not sound to me like an Iranian accent.” She didn’t say that on-air, however, prior to this morning.
Kilmeade’s other co-host, Steve Doocy, piped in with this comment:
DOOCY: But can you imagine, had we blown those little boats out of the water to find out, you know, that they didn’t have bombs and in fact it was the Filipino Monkey who was somewhere on shore pulling a prank?
Indeed, we would have have, if Fox News had its way. Watch a compilation:
US President George W. Bush promised Israel’s opposition leader Binyamin Netanyahu that the United States will join the Jewish state in a nuclear strike against Iran, Israel Radio reported today.
Former Prime Minister Netanyahu, opposition Likud party’s hardline chairman who opposes the US-backed Annapolis peace process, reiterated to President Bush his stance, that a pre-emptive nuclear strike against Iran’s nuclear installations was the only way to stop the Islamic nation’s nuclear weapons ambitions.
“I told him my position and Bush agreed,” Netanyahu told Israel Radio.
During their 45-minute meeting at King David hotel in Jerusalem Netanyahu also told Bush that “Jerusalem belongs to the Jewish people and will remain under Israeli sovereignty for eternity.”
President Bush issued a stark warning to Iran over Strait of Hormuz incident, saying that “all options are on the table to protect our assets.”
“There will be serious consequences if they attack our ships, pure and simple,” Bush said during the joint news conference with Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert in Jerusalem. “And my advice to them is, don’t do it.”
Bush criticized those who interpret the National Intelligence Estimate, which found that Iran gave up its nuclear weapons program in 2003, as a sign that Iran was no longer a threat.
“Let me remind you what the NIE actually said,” Bush stold reporters. “It said that as far as the intelligence community could tell, at one time the Iranians had a military — covert military program that was suspended in 2003 because of international pressure. My attitude is that a non-transparent country, a country which has yet to disclose what it was up to, can easily restart a program.”
Israel is keeping all options on the table if economic and diplomatic pressure fails to halt archfoe Iran’s nuclear programme, Israel’s ambassador to the United States said on Thursday.
“In assessing the threat from Iran we see in sync and think similarly. Both America and Israel understand the severity of the threat, the implication of the threat if it grows,” Israel’s US Ambassador Sallai Meridor said.
He spoke a day after visiting US President George W. Bush met Prime Minister Ehud Olmert in Jerusalem at the start of his regional visit for talks that focused on the Islamic republic.
“Both the US and Israel would prefer seeing this threat removed through diplomatic-economic means without any need to take other steps,” he said.
Asked if a military strike was a realistic option, Meridor said “both the US and Israel haven’t removed any option from the table,”
“All options are on the table, not only in the future. They are on the table if we get to the point, and I hope we don’t get to the point, that diplomactic and economic preferred alternatives will fail to produce the hoped for results.”
International support for new sanctions on Iran has been waning since a US National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) in early December said that the Islamic republic had halted a nuclear weapons programme in 2003.
Israel considers the Islamic republic its main regional threat in the wake of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s repeated statements for it to be wiped off the map.
Widely considered to be the Middle East’s sole if undeclared nuclear power, Israel along with the US suspects that Tehran’s nuclear programme is a cover for developing atomic weapons, a charge Iran denies.
Iran broadcast video Thursday of its boats and U.S. naval ships in the Persian Gulf in an apparent attempt to show that there was no confrontation between the vessels.
The grainy 5-minute, 20-second video showed a man speaking into a handheld radio, with three U.S. ships floating in the distance. It appeared to be shot from a small boat bobbing at least 100 yards from the American warships.
The footage did not show any Iranian boats approaching the U.S. vessels or any provocation. But the short clip likely did not show Sunday’s entire encounter, which U.S. Navy officials described as threatening, and said lasted about 20 minutes.
Just two days after the U.S. Navy released the eerie video of Iranian speedboats swarming around American warships, which featured a chilling threat in English, the Navy is saying that the voice on the tape could have come from the shore or from another ship.
The near-clash occurred over the weekend in the Strait of Hormuz. On the U.S.-released recording, a voice can be heard saying to the Americans, “I am coming to you. You will explode after a few minutes.”
The Navy never said specifically where the voices came from, but many were left with the impression they had come from the speedboats because of the way the Navy footage was edited.
Today, the spokesperson for the U.S. admiral in charge of the Fifth Fleet clarified to ABC News that the threat may have come from the Iranian boats, or it may have come from somewhere else. We’re saying that we cannot make a direct connection to the boats there,” said the spokesperson. “It could have come from the shore, from another ship passing by. However, it happened in the middle of all the very unusual activity, so as we assess the information and situation, we still put it in the total aggregate of what happened Sunday morning. I guess we’re not saying that it absolutely came from the boats, but we’re not saying it absolutely didn’t.”
The Iranians have denied using the threatening language and are saying U.S.-released video is fabricated. Today, the Iranian government aired its own video of the event on state-run TV there. On the audio, the voice that the Iranians say is the communication from their vessel can be heard identifying itself to the American ship, “Coalition warship No. 73 this is an Iranian navy patrol boat.”The incident ended without shots being fired, but senior defense officials told ABC News that the USS Hopper’s gunners were within seconds of firing on the Iranians.
The Israeli premier Ehud Olmert intends to visit Russia to foil a possible arms deal to Syria, according to Yediot Ahronot on Friday.
French President Nicolas Sarkozy has launched a new international body with 43 member nations aimed at ending conflict in the Middle East.
The US military has constructed four advanced bases 20 miles from Iraq’s border with
Despite constant talk of war, U.S. officials have tried to reach out to the Iranian people in an attempt to get past the animosity between Washington and Tehran.
ISRAEL’S Prime Minister, Ehud Olmert, has warned the radical Islamic movement Hamas that the truce due to take effect today is the last chance to avoid a massive military incursion into the Gaza Strip.
The Greek Air Force says it partook in an Israeli military exercise which is regarded as a rehearsal for a potential attack on Iran. 
Israel has reportedly started to set up an ‘Iran Command’ within its air force as part of preparations for a possible war against Iran.
An Israeli attack on Iranian nuclear sites looks “unavoidable” given the apparent failure of sanctions to deny Tehran technology with bomb-making potential, one of Prime Minister Ehud Olmert’s deputies said on Friday.
Israeli forces on Monday killed seven Palestinians and wounded dozens in al-Shijaeya neighborhood, al-Nusaerat refugee camp and Jabalya refugee camp, northern Gaza Strip. Palestinian security sources said that Israeli warplanes fired a missile against a group of Hamas activists in Baghdad street, eastern al-Shijaeya neighborhood, killing one and wounding others, some critically.
An Israeli airstrike aimed at the ministry of interior building in Gaza City also destroyed the nearby Palestinian Medical Relief Society (PMRS) head office in Gaza and killed a 5-month-old baby in a residential building in the same area.
Former US ambassador to the United Nations John Bolton said on Monday that Israel may have to take military action to prevent its archfoe Iran from acquiring an atomic bomb. Bolton also said that further UN sanctions against the Islamic republic will be ineffective in stopping Iran’s controversial nuclear programme which Israel and the US believe is aimed at developing a bomb — a claim denied by Tehran. “One can say with some assurance that in the next year the use of force by the United States is highly unlikely,” Bolton told AFP on the sidelines of the Herzliya conference on the balance of Israel’s national security. “That increases the pressure on Israel in that period of time… if it feels Iran is on the verge of acquiring that capability, it brings the decision point home to use force,” he said.
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