For 33 Years They've Been Telling Us Iran Has Nukes

Even his own intelligence chiefs say Bibi Netanyahu is messianic about going to war with Iran. Why do we let these nutters twist our peaceful world into violence and destruction?

1. Earliest warnings: 1979-84

Fear of an Iranian nuclear weapon predates Iran’s 1979 Islamic revolution, when the pro-West Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi was deep in negotiations with the US, France and West Germany, on a nuclear-energy spending spree that was to yield 20 reactors.

Late 1970s: US receives intelligence that the Shah had “set up a clandestine nuclear weapons development program.”

1979: Shah ousted in the Iranian revolution, ushering in the Islamic Republic. After the overthrow of the Shah, the US stopped supplying highly enriched uranium (HEU) to Iran. The revolutionary government guided by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini condemned nuclear weapons and energy, and for a time stopped all projects.

1984: Soon after West German engineers visit the unfinished Bushehr nuclear reactor, Jane’s Defence Weekly quotes West German intelligence sources saying that Iran’s production of a bomb “is entering its final stages.” US Senator Alan Cranston claims Iran is seven years away from making a weapon.

2. Israel paints Iran as Enemy No. 1: 1992

Though Israel had secretly done business with the Islamic Republic after the 1979 revolution, seeking to cultivate a Persian wedge against its local Arab enemies, the early 1990s saw a concerted effort by Tel Aviv to portray Iran as a new and existential threat.

1992: Israeli parliamentarian Benjamin Netanyahu tells his colleagues that Iran is 3 to 5 years from being able to produce a nuclear weapon – and that the threat had to be “uprooted by an international front headed by the US.”

1992: Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres tells French TV that Iran was set to have nuclear warheads by 1999. “Iran is the greatest threat and greatest problem in the Middle East,” Peres warned, “because it seeks the nuclear option while holding a highly dangerous stance of extreme religious militanCY.”

1992: Joseph Alpher, a former official of Israel’s Mossad spy agency, says “Iran has to be identified as Enemy No. 1.” Iran’s nascent nuclear program, he told The New York Times, “really gives Israel the jitters.”

3. US joins the warnings: 1992-97

The same alarm bells were already ringing in Washington, where in early 1992 a task force of the House Republican Research Committee claimed that there was a “98 percent certainty that Iran already had all (or virtually all) of the components required for two or three operational nuclear weapons.”

Similar predictions received airtime, including one from then-CIA chief Robert Gates that Iran’s nuclear program could be a “serious problem” in five years or less. Still, the bureaucracy took some time to catch up with the Iran threat rhetoric.

1992: Leaked copy of the Pentagon’s “Defense Strategy for the 1990s” makes little reference to Iran, despite laying out seven scenarios for potential future conflict that stretch from Iraq to North Korea.

1995: The New York Times conveys the fears of senior US and Israeli officials that “Iran is much closer to producing nuclear weapons than previously thought” – about five years away – and that Iran’s nuclear bomb is “at the top of the list” of dangers in the coming decade. The report speaks of an “acceleration of the Iranian nuclear program,” claims that Iran “began an intensive campaign to develop and acquire nuclear weapons” in 1987, and says Iran was “believed” to have recruited scientists from the former Soviet Union and Pakistan to advise them.

1997: The Christian Science Monitor reports that US pressure on Iran’s nuclear suppliers had “forced Iran to adjust its suspected timetable for a bomb. Experts now say Iran is unlikely to acquire nuclear weapons for eight or 10 years.”

4. Rhetoric escalates against ‘axis of evil’: 1998-2002

But Iran was putting the pieces of its strategic puzzle together. A US spy satellite detected the launch of an Iranian medium-range missile, sparking speculation about the danger posed to Israel.

1998: The New York Times said that Israel was less safe as a result of the launch even though Israel alone in the Middle East possessed both nuclear weapons and the long-range missiles to drop them anywhere. “The major reaction to this is going to be from Israel, and we have to worry what action the Israelis will take,” the Times quoted a former intelligence official as saying. An unidentified expert said: “This test shows Iran is bent on acquiring nuclear weapons, because no one builds an 800-mile missile to deliver conventional warheads.”

1998: The same week, former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld reports to Congress that Iran could build an intercontinental ballistic missile – one that could hit the US – within five years. The CIA gave a timeframe of 12 years.

