The Jerusalem Post & Rense.com & Welcome to Potterville.blog – 2007-04-04 09:04:41
http://www.rense.com/general75/bite.htm http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1173879220977&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull
‘US ready to strike Iran on Good Friday’
Jerusalem Post & AP
JERUSALEM (April 1, 2007) — The United States will be ready to launch a missile attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities as soon as early this month, perhaps “from 4 a.m. until 4 p.m. on April 6,” according to reports in the Russian media on Saturday.
According to Russian intelligence sources, the reports said, the US has devised a plan to attack several targets in Iran, and an assault could be carried out by launching missiles from fighter jets and warships stationed in the Persian Gulf.
Russian news agency RIA Novosti quoted a security official as saying, “Russian intelligence has information that the US Armed Forces stationed in the Persian Gulf have nearly completed preparations for a missile strike against Iranian territory.”
Iran fears strike by ‘warmongers’
JPost.com special: news, opinion, blogs and more
The Russian Defense Ministry rejected the claims of an imminent attack as “myths.” There was no immediate response from Washington.
The reports come as the Iranian chief of staff, Hassan Fayrouz Abadi, was quoted on Saturday by Iran’s Fars news agency warning leaders of Arab countries that Israel plans to open a “suicidal attack” on its neighbors this summer, to “prevent the withdrawal of the US troops from Iraq and the area.”
“I warn the dear leaders and Muslim brothers in the neighboring countries of the occupied territories that this suicidal attack of the Zionists is threatening them,” he said.
The countries in danger, he said, were “Lebanon and Syria, and later Egypt, Jordan and Saudi Arabia.”
Also on Saturday, Russia urged Britain and Teheran to resolve the dispute over 15 British sailors and marines captured by Iran last week, a local news agency reported.
Russian Foreign Ministry spokesman Mikhail Kamynin urged the two sides to provide the United Nations with their own assessments as to what happened and where exactly the detention occurred so that the body could conduct an independent probe.
“We hope these actions will provide a foundation for the soonest possible resolution of the crisis,” Kamynin was quoted as saying by the Interfax news agency.
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad insisted that the captured British sailors and marines trespassed in Iranian waters and called world powers “arrogant” for failing to apologize, the country’s official news agency reported.
“The British occupier forces did trespass our waters. Our border guards detained them with skill and bravery. But arrogant powers, because of their arrogant and selfish spirit, are claiming otherwise,” IRNA quoted Ahmadinejad as saying during a speech in the southeastern city of Andinmeshk.
The European Union grappled with a double bind over Iran Saturday – the country’s nuclear program and its seizure of the British troops – and reported no progress on either issue.
A debate about Iran’s nuclear ambitions had been scheduled as a key agenda item but “was overshadowed to a certain extent by the issue of the sailors and marines,” German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier said after hosting a two-day EU foreign ministers meeting in Bremen, Germany.
The Foreign Ministry in Iran dismissed the EU’s “biased and meddlesome” comments on the captured troops, saying the dispute solely involved the governments of Iran and Britain.
Speaking to reporters in Bremen, British Foreign Secretary Margaret Beckett urged Iran to resolve the crisis over the military personnel peacefully, saying London remains open to dialogue.
“We encourage Iran to peacefully resolve this issue,” she said.
“We continue to express our willingness to engage in dialogue and discussions with Iran,” she added. “That is very much in the best interest of our people and that is our foremost concern.”
“I think everyone regrets that this position has arisen,” she said. “What we want is a way out of it.”
AP contributed to this report.
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Operation Bite:
Russian Military Sources Warn
Sneak Attack by US Forces On Iran
Planned for April 6
rense.com
General Ivashov Calls For Emergency Session
Of UN Security Council To Ward Off
Looming US Aggression
Webster G. Tarpley / rense.com
WASHINGTON DC (March 25, 2007) — The long awaited US military attack on Iran is now on track for the first week of April, specifically for 4 AM on April 6, the Good Friday opening
of Easter weekend, writes the well-known Russian journalist Andrei Uglanov in the Moscow weekly “Argumenty Nedeli.” Uglanov cites Russian military experts close to the Russian General Staff for his account.
