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US lawmaker calls for sanctions on China, Russia

US lawmaker calls for sanctions on China, Russia

AFP
August 3, 2010


Congresswoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-Florida)

The United States should immediately impose sanctions on Russia and China under a US law that punishes major investments in Iran’s energy sector, a senior US lawmaker said Monday.

“It’s time to implement our sanctions laws and demonstrate to Russia and China that there are consequences for abetting Tehran and flouting US sanctions,” Representative Ileana Ros-Lehtinen said in a statement.

Ros-Lehtinen, the top Republican on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, said firms run by the Russian and Chinese governments had invested “huge sums” in Iran’s energy sector, “effectively bankrolling” Tehran’s alleged nuclear weapons program and its backing of Islamist groups.

She did not offer details, but US officials have noted that Chinese firms have been stepping in to fill the void left by companies leaving Iran because of UN and US sanctions.

“Russia and China appear determined to continue to facilitate Iran’s dangerous policies. This must not be allowed to continue without serious repercussions,” she said.

Her comments came as a top US State Department official, Robert Einhorn, was on a trip to Asia set to include a stop in Beijing to press China to fully enforce sanctions on Iran.

China has invested around 40 billion dollars in the Islamic republic’s oil and gas sector, but Chinese imports of Iranian oil fell in the first half of 2010, a senior Iranian official told Mehr news agency on Saturday.

In 2009, China became Iran’s premier trading partner, with bilateral trade worth 21.2 billion dollars against 14.4 billion dollars three years earlier.

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Intel Experts Warn Obama Israel May Bomb Iran This Month

Intel Experts Warn Obama Israel May Bomb Iran This Month

Paul Joseph Watson
Prison Planet.com
August 4, 2010

Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity, a group of former intelligence and military officials, warns President Obama in a memo that Israel is preparing to attack Iran this month, and that Obama needs to publicly denounce such an attack in order to prevent a wider war and the ultimate destruction of Israel.

“We write to alert you to the likelihood that Israel will attack Iran as early as this month. This would likely lead to a wider war,” states the VIPS memo, which is addressed to the President.

The letter is signed by Phil Giraldi, former CIA (20 years), Larry Johnson, former CIA; DoS, (24 years), W. Patrick Lang, Col., USA, Special Forces (ret.); Director of HUMINT Collection, Defense Intelligence Agency (30 years), Ray McGovern, US Army Intelligence Officer, CIA (30 years), Coleen Rowley, FBI (24 years), and Ann Wright, Col., US Army Reserve (ret.), (29 years); Foreign Service Officer, Department of State (16 years).

The intelligence experts explain that Israel’s tactic is to launch the war suddenly and then make it politically untenable for Obama to do anything other than offer the United States’ full military support for the campaign.

Pointing out that Israel has habitually employed surprise and deception in furthering its geopolitical aims, VIPS warns Obama that misplaced trust in Israeli Prime Minister [Benjamin] Netanyahu’s assurances that Israel would not launch a surprise attack would be foolhardy.

The memo highlights Netanyahu’s attitude to how pliable he believes the American government is to satisfying Israel’s demands, making reference to comments he made nine years ago on Israeli television.

“America is something that can be easily moved. Moved in the right direction. … They won’t get in our way … Eighty percent of the Americans support us. It’s absurd,” said Netanyahu.

“As we hope your advisers have told you, regime change, not Iranian nuclear weapons, is Israel’s primary concern,” states the memo, adding, “A strong public statement by you, personally warning Israel not to attack Iran would most probably head off such an Israeli move.”

The VIPS members appeal to Obama that only he can now head off an attack on Iran that could take place as soon as this month. But the group’s call on Obama to denounce a planned military assault on Iran is likely to fall on deaf ears, because Washington has been almost as active as Israel in planning an attack on Iran’s nuclear enrichment facilities.

A report in Time Magazine last month confirmed that Israel had convinced Washington to put the idea of a military strike firmly at the forefront of strategic planning. The report stated that US Central Command had been finalizing a plan of targeted air strikes on Iran’s nuclear facilities and that Israel had been brought into that process.

On Sunday August 1st during an appearance on CBS’s “Face The Nation,” Admiral Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, reiterated that the military option remained on the table.

Any such attack would come from the air and would utilize B-2 bombers and cruise missiles as part of a knockout blow against Iran’s nuclear facilities. This would be followed by a velvet revolution in which opposition groups, which are largely controlled by the CIA and its allies, would overthrow the Ahmadinejad government.

Destabilization efforts in pursuit of this overthrow have been ongoing for years, the latest of which appears to be a claim that Ahmadinejad himself was the target of an assassination attempt today, a story the Iranian state media has strongly denied.

The U.S. government has been funding and training the Sunni terrorist group Jundullah, formerly headed by the accused mastermind of 9/11 Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, to carry out bombings and other destabilization campaigns in Iran as part of a “campaign intended to destabilise, and eventually topple, the theocratic rule of the mullahs”.

As we have documented, political pressure is clearly being brought to bear on Obama in an effort to get the green light for the attack on Iran. Voices from both sides of the political spectrum are repeating the mantra that the only way to rescue Obama’s plummeting approval ratings is to rally the country behind another war in the Middle East.

Given this backdrop, it seems unlikely that the Obama administration would do anything other than vehemently support an Israeli-led attack on Iran. Perhaps the best way to try and stop such an outcome would be to appeal to current intelligence and military insiders who experienced the Iraqi weapons of mass destruction debacle at first hand and, as the November National Intelligence Estimate proved, are loathe to be hoodwinked into another staged war based on false pretenses.

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B-52 would drop ‘tons of bombs’ on Iran

B-52 would drop ‘tons of bombs’ on Iran

Washington Times
August 2, 2010

A Pentagon strike against Iran would rely heavily on the B-2 bomber and cruise missiles to try to destroy the regime’s ability to make nuclear weapons, analysts say, after the top U.S. military officer said a war plan is in place.

The missiles, fired from surface ships, submarines and B-52 bombers, would take out air defenses and nuclear-related facilities.

The B-2s would drop tons of bombs, including ground penetrators, onto fortified and buried sites where Tehran is suspected of enriching uranium to fuel the weapons and working on warheads.

“It will be primarily an air attack with covert work to start a ‘velvet’ revolution so [the] Iranian people can take back their country,” said retired Air Force Lt. Gen. Thomas McInerney, a former fighter pilot.

John Pike, a military analyst who runs Global Security.org, said that although Iran has many potential targets, only about a half-dozen facilities are so critical that, if destroyed, would set back the program significantly.

“Almost all are in isolated areas where civilian casualties would not be much of a problem,” Mr. Pike said. “Most of them have co-located staff housing. Bomb the housing, kill the staff, set back the program by a generation.”

His website’s scenario states: “American air strikes on Iran would vastly exceed the scope of the 1981 Israeli attack on the Osiraq nuclear center in Iraq, and would more resemble the opening days of the 2003 air campaign against Iraq. Using the full force of operational B-2 stealth bombers, staging from Diego Garcia or flying direct from the United States … two-dozen suspect nuclear sites would be targeted.”

The Obama administration this summer won the backing of the United Nations for another round of economic sanctions against Tehran, but there are doubts that limits on banking and trade would ever persuade the hard-line Islamic regime to give up plans to become a nuclear power.

Read Full Article Here

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