2002: CIA warns that the danger from nuclear-tipped missiles, especially from Iran and North Korea, is higher than during the cold war. Robert Walpole, then a top CIA officer for strategic and nuclear programs, tells a Senate panel that Iran’s missile capability had grown more quickly than expected in the previous two years – putting it on par with North Korea. The threat “will continue to grow as the capabilities of potential adversaries mature,” he says.

2002: President George W. Bush labels Iran as part of the “axis of evil,” along with Iraq and North Korea.

5. Revelations from inside Iran: 2002-05

In August 2002, the Iranian opposition group Mojahedin-e Khalq (MEK, a.k.a. MKO) announces that Iran is building an underground uranium enrichment facility at Natanz, and a heavy water reactor at Arak. It is widely believed that the evidence had been passed to the MEK by Israeli intelligence.

Enrichment and reactors are not forbidden to Iran as a signatory of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), but the failure to disclose the work prompts an IAEA investigation and much closer scrutiny. Iran insists its efforts are peaceful, but is found in breach of its IAEA safeguards agreement, and accused by the IAEA of a “pattern of concealment.”

2004: Then-Secretary of State Colin Powell tells reporters that Iran had been working on technology to fit a nuclear warhead onto a missile. “We are talking about information that says they not only have [the] missiles but information that suggests they are working hard about how to put the two together,” he said.

2005: US presents 1,000 pages of designs and other documentation allegedly retrieved from a computer laptop in Iran the previous year, which are said to detail high-explosives testing and a nuclear-capable missile warhead. The “alleged studies,” as they have since been called, are dismissed by Iran as forgeries by hostile intelligence services.

6. Dialing back the estimate: 2006-09

2006: The drums of war beat faster after the New Yorker’s Seymour Hersh quotes US sources saying that a strike on Iran is all but inevitable, and that there are plans to use tactical nuclear weapons against buried Iranian facilities.

2007: President Bush warns that a nuclear-armed Iran could lead to “World War III.” Vice President Dick Cheney had previously warned of “serious consequences” if Iran did not give up its nuclear program.

2007: A month later, an unclassified National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) on Iran is released, which controversially judges with “high confidence” that Iran had given up its nuclear weapons effort in fall 2003.

The report, meant to codify the received wisdom of America’s 16 spy agencies, turns decades of Washington assumptions upside down. Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad calls the report a “victory for the Iranian nation.” An Iranian newspaper editor in Tehran tells the Monitor, “The conservatives … feel the chance of war against them is gone.”

June 2008: Then-US Ambassador to the United Nations John Bolton predicts that Israel will attack Iran before January 2009, taking advantage of a window before the next US president came to office.

May 2009: US Senate Foreign Relations Committee reports states: “There is no sign that Iran’s leaders have ordered up a bomb.”

7. Israel’s one-year timeframe disproved: 2010-11

Despite reports and intelligence assessments to the contrary, Israeli and many US officials continue to assume that Iran is determined to have nuclear weapons as soon as possible.

August 2010: An article by Jeffrey Goldberg in The Atlantic’s September issue is published online, outlining a scenario in which Israel would chose to launch a unilateral strike against Iran with 100 aircraft, “because a nuclear Iran poses the gravest threat since Hitler to the physical survival of the Jewish people.”

Drawing on interviews with “roughly 40 current and past Israeli decision makers about a military strike” and American and Arab officials, Mr. Goldberg predicts that Israel will launch a strike by July 2011. The story notes previous Israeli strikes on nuclear facilities in Iraq and Syria, and quotes Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu saying, “You don’t want a messianic apocalyptic cult controlling atomic bombs. When the wide-eyed believer gets hold of the reins of power and the weapons of mass death, then the world should start worrying, and that’s what is happening in Iran.”

2010: US officials note that Iran’s nuclear program has been slowed by four sets of UN Security Council sanctions and a host of US and EU measures. The Stuxnet computer virus also played havoc through 2011 with Iran’s thousands of spinning centrifuges that enrich uranium.

January 2011: When Meir Dagan steps down as director of Israel’s Mossad spy agency, he says that Iran would not be able to produce a nuclear weapon until 2015. “Israel should not hasten to attack Iran, doing so only when the sword is upon its neck,” Mr. Dagan warned. Later he said that attacking Iran would be “a stupid idea…. The regional challenge that Israel would face would be impossible.”

