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The debate over whether Israel should attack Iran rests on three basic questions.
First, if Iran’s leaders got the bomb, would they use it or give it to people who might?
Second, would a strike substantially retard Iran’s nuclear program?
Third, if Israel attacks, what will Iran do in response?
The vast majority of people opining on these questions—myself very much included—lack the expertise to answer. We’ve never directed a bombing campaign; we have no secret sources in Tehran; we don’t spend our days studying the Iranian regime. So essentially, we decide which experts to trust.
As it happens, both the American and Israeli governments boast military and intelligence agencies charged with answering exactly these sorts of questions. And with striking consistency, the people who run, or ran, those agencies are warning—loudly—against an attack.
Start with the first question: whether Iran would be suicidal enough to use or transfer a nuke. In 2007, the U.S. intelligence community’s National Intelligence Estimate on Iran argued that the Iranian regime—loathsome as it is—is “guided by a cost-benefit approach.” In 2011, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper testified before Congress that “we continue to judge Iran’s nuclear decision-making is guided by a cost-benefit approach.” Last week, Gen. Ron Burgess, director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, told Congress that “the agency assesses Iran is unlikely to initiate or provoke a conflict.” Last weekend, Gen. Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told CNN’s Fareed Zakaria: “We are of the opinion that Iran is a rational actor.”
I seriously do not know how the USA is able to get away with unjustified and blatant attacks on other countries with only the justification that it is a 'war on terror'.
Iran ‘Dismissed’ IAEA, Tripled Uranium Production
Iran dismissed United Nations atomic inspectors’ concerns over possible nuclear-weapon work and the Persian Gulf nation tripled its quarterly rate of producing 20 percent-enriched uranium.
Iran increased its supply of 20 percent-enriched uranium to 109 kilograms from 73.7 kilograms reported in November, the IAEA said. Iran has produced 5,451 kilograms of uranium enriched to less than 5 percent compared with 4,922 kilograms in the last IAEA report.
The biggest Jewish population out side Israel lives in Iran and have just as many rights as the locals do..
The top twelve Jewish populations in the world are:
1. USA 6,500,000
2. Israel 4,950,000
3. France 600,000 (750,000)
4. Canada 364,000
5. Britain 275,000
6. Russia 275,000 (650,000)
7. Argentina197,000 (250,000)
8. Ukraine 112,000
9. Germany98,000 (115,000)
10. Brazil 97,500
11. South Africa88,000 (65,000)
12. Hungary 55,000 (100,000)
The biggest Jewish population out side Israel lives in Iran and have just as many rights as the locals do..
The issue here is the power of the Israel Lobby in Washington. Ultimately, the US does not have an independent Middle East foreign policy. It only has the policy that Israel pressures it to have. The US Congress is wholly owned by that Lobby. If you want proof, count the number of standing ovations that Netanyahu received when he addressed Congress last year. It was unprecedented. It was like watching the Politburo in Soviet Russia being addressed by Stalin. It was an embarrassment.
Wouldn't it be nice to have a mullah-missile, just to take out the old godbothering farts, and leave the gentle people of Persia, the men, women and children of a great civilisation, safe and well to get on with their lives.
gg
Dream on GG they would some another replacement and USA would look for another country to beat up on.
The yanks are just as brained washed as the Koran Quoters.
Some thing we will never get rid of sadly.
We got a few Exclusive Brethren moving in around OZ
The biggest Jewish population out side Israel lives in Iran and have just as many rights as the locals do..
IRAN'S key oil industry was briefly affected by the powerful computer virus known as "Flame" that has unprecedented data-snatching capabilities and can eavesdrop on computer users, a senior Iranian military official said Wednesday.
The comment is the first direct link between the emergence of the new malware and an attack inside a highly sensitive computer system in Iran, which counts on oil revenue for 80 per cent of its income.
The full extent of last month's disruptions has not been given, but Iran was forced to cut Internet links to the country's main oil export terminal presumably to try to contain the virus.
It would be the latest high-profile virus to penetrate Iran's computer defenses in the past two years, boosting speculation that Israeli programmers could have struck again.
Experts see technological links between Flame and the highly focused Stuxnet virus, which was tailored to disrupt Iran's nuclear centrifuges in 2010. Many suspect Stuxnet was the work of Israeli intelligence.
