Iran Super Thread- Merged

[a_majoor]

Sadly, the Iranians might have been out of contention if there was a lot more material and political support shown to the protesters this summer after the "elections". Since no one has demonstrated the will to stand against Iranian agression or repression, the regime feels not only justified but even encouraged to continue on the present course to nuclearization and attempting to become the regioonal hegemons.

One thing which no one seems to have openly mentioned is the fact that Israel already has developed the technologies of long range missiles and is long rumored to have nuclear weapons, so the eliminatioon of Iranian nuclear capabilities is quite probable with the turn of a key (many articles have been written about the difficulties a presumptive IAF air strike would have, this totally bypasses the problem).

WRT the lack of Western military capabilities, I suspect that the spreading of the conflict will be in the form of terrorism and low intensity conflict, which will engage the police and security forces far more than the military, and the opening of an existential threat will certainly shift many Western nations off the fence and towards building capable forces to deal with it (even if only large infantry reserves to secure restive areas of the homeland).

 

[Edward Campbell]

I have watched the video of the "short range missles", and to me some of the captures show that some look and awful lot like souped up SA-2s, others look like Honest Johns.
IMHO they Honest John look alikes are not much of a threat to Israel. They are a battlefield system (Canada even had a Bty of them in the 60's).
The media will take this and run with it though, based on thier "expert military analysts"...(one Col Michel Drapeau ret springs to mind).

This, taken from a story in today’s Globe and Mail, doesn’t look much like an Honest John:

An Iranian long-range Shahab-3 missile is seen before being tested from desert terrain at an unspecified location in Iran on September 28, 2009. The Islamic republic test-fired the Shahab-3 missile which it says could hit targets in arch-foe Israel, as the Revolutionary Guards staged missile war games for the second straight day AFP/Getty Images

The article says:

“Iran said it successfully test-fired the longest-range missiles in its arsenal today, weapons capable of carrying a warhead and striking Israel, U.S. military bases in the Middle East, and parts of Europe ... The Sajjil-2 missile is Iran's most advanced two-stage surface-to-surface missile and it is powered entirely by solid-fuel while the older Shahab-3 uses a combination of solid and liquid fuel in its most advanced form. Solid fuel is seen as a technological breakthrough for any missile program as it increases the accuracy of missiles in reaching targets.”

 

[Edward Campbell]

The Honest John:

From the Redstone Arsenal site:

“The HONEST JOHN was a simple, free-flight rocket capable of delivering a nuclear warhead. This highly mobile system was designed to fire like conventional artillery in battlefield areas. The Basic (M31) HONEST JOHN system was first deployed in 1954. It was replaced by the Improved (M50) HONEST JOHN (left) in 1961 which reduced the system's weight, shortened its length, and increased its range. In July 1982, all HONEST JOHN rocket motors, launchers, and related ground equipment items were type classified obsolete.”

The Honest John’s range was measured in a few tens of kilometres, not hundreds or thousands.

---------------​

The SA-2 is a little more like it but, of course, it was a surface to air missile, and its range, too, was measured in the tens of kilometres.

But, Jammer’s point - that two stage solid fuel missiles have been around for a while and are not going to be too hard to produce – is valid. What’s mildly impressive is that Iran, a so called pariah state, appears to have been able to build and fire a medium range multi-stage, solid fuel missile. With a little help from their friends, no doubt.

 

[Jammer]

I just caught the story on the Shahab III (SCUD B).
The vid I saw on CNN last night showed a missle much like the HJ firing stabilizing motors 1/4 of the way down the body.
The launch veh looked very similar to an M-35 deuce.
Keep in mind as well that Iran has been able to reverse engineer enough material to keep their western military equipment functioning for more than thirty years AFTER sanctions were imposed.

 

[Old Sweat]

Based on the clips I have seen, which may or may not be authentic, I failed to recognize any similarity with the Honest John. One device had a superficial resemblance to a SA-2, but that was based on the presence of small fins, presumably for steering, near the nose. What impressed me in the clips was the long vapour trail, which indicates a long burn time for the propellant. (The Honest John's motor only burned for less than four seconds which propelled it up to 38 kms.)

I think, and this is a guesstimate, that the missiles I saw in the clip probably are guided, perhaps with GPS technology, and could have a CEP of less than 100 metres. Theoretically this would make a small HE or cluster bomb warhead feasible, but this is the kind of weapon that also could carry a small nuke of up to perhaps 50 -100 kt. This is based on the size of the rocket and what I know of the warheads available for the Honest John.

Jammer, the rockets you saw firing about 1/4 of the way down the body are probably spin rockets to impart a slow rate of rotation to the missile for stability.

On the other hand, these rockets could also be unguided with a CEP measured in small countries, not hundreds of metres. This is probably not the case, but we are all working from limited, open source material. However, we (the collective we) cannot afford to discount the threat.

As for a ground offensive, I don't think the west has the troops or the stomach for such a course.