January 2011: A report by the Federation of American Scientists on Iran’s uranium enrichment says there is “no question” that Tehran already has the technical capability to produce a “crude” nuclear device.

February 2011: National intelligence director James Clapper affirms in testimony before Congress that “Iran is keeping the option open to develop nuclear weapons in part by developing various nuclear capabilities and better position it to produce such weapons, should it choose to do so,” Mr. Clapper said. “We do not know, however, if Iran will eventually decide to build nuclear weapons.”

November 2011: The IAEA claims for the first time that Iran is has worked on weapons-related activities for years, publishing detailed information based on more than 1,000 pages of design information that is corroborated, it says, by data from 10 member states and its own investigation and interviews.

U.S. & Israel Preparing False Flag Iranian Attack

Events over the last several days reveal that the United States and Israel plan to conduct a false flag terror event to be blamed on Iran. The event will likely occur within the next six months and will result in an attack on Iran prior to the November election.

Obama’s intelligence chief, James Clapper (center), warned of Iranian terror attacks inside the United States.

Intelligence in U.S. and Israel Warn of Domestic Terror Attack

Officialdom in the United States and Israel have issued a warning about an Iranian “threat stream” against Israeli “soft targets” in America.

The warning arrives several days after Obama’s intelligence boss James Clapper said Iran may strike inside the United States,

“We predict that the threat on our sites around the world will increase… on both our guarded sites and ‘soft’ sites,” states a letter sent out by the head of security for the Israeli Consul General for the Mid-Atlantic States.

Guarded sites are Israeli government facilities like embassies while soft sites are Jewish synagogues, schools, and community centers.

Yoram Cohen, the head of Israel’s security service Shin Bet, said recently that Iran’s Revolutionary Guard will attack Israeli and Jewish targets abroad in response to the assassination of Iranian nuclear scientists.

In January it was reported Mossad was behind the assassination of Iranian nuclear scientist Mostafa Ahmadi-Roshan.

“The thwarted assassination plot of a Saudi official in Washington, D.C., a couple of months ago was an important data point,” a nameless official told ABC News, “in that it showed at least parts of the Iranian establishment were aware of the intended event and were not concerned about inevitable collateral damage to U.S. citizens had they carried out an assassination plot on American soil.”

Cohen linked the alleged threat to the discredited plot to assassinate the Saudi ambassador in October.

A court document in the case revealed that the FBI and the DEA concocted the plot as a sting operation and used failed used car salesman and alcoholic Mansour Arbabsiar as a patsy. Arbabsiar, who is from Iran, thought he was participating in a drug deal.

Despite the fallacious nature of the plot, intelligence officials used it to hype the specter of Iranian terrorism that will likely result in a false flag operation used as a pretext to invade Iran.

“In the past few weeks, there has been an escalation in threats against Israeli and Jewish targets around the world,” an intelligence document cited by ABC News states. It warns that demonstrations against Israel “could potentially turn violent at local synagogues, restaurants, the Israeli Embassy and other Israeli sites.”

The Israeli bulletin also provides an excuse for the TSA to step-up intrusive pat-downs and demand travelers be subjected to dangerous naked body scanners at airports across the United States.

“According to our evaluation there is a possibility that the forged passports will be used in order to pass as Israeli citizens at the security checks in Israel and around the world.

Israeli security authorities may consider an Israeli citizenship as a [criterion] to proceed with a more lenient security check in secure sites such as airports, etc.,” the bulletin explains.

The latest warning arrives two weeks after the Turkish newspaper Zaman reported that a cell of the Quds Unit of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard planned to attack U.S. embassy in Ankara and other targets across Turkey.

Fast Moving Timeline for War

The latest development follows a number of events over the past few weeks that point toward a concerted attack by Israel and then the United States on Iran:

• DEBKAfile reported earlier in the week that the United States will have 100,000 troops in the region by March. “Pentagon has been quietly massing troops and armaments on two islands located just south of the Strait of Hormuz, and within easy striking distance of Iran,” Mac Slavo wrote on January 31.

• On Friday, the establishment media reported that Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said “there is a strong likelihood that Israel will strike Iran in April, May or June,” according to the Washington Post. The timeline is predicated on Iran entering an Israeli contrived “zone of immunity” in its unsubstantiated effort to build a nuclear bomb.

