*IRAN* War already started: Scott Ritter

[DB008]

Iran military shoots down U.S. drone: state TV

TEHRAN (Reuters) - Iran's military has shot down a U.S. reconnaissance drone aircraft in eastern Iran and has threatened to respond to the violation of Iranian airspace, a military source told state television Sunday.

"Iran's military has downed an intruding RQ-170 American drone in eastern Iran," Iran's Arabic-language Al Alam state television network quoted the unnamed source as saying.
"The spy drone, which has been downed with little damage, was seized by the Iranian armed forces."

Iran shot down the drone at a time when it is trying to contain foreign reaction to the storming of the British embassy in Tehran Tuesday, shortly after London announced that it would impose sanctions on Iran's central bank in connection with Iran's controversial nuclear enrichment program.

http://news.yahoo.com/iran-military-shoots-down-u-drone-state-tv-142804389.html

 

[DB008]

Interesting....

Iran Threatens to Block Oil Shipments, as U.S. Prepares Sanctions

WASHINGTON ”” A senior Iranian official on Tuesday delivered a sharp threat in response to economic sanctions being readied by the United States, saying his country would retaliate against any crackdown by blocking all oil shipments through the Strait of Hormuz, a vital artery for transporting about one-fifth of the world’s oil supply.

 

[Whiskers]

Interesting....

Iran Threatens to Block Oil Shipments, as U.S. Prepares Sanctions

I'd like to see them try.

No doubt with the growing desire by younger Iranians for 'western' culture and there increasing intolerance for fanatical religious rule, it would give the US and UK etc, an opportunity to do a 'Gadaffi' style campaign on them.

 

[DB008]

I'd like to see them try.

No doubt with the growing desire by younger Iranians for 'western' culture and there increasing intolerance for fanatical religious rule, it would give the US and UK etc, an opportunity to do a 'Gadaffi' style campaign on them.

As we all know, any type of disruption in the Middle East and bingo - POO (Price Of Oil) climbs.

 

[DB008]

With all this hoo-ha going on with Iran, l'm pretty bullish on oil at the moment.


EU Moves Closer to Iran Oil Ban - Bloomberg

European Union governments moved closer to halting oil purchases from Iran, stepping up the confrontation over the Islamic republic’s nuclear program.

EU foreign ministers are aiming to announce harsher sanctions on Iran’s energy and banking industries at their next meeting on Jan. 30 after Greece lifted its objections to an oil embargo.

“We want to tighten sanctions on Iran -- the things that have been mentioned are the oil sector and the financial sector,” EU spokesman Michael Mann said by telephone in Brussels today.

French Foreign Minister Alain Juppe said in Lisbon today that he hopes a decision about an embargo on Iranian oil exports may be adopted at the Jan. 30 meeting of foreign ministers.

Oil fluctuated near an eight-month high after the European Union said it’s working to sanction oil imports from Iran and its banks and on concern that Europe’s debt crisis will affect consumption market. Crude for February delivery rose 29 cents to settle at $103.25 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange.

The U.S. today welcomed the push toward an embargo.

“This is consistent with tightening the noose around Iran economically,” State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said at a briefing in Washington. “The place to get Iran’s attention is in the oil sector.”

More on link above...

 

[Whiskers]

With all this hoo-ha going on with Iran, l'm pretty bullish on oil at the moment.


EU Moves Closer to Iran Oil Ban - Bloomberg




More on link above...

Yeah, I'm a little also... but I'm not thinking it will go through the roof.

I understand since Obama reinstated permits in the gulf of Mexico after the BP disaster, they are now capable of drilling the deepest parts of the gulf and quietly optimistic there is considerable oil to be got there.

With increased production out of Iraq and more exploration activity in Afghanistan also, for minerals and oil, it loosens Iran's grip somewhat as a major oil supplier for the rest of the world, hence an opportunity to increase sanctions against nuclear proliferation and military build up for invasion of Iraq for example.

 

[Knobby22]

It appears the US hawks are trying to get into a fight with Iraq yet the Defence secretary states that he knows they are not building nucleur weapons!

http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com/2012/01/us-defense-secretary-admits-iran-not.html

 

[DB008]

Knobby22, it's hard to decide which side to believe in?

Boths sides are throwing propaganda around the place.


Hows this article?

Iran Charges ‘Foreign Quarters’ Assassinated Nuclear Engineer

Jan. 12 (Bloomberg) -- The Iranian government charged in a letter to United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon that a civilian nuclear scientist who was killed by a bomb yesterday was the latest victim of a foreign terror campaign.

“Based on the existing evidence collected by the relevant Iranian security authorities, similar to previous incidents, perpetrators used the same terrorist method in assassinating Iranian nuclear scientists, i.e. attaching a sticky magnetic bomb to the car carrying the scientists and detonating it,” Mohammad Khazaee, Iran’s ambassador to the UN, said in the letter yesterday. “Furthermore, there is firm evidence that certain foreign quarters are behind such assassinations.”

Iranian officials have accused the U.S. and Israel of targeting Iranian nuclear scientists in an effort to halt Iran’s nuclear program, which Western nations say is aimed at producing atomic weapons. Tensions have risen over U.S. and European efforts to increase economic sanctions on Iran because of the nuclear program.

More on link above...

 

[Knobby22]

Well it looks like the US sanctions on Iran will deliver China cheaper oil.
Insane policy. I just don't get where they are coming from on this.

China stands to be the biggest beneficiary of U.S. and European plans for sanctions on Iran’s oil sales in an effort to pressure the regime to abandon its nuclear program.