The attack is slated to last for twelve hours, according to Uglanov, lasting from 4 AM until 4 PM local time. Friday is a holiday in Iran. In the course of the attack, code named Operation Bite, about 20 targets are marked for bombing; the list includes uranium enrichment facilities, research centers, and laboratories.
The first reactor at the Bushehr nuclear plant, where Russian engineers are working, is supposed to be spared from destruction. The US attack plan reportedly calls for the Iranian air defense system to be degraded, for numerous Iranian warships to be sunk in the Persian Gulf, and the for the most important headquarters of the Iranian armed forces to be wiped out.
The attacks will be mounted from a number of bases, including the island of Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean. Diego Garcia is currently home to B-52 bombers equipped with standoff missiles. Also participating in the air strikes will be US naval aviation from aircraft carriers in the Persian Gulf, as well as from those of the Sixth Fleet in the Mediterranean. Additional cruise missiles will be fired from submarines in the Indian Ocean and off the coast of the Arabian peninsula. The goal is allegedly to set back Iran’s nuclear program by several years, writes Uglanov, whose article was re-issued by RIA-Novosti in various languages, but apparently not English, several days ago. The story is the top item on numerous Italian and German blogs, but so far appears to have been ignored by US websites.
Observers comment that this dispatch represents a high-level orchestrated leak from the Kremlin, in effect a war warning, which draws on the formidable resources of the Russian intelligence services, and which deserves to be taken with the utmost seriousness by pro-peace forces around the world.
Asked by RIA-Novosti to comment on the Uglanov report, retired Colonel General Leonid Ivashov confirmed its essential features in a March 21 interview: “I have no doubt that there will be an operation, or more precisely a violent action against Iran.” Ivashov, who has reportedly served at various times as an informal advisor to Putin, is currently the Vice President of the Moscow Academy for Geopolitical Sciences.
Ivashov attributed decisive importance to the decision of the Democratic leadership of the US House of Representatives to remove language from the just-passed Iraq supplemental military appropriations bill which would have demanded that Bush come to Congress before launching an attack on Iran. Ivashov pointed out that the language was eliminated under pressure from AIPAC, the lobbing group representing the Israeli extreme right, and of Israeli Foreign Minister Tsipi Livni.
“We have drawn the unmistakable conclusion that this operation will take place,” said Ivashov. In his opinion, the US planning does not include a land operation: “Most probably there will be no ground attack, but rather massive air attacks with the goal of annihilating Iran’s capacity for military resistance, the centers of administration, the key economic assets, and quite possibly the Iranian political leadership, or at least part of it,” he continued.
Ivashov noted that it was not to be excluded that the Pentagon would use smaller tactical nuclear weapons against targets of the Iranian nuclear industry. These attacks could paralyze everyday life, create panic in the population, and generally produce an atmosphere of chaos and uncertainty all over Iran, Ivashov told RIA-Novosti. “This will unleash a struggle for power inside Iran, and then there will be a peace delegation sent in to install a pro-American government in Teheran,” Ivashov continued. One of the US goals was, in his estimation, to burnish the image of the current Republican administration, who would now be able to boast that they had wiped out the Iranian nuclear program.
Among the other outcomes, General Ivashov pointed to a partition of Iran along the same lines as Iraq, and a subsequent carving up of the Near and Middle East into smaller regions. “This concept worked well for them in the Balkans and will now be applied to the greater Middle East,” he commented.
“Moscow must expert Russia’s influence by demanding an emergency session of the
United Nations Security Council to deal with the current preparations for an illegal use of force against Iran and the destruction of the basis of the United Nations Charter,” said General Ivashov. “In this context Russia could cooperate with China, France and the non-permanent members of the Security Council. We need this kind of preventive action to ward off the use of force,” he concluded.