Iran has issued a number of threats in response to punitive oil and economic sanctions devised by the United States and Europe. On Friday, Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said in a nationally televised speech that his country will retaliate if Western nations impose crippling oil sanctions. In January, in response to European Union foreign ministers deciding to impose an oil embargo on the country, Iran vowed to shut down the Strait of Hormuz.

• Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman General Martin Dempsey admitted on January 9 that Iran has the ability to close off the strategic shipping lane linking the Gulf of Oman with the Persian Gulf. He said doing so would constitute a “red line.”

• In December, in response to Sec. Def. Panetta’s not ruling out an attack, Iranannounced it would hold a military exercise in the Persian Gulf. The 10 day exercise, dubbed “Velayat-e 90,” demonstrated that Iran has the ability to shut down the Strait of Hormuz. The U.S. further exacerbated the situation by sending the aircraft carrier USS John C. Stennis through the Strait of Hormuz while Iran was conducting its war game.

• Russia and China have indicated that an attack on Iran would constitute an attack on their national security. “Iran is our close neighbor, just south of the Caucasus.Should anything happen to Iran, should Iran get drawn into any political or military hardships, this will be a direct threat to our national security,” said Dmitry Rogozin, Russia’s deputy prime minister and former envoy to NATO, in mid-January.

War President: Re-electing Obama

In November, DEBKAfile said Obama will use war as a re-election tool. “President Barack Obama went on line to America’s senior allies, Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Israel and Saudi Arabia, with notice of his plan to attack Iran no later than September-October 2012 – unless Tehran halted its nuclear weaponization programs,” the neocon-connected subscriber-only publication predicted.

“Obama’s announcement was not perceived as a general directive to US allies, but a guideline to blow the dust off the contingency plans for a strike against Iran’s nuclear facilities which stayed locked in bottom drawers for three years,” states the report, adding that “Obama’s announcement spurred Germany, France, Britain, Italy and Israel into girding their navies, air forces, ballistic units and anti-missile defense systems for the challenges ahead.”

Britain’s foreign secretary William Hague said in January his country has not ruled out military action against Iran. Britain had dispatched its “most formidable warship HMS Daring” to the Persian Gulf region prior to Hague’s remarks.

In 2010, as Obama’s job rating began its descent into the abyss, former Clintonite and Democrat operative Mark Penn said Obama needs a domestic terror attack to regain his popularity. In July of that year, another former Clintonite, Robert Shapiro, said the only thing can preserve the Obama presidency is war.

“The bottom line here is that Americans don’t believe in President Obama’s leadership,” said Shapiro, writing for the Financial Times. “He has to find some way between now and November of demonstrating that he is a leader who can command confidence and, short of a 9/11 event or an Oklahoma City bombing, I can’t think of how he could do that.”

The late Washington Post columnist David Broder was more succinct. “With strong Republican support in Congress for challenging Iran’s ambition to become a nuclear power, he can spend much of 2011 and 2012 orchestrating a showdown with the mullahs.

This will help him politically because the opposition party will be urging him on. And as tensions rise and we accelerate preparations for war, the economy will improve,” he wrote in late 2010.

Tensions will undoubtedly rise if there is a terror attack inside the United States, either against an Israeli target or American one.

It would provide an airtight excuse to unleash the awesome power of the U.S. military against Iran and cast Obama in the adulatory light all “war presidents” receive as the masses fall in line and wave their flags and cheer on “our boys” as they decimate another country and engage in yet another bloody massacre of innocents.

This article originally appeared at Infowars.com

A Brief History Of The Presstitute Media & Human Gullibility On Iran

This week, Media Matters came out with an article that detailed how, since 2005, conservatives have been predicting imminent death by Iranian nuclear bombs, always conveniently a year or two away from coming to full, frightening fruition. But Media Matters could have gone back even further. Because, see, pretty much as long as many of us can remember, despite the IAEA saying it's not true and, at times, despite the U.S. government denying it, Iran has been within a couple of years to a decade from having nukes. Think of this as a supplement to what is probably the most convincing argument you'll read about how irrational our media and politicians are about Iran right now:

Iran will have nukes by 1986, says AP article, April 25, 1984: "Iran is likely to have its own nuclear bomb within two years, according to press reports cited by Jane's Defence Weekly. The magazine, part of the authoritative Jane's Publications on weapons systems, said Tuesday that reports from the Persian Gulf region last week indicated the bomb was being produced at a nuclear power plant in Boushahar, southern Iran."