As European Union members negotiate an Iranian oil embargo and the U.S. begins work on imposing sanctions to complicate global payments for Iranian oil, Chinese refiners already may be taking advantage of the mounting pressure. China is demanding discounts and better terms on Iranian crude, oil analysts and sanctions advocates said in interviews.


http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com/2012/01/china-snubs-geithner-on-iran-oil-china.html

 

[Sean K]

Boths sides are throwing propaganda around the place.

Hows this article?

More on link above...

There's no doubt in my mind that Israel is behind these assassinations with tacit approval from the US and probably UK, France and Germany. Israel are best positioned to conduct these types of attacks inside Iran with their deep cover agents. All would be deniable operators without links back home. Really, who else would be trying to kill off their nuclear scientists? It's just plain obvious.

 

[bellenuit]

There's no doubt in my mind that Israel is behind these assassinations with tacit approval from the US and probably UK, France and Germany. Israel are best positioned to conduct these types of attacks inside Iran with their deep cover agents. All would be deniable operators without links back home. Really, who else would be trying to kill off their nuclear scientists? It's just plain obvious.

Whilst I would accept that the mentioned parties would have an interest in the assassination of the scientist, don't rule out the possibility that Iran itself may be the culprit. If the scientist in question was not involved in the development of nuclear weapons, but discovered that such activity was occurring and was planning to expose it, then the Iranian authorities may have decided to eliminate him while pinning the blame on the West. They certainly have the means to do it, more than any external government has.

 

[DB008]

I'm leaning towards the Jews taking out Iranian scientists myself. As they have done in the past.

Also, when you hear someone say this, someone sitting in Israel's shoes would want to do something about it.
'Wiped off the map'...."will that be with a nuke Sir?"

 

[DB008]

Stuxnet Worm

CNBC Code-Wars

NY Times - Stuxnet

Programmed into PLC's and looking for 1 particular type of machine, uranium centrifuge's.

((Maybe l should hook my Dad up, he one of the best PLC programmers out there, but not these types, LOL ))

 

[DB008]

Interesting article about enriching Uranium and how it's getting easier and easier for Iran to do with existing Uranium...

NY Time's Article

 

[Knobby22]

Interesting article about enriching Uranium and how it's getting easier and easier for Iran to do with existing Uranium...

NY Time's Article

Groan

 

[DB008]

Attacks May Escalate Covert Israel-Iran War

U.S. officials and defense analysts are concerned that a covert war of assassinations between Israel and Iran could escalate out of control.
“Things are heating up and there is a surge” of assassination attempts, Matthew Levitt, a former U.S. Treasury Department official and now director of the Stein Program on Counterterrorism and Intelligence at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, said in a telephone interview.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu yesterday blamed Iran for car bombings of Israeli diplomatic vehicles in New Delhi and the Georgian capital of Tbilisi. The attacks come after the deaths of several Iranian nuclear scientists, the most recent in a Jan. 11 car bombing in Tehran that Iran said Israel had orchestrated.

Israeli leaders have said time is running out for sanctions to deter Iran from developing nuclear weapons and have not ruled out a military strike. The U.S. and its allies have tightened economic restrictions on Iran while seeking to avert a military conflagration in a region that holds more than half of global oil reserves.

Bloomberg Link

 

[DB008]

Iran Raid Seen as a Huge Task for Israeli Jets

One possible Israeli target, the uranium-enrichment facility in Natanz, Iran, was guarded in 2007 by antiaircraft artillery.

WASHINGTON — Should Israel decide to launch a strike on Iran, its pilots would have to fly more than 1,000 miles across unfriendly airspace, refuel in the air en route, fight off Iran’s air defenses, attack multiple underground sites simultaneously — and use at least 100 planes.

That is the assessment of American defense officials and military analysts close to the Pentagon, who say that an Israeli attack meant to set back Iran’s nuclear program would be a huge and highly complex operation. They describe it as far different from Israel’s “surgical” strikes on a nuclear reactor in Syria in 2007 and Iraq’s Osirak reactor in 1981.

“All the pundits who talk about ‘Oh, yeah, bomb Iran,’ it ain’t going to be that easy,” said Lt. Gen. David A. Deptula, who retired last year as the Air Force’s top intelligence official and who planned the American air campaigns in 2001 in Afghanistan and in the 1991 Gulf War.

Speculation that Israel might attack Iran has intensified in recent months as tensions between the countries have escalated. In a sign of rising American concern, Tom Donilon, the national security adviser, met with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel in Jerusalem on Sunday, and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Martin E. Dempsey, warned on CNN that an Israeli strike on Iran right now would be “destabilizing.” Similarly, the British foreign secretary, William Hague, told the BBC that attacking Iran would not be “the wise thing” for Israel to do “at this moment.”

More on link above...

 

[DB008]

Bloomberg
Video takes a while to load

http://www.bloomberg.com/video/86713518/

 

[AbrasiveCamel]

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/wor...ieves-Israel-may-strike-Iran-this-spring.html

http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2012/02/201222072746430386.html

 

[DB008]

4 corners last night. Story on Syria and Assad, interview with Jonathan Miller, UK Channel 4 reporter. Very interesting.

http://www.abc.net.au/4corners/stories/2012/02/16/3432592.htm

Fast forward to the 9:50 mark.

What J Miller says is true, "if Iran develop the bomb and use it on Israel; the West Bank and Gaza (Palestinians), half of Lebanon, part of Syria and part of Jordan are gone"

Sure, the Arabs might unite to be against the Jews, but Iran is it's own worst enemy and could wipe out it's fellow Arabs too.