Commentary: Operation Bite Off More Than Bush Can Chew
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I don’t know if this is a hoax, paranoia dressed up as serious journalism, the classic echo chamber or the straight and skinny but Naomi at God Is 4 Suckers emailed me this link that indicates we’re attacking Iran. The story was relayed to our shore by Webster G. Tarpley, co-author of the book George Bush: The Unauthorized Biography.
It had gotten some play in the blogosphere the day and the day after the story came out but, eerily, it hasn’t hit the American mainstream media, indicating that either 1) This is a hoax that can’t be taken seriously by any self-respecting journalist, or 2) It’s true but so fantastic that it can’t be taken seriously by any self-respecting journalist.
If it is a hoax, then it’s a very plausible one, considering the blood-spattered backdrop of the Rapturish Bush administration.
According to Russian journalist Andrei Uglanov of the Argumenty Nedeli, we’re launching an assault on Iran on April 6th in a massive, 12 hour air strike called Operation Bite. Of course, this story, while it may be fairly new (March 25th), is hardly news.
I’ve been saying for months now that we’re going to hit Iran anytime now and Global Research and the Arab Times have been saying the same thing since at least the middle of January. What’s notable is that the April date has remained intact all this time, which indicates a specific timetable and an unshakable, longstanding agenda.
Don’t forget Bush’s naming of Admiral William “Fox” Fallon to replace Gen. John Abizaid as head honcho at the Central Command early this year. At first it looked to be yet another bizarre, inappropriate appointment by our bizarre preznit until one re-examined Fallon’s biography a bit more closely and realized that he was exactly the sort of guy that Bush would need for an air/naval war with Iran.
What’s scary is that the US and Great Britain may at last have their Gulf of Tonkin/USS Maine incident with Iran’s kidnapping of the 15 British sailors. What’s odd is you’d think the Iranian press would be screaming about this imperialist Anglo-American aggression. Yet not a word has come out and I’ve been to at least four or five Iranian newspapers online. Plus, the only sources for this story seem to be Tarpley, a syndicated columnist, who in turn got it from Uglanov.
It’s impossible to double source this, much less triple source it but then again Sy Hersh is still the only guy reporting on the Cheney administration funding al-Qaida sympathizers through Cheney’s office and us sending special forces across the Iranian border to provoke unrest between religious factions.
So, if you were to seriously entertain this, Hersh is saying “Divide” and Uglanov is saying “Conquer.”
However, there is this story in Novosti, the Russian News and Information Agency, that, while not specifying a date for an attack, seems to bear out the Uglanov/Tarpley story. What’s eerie is this line: “He said the Pentagon is looking for a way to deliver a strike against Iran ‘that would enable the Americans to bring the country to its knees at minimal cost.’”
Gee, when did we hear that before? Oh, yeah. 2003.
The one nuclear power plant not slated to be hit by this hypothetical air strike in which 20 targets are specified, is the ironically-named Bushehr plant, which is supposed to get a free pass on account of the Russian engineers who work there. That would be the Russian engineers who were rumored a week ago to have left Bushehr over billing discrepancies (The Russians poo-poohed the exodus exposé while the Iranians claimed to have paid the Russian firm in full for the NPP fuel and construction costs).
Now, we all know that Bush considers criticism and advice from his detractors as “noise”. If he wants to have his little Gibson-esque Apocalypto against them damned heathen Persians, then well, what Junior wants, Junior gets and time’s a’runnin’ out.
If this is all true then I agree 100% with, of all people, Pat Buchanan when he said on the 20th that if we ever launch an attack or, God help us, start a full-blown war with Iran, Nancy Pelosi’s going to have to eat it. It was Pelosi, don’t forget, who took a big blue eraser to the military spending bill that essentially gave Bush the power to attack Iran without Congressional approval because poor defenseless little Israel is afraid of big, bad Iran. No doubt news of Pelosi’s complicity produced many wet crotches at the last AIPAC conference.
And, as usual, when I said last year that Pelosi’s elevation to House Speaker would be an unmitigated catastrophe, I was ignored. When I told people that we were invading Iran I was ignored and derided.
Well, we’ll find out in just over a week and a half who was right and who was wrong and God help us all if I was right.