Via Rude Pundit

Or maybe 2000, says AFP, December 4, 1991: "Iran will be able to build a nuclear bomb by the year 2000 if it keeps up its present military activities, German intelligence chief Konrad Porzner said."

Or sometime between 1995 and 2000, says the Washington Post, October 18, 1992: "Gen. Uri Saguy, the head of Israel's military intelligence, estimates that Iran will have a nuclear capability by the end of the decade; British and French intelligence officials predict that Iran might join the nuclear club even earlier. Mohammed Mohaddessin, an adviser to the National Council of Resistance of Iran, said during a recent visit to Washington that he believes Iran will have nuclear devices within three to five years."

Or perhaps in 1999, according to AP, February 12, 1993: "Iran now poses the greatest threat to Israel's security, a leading Israeli newspaper said today, quoting experts who predicted Tehran would have an atomic bomb within six years."

No, more likely 2000, according to the Guardian, January 6, 1995: "Iran is much closer to producing nuclear weapons than previously thought, and could be less than five years from having an atomic bomb, several senior American and Israeli officials say. 'The date by which Iran will have nuclear weapons is no longer 10 years from now,' a senior official said recently, referring to previous estimates. 'If the Iranians maintain this intensive effort to get everything they need, they could have all their components in two years. Then it will be just a matter of technology and research. If Iran is not interrupted in this program by some foreign power, it will have the device in more or less five years.'"

Or, holy crap, they already have them, says AFP, April 9, 1998: "Iran obtained several nuclear warheads from a former Soviet republic in the early 1990s, according to Iranian documents obtained by Israel and revealed in The Jerusalem Post newspaper Thursday."

You get the idea. Hmmm. There's a common thread here that the Rude Pundit can't quite figure out, a nation involved in this fearmongering that has controlled a great deal of U.S. foreign policy in the region for decades. It's on the tip of his tongue. Gosh, he really wishes he could connect the dots. Of course, if one does ever connect 'em, one will automatically beaccused of being anti...well, something or other.

Christopher Hitchens On Colin Powell & Iran Contra

It's just a couple of seconds at the beginning but worth its weight in depleted uranium

In 1984-85, as the Iran-contra storm clouds began to build, one-star Gen. Colin Powell was the "filter" for information flowing to Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger. It would be what knowledge flowed through that "filter" that investigators would try to determine years later -- a mystery still relevant as Powell's political star rises and his importance to Bob Dole's 1996 campaign grows. 

When Iran-contra broke in 1986-87, Powell would claim to know next to nothing about unlawful 1985 shipments of U.S. weapons from Israel to Iran -- or about illegal third-country financing of the Nicaraguan contra rebels. But was the general lying? The documentary record made clear certainly that his boss, Weinberger, knew a great deal. 

Weinberger, a close adviser to President Reagan, was one of the first officials outside the White House to learn that Reagan had put the arm on Saudi Arabia to give the contras $1 million a month in 1984, as Congress cut off aid. Like Weinberger, Powell was a very close friend to Prince Bandar, the Saudi ambassador who handled that transaction. Powell and Bandar, who had met in the 1970s, were frequent tennis partners. 

But exactly when Weinberger learned of the Saudi contributions and what he told Powell are still not clear. On June 20, 1984, Weinberger attended a State Department meeting on the contras, and his scribbled notes cited the need to "plan for other sources for $." But secrecy would be vital, the defense secretary understood. "Keep US fingerprints off," he wrote. 

Over the summer, Gen. John Vessey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, learned from a foreign visitor about the Saudi money and passed on word to the defense secretary. "I reported it to Secretary Weinberger," Vessey said in a deposition. "His reaction was about the same as mine, sort of surprise first that Saudi Arabia] would do it." 

In 1985, when the Saudis doubled their annual contra gift from $12 million to $25 million, Vessey quickly passed on word to his boss. "Jack Vessey in office alone," Weinberger wrote on March 13, 1985. "Bandar is giving $25 million to Contras -- so all we need is non-lethal aid." 