Gholam Reza Jalali, who heads an Iranian military unit in charge of fighting sabotage, claimed that Iranian experts had detected and defeated the "Flame" virus.
He told state radio that the oil industry was the only governmental body seriously affected and that all data that had been lost were retrieved.
Iran has acknowledged that Stuxnet affected a limited number of its centrifuges - a key component in the production of nuclear fuel - at its main uranium enrichment facility in the central city of Natanz. But Tehran has said its scientists discovered and neutralized the malware before it could cause serious damage.
Iran says is has previously discovered one more espionage virus, Duqu, but that the malware did no harm Iran's nuclear or industrial sites. Jalali said Flame is the third.
Iran says Stuxnet and other computer virus attacks are part of a concerted campaign by Israel, the U.S. and their allies to undermine its nuclear program and economy.
Confirmed: US and Israel created Stuxnet, lost control of it
Stuxnet was never meant to propagate in the wild.
In 2011, the US government rolled out its "International Strategy for Cyberspace," which reminded us that "interconnected networks link nations more closely, so an attack on one nation’s networks may have impact far beyond its borders." An in-depth report today from the New York Times confirms the truth of that statement as it finally lays bare the history and development of the Stuxnet virus””and how it accidentally escaped from the Iranian nuclear facility that was its target.
The article is adapted from journalist David Sanger's forthcoming book, Confront and Conceal: Obama’s Secret Wars and Surprising Use of American Power, and it confirms that both the US and Israeli governments developed and deployed Stuxnet. The goal of the worm was to break Iranian nuclear centrifuge equipment by issuing specific commands to the industrial control hardware responsible for their spin rate. By doing so, both governments hoped to set back the Iranian research program””and the US hoped to keep Israel from launching a pre-emptive military attack.
The code was only supposed to work within Iran's Natanz refining facility, which was air-gapped from outside networks and thus difficult to penetrate. But computers and memory cards could be carried between the public Internet and the private Natanz network, and a preliminary bit of "beacon" code was used to map out all the network connections within the plant and report them back to the NSA.
That program, first authorized by George W. Bush, worked well enough to provide a digital map of Natanz and its industrial control hardware. Soon, US national labs were testing different bits of the plan to sabotage Natanz (apparently without knowing what the work was for) using similar centrifuges that had come from Libya's Qadaffi regime. When the coders found the right sets of commands to literally shake the centrifuges apart, they knew that Stuxnet could work.
When ready, Stuxnet was introduced to Natanz, perhaps by a double agent.
Israel attacked the un armed USS Cole during the Gulf war it was in international waters and Israel knew it was there.
The ship was sent to listen in on World communications, Israel sent in 3 unmarked planes which bombed and torpedoed the ship and then sent in patrol boats to finish off any survivors,the hope by Israel was the US would think Egypt was attacking the ship. The USA sent atomic bomb laden planes to bomb Egypt but lucky for all they were called back. The Cole was patch up and sent back to USA were the damage was so great it was sold for scrap, the crew were given medals in private and told not to tell any one what went on and the incident is still under the secrets act to day.
So Israel rules the world. USA has not won a war since 1945 including the war on plants yet every president since 45 has been in a war .
Wars are funded by big banks they fund both sides including Russia to keep the myth going and help bleed money out of suckers and support the arms industry.
Israel attacked the un armed USS Cole during the Gulf war it was in international waters and Israel knew it was there.
The ship was sent to listen in on World communications, Israel sent in 3 unmarked planes which bombed and torpedoed the ship and then sent in patrol boats to finish off any survivors,the hope by Israel was the US would think Egypt was attacking the ship. The USA sent atomic bomb laden planes to bomb Egypt but lucky for all they were called back. The Cole was patch up and sent back to USA were the damage was so great it was sold for scrap, the crew were given medals in private and told not to tell any one what went on and the incident is still under the secrets act to day.
So Israel rules the world. USA has not won a war since 1945 including the war on plants yet every president since 45 has been in a war .
Wars are funded by big banks they fund both sides including Russia to keep the myth going and help bleed money out of suckers and support the arms industry.
Glen, this is the most outlandish pile of BS I've read since the claims that the moon landings were a hoax. Now if you cannot provide a factual link, it will be removed.
CanOz
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