Dangerous Lands

Meanwhile, the White House was maneuvering into dangerous territory, too, in its policy toward Iran. The Israelis were interested in trading U.S. weapons to Iran to gain a strategic foothold in that Middle Eastern country -- and to enlist Iran's help in freeing American hostages in Lebanon. 

Carrying the water for the Iran opening was national security adviser Robert McFarlane, who circulated a draft presidential order in late spring 1985. As always, the paper passed through Weinberger's "filter," Colin Powell. In his memoirs, Powell called the proposal "a stunner" and a grab by McFarlane for "Kissingerian immortality." 

After reading the draft, Weinberger scribbled in the margins, "this is almost too absurd to comment on." Ironically, on the same day the Iran paper went out, Reagan declared that the United States would give no quarter to terrorism. "Let me further make it plain to the assassins in Beirut and their accomplices, wherever they may be, that America will never make concessions to terrorists," Reagan declared. 

But in July 1985, Weinberger, Powell and McFarlane were actively meeting on details to do just that. Iran wanted 100 anti-tank TOW missiles that would be delivered through Israel, according to Weinberger's notes. Reagan gave his approval, though the White House wanted the shipments handled with "maximum compartmentalization" to prevent public disclosure. 

On Aug. 20, 1985, the Israelis delivered the first 96 missiles to Iran, a pivotal moment for the Reagan administration. That missile shipment put the Reagan administration over the legal line, in violation of laws both requiring congressional notification for transshipment of U.S. weapons and prohibiting arms to Iran or any other nation designated a terrorist state. Violation of either statute could be a felony and an impeachable offense. 

The available evidence from that period also suggests that Weinberger and Powell were very much in the loop on the operation, even though they may have opposed the policy. On Aug. 22, two days later, Israel notified McFarlane of the completed shipment. From aboard Air Force One, McFarlane promptly called Weinberger. 

A Mystery Meeting

When Air Force One landed at Andrews Air Force Base, McFarlane rushed to the Pentagon to meet Weinberger and Powell. The 40-minute meeting started at 7:30 p.m, but the substance of the meeting remains in dispute. McFarlane said he cited Reagan's approval of the missile transfer and the need to replenish Israeli stockpiles. But Weinberger denied that account, and Powell insisted that he had only a vague memory of the meeting. 

"My recollection is that Mr. McFarlane described to the Secretary the so-called Iran Initiative and he gave to the Secretary a sort of a history of how we got where we were that particular day and some of the thinking that gave rise to the possibility of going forward ... and what the purposes of such an initiative would be," Powell said in a deposition two years later. 

Congressional attorney Joseph Saba asked Powell if McFarlane had mentioned that Israel already had supplied weapons to Iran. "I don't recall specifically," Powell answered vaguely. "I just don't recall." When Saba asked about any notes, Powell responded, "there were none on our side." 

In a later interview with the FBI, Powell said he learned at that meeting that there "was to be a transfer of some limited amount of materiel" to Iran. But he did not budge on his claim that he did not remember that the first shipment had already gone and that replenishment had been promised. 

This claim of only prospective knowledge would be key to Powell's Iran-contra defense. But it made little sense for McFarlane to hurry to the Pentagon, after learning of the delivery and the need for replenishment, simply to debate a future policy that, in fact, was already being implemented. The behavior of Powell and Weinberger in the following days also suggested that they knew an arms-for-hostage swap was under way. 

According to Weinberger's diary, he and Powell eagerly awaited hostage release in following weeks. In early September 1985, Weinberger dispatched a Pentagon emissary to meet with Iranians in Europe. At the same time, McFarlane sent a message to Israel that the United States was prepared to replace 500 Israeli missiles, an assurance that would have required Weinberger's clearance. 

On Sept. 14, 1985, Israel delivered the second shipment, 408 more missiles to Iran. The next day, one hostage, the Rev. Benjamin Weir, was released in Beirut. Back at the Pentagon, Weinberger penned in his diary a cryptic reference to "a delivery I have for our prisoners." 

But when the Iran-contra scandal broke more than a year later, Weinberger and Powell would plead faulty memories again. Saba asked Powell if he had heard of any linkage between an arms delivery and Weir's release. "No, I have no recollection of that," Powell answered. 

After Weir's freedom, the job of replenishing the Israel stockpile fell to White House aide Oliver North. "My original point of contact was General Colin Powell, who was going directly to his immediate superior, Secretary Weinberger," North would testify in 1987. But in their later sworn testimony, Powell and Weinberger would continue to insist that they had no idea that 508 missiles had already been shipped.

Update: Original video, deleted.

Top Ten Mainscream Media Reasons For Attacking Iran

1. Iran has threatened to fight back if attacked, and that's a war crime. War crimes must be punished.

2. My television says Iran has nukes.  I'm sure it's true this time.  Just like with North Korea.  I'm sure they're next.  We only bomb places that really truly have nukes and are in the Axis of Evil.  Except Iraq, which was different.

3. Iraq didn't go so badly. Considering how lousy its government is, the place is better off with so many people having left or died.  Really, that one couldn't have worked out better if we'd planned it. 

4. When we threaten to cut off Iran's oil, Iran threatens to cut off Iran's oil, which is absolutely intolerable.  What would we do without that oil? And what good is buying it if they want to sell it?

5. Iran was secretly behind 9-11. I read it online. And if it wasn't, that's worse. Iran hasn't attacked another nation in centuries, which means its next attack is guaranteed to be coming very soon.

6. Iranians are religious nuts, unlike Israelis and Americans.  Most Israelis don't want to attack Iran, but the Holy Israeli government does. To oppose that decision would be to sin against God. 

7. Iranians are so stupid that when we murder their scientists they try to hire a car dealer in Texas to hire a drug gang in Mexico to murder a Saudi ambassador in Washington, and then they don't do it -- just to make us look bad for catching them.

7. b. Oh, and stupid people should be bombed.  They're not civilized.

8. War is good for the U.S. economy, and the Iranian economy too.  Troops stationed in Iran would buy stuff.  And women who survived the war would have more rights.  Like in Virginia.  We owe Iranians this after that little mishap in 1953.

9. This is the only way to unite the region.  Either we bomb Iran and it swears its eternal love to us.  Or, if necessary, we occupy Iran to liberate it like its neighbors.  Which shouldn't take long.  Look how well Afghanistan is going already.

10. They won't give our drone back.  Enough said.


Via David Swanson

Somebody Muzzle The Dog (The Silence Is Killing Me)

The Red areas are US military bases surrounding Iran. 

After 1953 when the CIA and MI6 toppled the democratically elected Iranian government to install their man the Shah of Iran, the people rose up and kicked him out. The United States was pissed and sided with Iraq by lending Saddam Hussein the money to buy the chemical weapons  and other WMD's for the Iran Iraq war

The Iran/Iraq war was ugly. It was like World War One multiplied twice but with kids involved as the Iranians sent 'martyr children' to trigger and blow up the land mines first so their army could follow after. 

At this point the Pentagon cut one of their famous two-faced double-dealing sneaky-fuck top-secret snake-oil-salesman hush-hush deals called the Iran Contra affair where they supplied arms to Iran and used the undeclarable profits to fund another war in South America with the democratically elected Nicaraguan government. This is pretty much how the CIA runs its terrorist operation globally.

Then when the Iran/Iraq war was over the corporations connected to the Pentagon had made a shed load of money to cause more mayhem and invest in bigger and better arms research and development. The Pentagon was ecstatic, the U.S. loved Ronnie Reagan more than any other president, Bush the ex head of the CIA was waiting in the wings, and everybody was pleased. Really really happy. It was like a fairy tale.

Iraq however was broke and asked for time to pay back its loans. This was the chance Kuwait had been waiting for since Mesopotamia fell in 1932. It fucked over Iraq by lowering the price of oil worldwide making it impossible for Iraq to pay back its loans. Furthermore, in a hostile and provocative manner, Kuwait was sending out it's drill pipes diagonally into Iraq land and stealing Iraqi oil.

Saddam was pissed about this and asked the US ambassador if he could invade Kuwait. He'd been a good U.S. arms customer and personally knew Rumsfeld and Bush. It was at this point, the U.S ambassador April Glaspie said to Saddam that the U.S. was uninterested before taking off on holiday.  

April Glaspie says this didn't happen but with Wikileaks we can prove this is not true 

Iraq then invaded Kuwait and the U.S. came to Kuwait and said if we help, you need to pay us back with your oil. 

Cut to today and it's Iranian oil that corporate America wants. Fortunately the biggest bully in the area is Israel which has 300 nuclear weapons to pick a fight it can't lose and not only that but they run U.S. politics with campaign contributions to AIPAC and four media conglomerates dominate the media landscape and can invent any reality they want to justify a war that pays back big dividends to everyone.

The largest media conglomerate though is Disney and as you've got the picture now about who creates the Mickey Mouse wars I'll just remind you of the Disney strap line.

"Capturing your imagination"

As far as I can see people are behaving as if their Jewish neighbours are being rounded up to the concentration camps and only a few have got the bottle to say anything in case it interferes with their salaries or career plans. 

Let's be candid, those careers don't exist if you keep quiet. Speak up. It's about the difference between right and wrong.


Update: Here is Chomsky saying exactly what I am. This is not a surprise as he taught me how much the corporate for profit media repeats the governments lies.

Why Is The United States Funding & Training MEK Terrorists To Destabilize Iran?

This is a rip roaring heated discussion between three people about the MEK or Mujahedin-e Khalq. Glen Greenwald and the former State Dept guy make the guy from the Washington Institute look like the terror revisionist he is but in the end I say the easiest way to know if they're good or not is to see who supports MEK: Tom Ridge, Rudy Giuliani and John Bolton. These are the most venal money grubbing political snakes in the United States. It's not hard.

Since its creation in 1997 the US list of terrorist organisations has included the Iranian group, Mujahedin-e Khalq (MEK).

"It is a criminal offence, a felony to have any transactions with this group, let alone to provide material support… if you coordinate advocacy on behalf of that group. There are lots of Muslims sitting in prison…for doing far less..." - Glenn Greenwald, a journalist and former civil rights lawyer

The group's supporters say they are Iran's democratic opposition, working for a nuclear-free Iran. But critics argue they have a violent history that dates back to the overthrow of Shah Reza Pahlavi.

Most members of the group now live in an Iraqi refugee camp.

Unlike other designated terrorist organisations, the MEK enjoys the support of many high-profile US officials, including Rudy Giuliani, the former New York City mayor; John Bolton, the former US envoy to the UN; James Woolsey, the former CIA director; and Tom Ridge, the former secretary of Homeland Security.

They have travelled around the US and the world, giving speeches advocating the MEK's removal from the US terrorist list.

Below are excerpts from some of the speeches:

Tom Ridge: "They do not belong on the list. They're not a terrorist organisation. Take them off the list".

John Bolton: "I don't think that organisations should be put on that list for political purposes as the MEK was in 1997. I don't think organisations should be kept on that list as the MEK was in 2008 for political purposes. I think the facts should be allowed to fall where they may."

Rudy Giuliani: "We will stand up for them, we are with them as if we are in that camp with them today. Whatever they do to them, they do to us."

"The treasury should get to the bottom of finding out where the money is coming from. If this is being done in coordination with the MEK, a crime has been committed then somebody ought to be convicted...but I don't know if that's the case [here]." - Patrick Clawson, Iran analyst at the Washington Institute

Now the US Treasury Department has launched an inquiry into whether these officials are being paid by the MEK to speak, which would be a violation of US laws.

So why are so many high-ranking US politicians and former officials openly backing the MEK despite their designation as a terrorist group?

Is it even legal? And why has it taken so long for the US government to ask the same question?

Joining Inside Story Americas with Lisa Fletcher to discuss this are: Glenn Greenwald, a journalist and former civil rights lawyer; Reza Marashi, the research director at the National Iranian American Council; and Patrick Clawson, the research director and Iran analyst at the Washington Institute.

"When the MEK was put on the terrorist list in 1997 by Martin Indyk he said in his book 'we decided to put the MEK as a designated terrorist organisation not because they were pro- or anti-American but because they were [one] without a shadow of a doubt...'" Reza Marashi, research director at the National Iranian American Council

Who is MEK?

• Founded in 1965 by Islamic-Marxist students, the group helped to overthrow the Iranian government in 1979, prompting a clampdown following the revolution.
• Many members are refugees in both Iraq and France.
• Saddam Hussein, the former Iraqi leader, used them for attacks against Iran and the Kurds.
• The US disarmed them following the 2003 invasion of Iraq, which the MEK agreed to in exchange for protection.
• The US turned over MEK refugees to the Iraqi government in 2011.
• The group's leaders continue to live and operate in France.