 

[Jammer]

I can barely spell my own name, let alone be a steely eyed missle man.
i guess i have to keep watching..Tks

 

[a_majoor]

"Most" rockets developed by third world nations seem to have been developments or at least based on the SCUD missile. This isn't too surprising since the former USSR was fairly lavish in handing these things out to clients, so everyone on "their" side had a common template to work with. Since the DPRK is one of the big exporters of rocket technology, it isn't too surprising that Iran has missiles that superficially resemble SCUDs.

Given that, rocket science really isn't all that difficult, being based on about a half dozen equations. The real trick is in material science and quality control.

 

[The Bread Guy]

My guesstimate is that, despite a HUGE whoop and holler from throughout the Muslim "world," and from it's European friends, the Sunni Muslims, worldwide, which is to say most Muslims, will breathe a sigh of relief when (IF) Shia Iran is dealt a harsh, even crippling, nuclear blow.

Along these lines, this from the Daily Express (UK):

Intelligence chief Sir John Scarlett has been told that Saudi Arabia is ready to allow Israel to bomb Iran’s new nuclear site.

The head of MI6 discussed the issue in London with Mossad chief Meir Dagan and Saudi officials after British intelligence officers helped to uncover the plant, in the side of a mountain near the ancient city of Qom.

The site is seen as a major threat by Tel Aviv and Riyadh. Details of the talks emerged after John Bolton, America’s former UN ambassador, told a meeting of intelligence analysts that “Riyadh certainly approves” of Israel’s use of Saudi airspace ....

 

[OldSolduer]

If what I read is true.....

"Unless I miss my guess, we're in for a wild ride"

 

[a_majoor]

Saudi Arabia might not need to worry about airspace violations, since they are also owners of Chinese CSS-2 ballistic missiles. How they are armed or even if they have been maintained over the years in firing condition is unknown (at least to me), but the entire deck seems to be full of wild cards.

 

[tomahawk6]

Recently I read an article advocating a cyber attack upon Iran's power grid,which in effect might shutdown the entire economy and command/control of the military. Its definitely a bloodless approach that might also work to destabilize the regime - a twofer.

 

[MarkOttawa]

A question: Could either the Shahab-3 or Sajjil-2 be produced in sufficient quantities (with sufficient accuracy, i.e. CEP) to be useful militarily/politically with conventional warheads?  I'm thinking, as a comparison, of the Iraqi SCUD-derived campaign against Tehran in 1988 that was instrumental in ending their war.
http://www.gulflink.osd.mil/scud_info/scud_info_s02.htm

Mark
Ottawa

 

[a_majoor]

Iran obviously used the "pause" created by the NIE to good effect; where are the screams of outrage now?

http://pajamasmedia.com/ronrosenbaum/2009/09/28/huge-intelligence-scandal-will-all-the-pundits-who-relied-onthe-discredited-2007-n-i-e-on-iran-now/

Huge Intelligence Scandal: Will All the Pundits Who Relied on the Discredited 2007 NIE on Iran Now…

Posted By Ron Rosenbaum On September 28, 2009 @ 4:39 pm In Uncategorized | 25 Comments

Will all the pundits who relied on the discredited 2007 NIE on Iran now admit that they were wrong? That they bought into and kept citing, without any serious questioning, the now clearly politically skewed analysis in the so-called National Intelligence Estimate of that year? You remember: the considered consensus wisdom of the entire U.S. intelligence community, which misled the world into believing there was nothing to worry about Iran’s nuclear program, that it had virtually ceased. When, in fact, out of the three components of a nuclear weapons program, at most one might have been suspended, if that.

Will the congressional intelligence committees demand to know how such a deliberately misleading report was being leaked and fed to the public by half-baked pundits even after (we now learn) some part of the “intelligence community” knew — before the the NIE was issued — about the secret nuclear fuel facility we’re now reading about?

What took them so long? Or if there were reasons to keep silent about it, why issue a report that deliberately misled the world into the opposite conclusion? The NIE now appears to be a deliberate LIE — deliberate disinformation, disingenuously written by its authors, who should be hauled before the committees and asked how they could have made such fools of the “intelligence community” and those who took their report seriously.

After all, it was not without consequences. The report essentially bought the Iranians two years of non-interfering in their obvious (to everyone but the “intelligence community”) drive to build nuclear weapons.

Who chose the authors of the LIE? How much did they get paid for distorting intelligence, betraying their trust, our trust (those who had any left after an unbroken record of intelligence community bungling)? Why do we still trust anything that comes out of the “intelligence community” since they are almost always wrong?

Just to review the bidding: there are three components to a nuclear weapons development program. The most difficult is manufacturing the highly enriched uranium (HEU) or plutonium fuel. The second is engineering the warhead itself, now no problem thanks to Pakistan’s A.Q. Khan, who sold the information to North Korea and Iran. And finally there is the delivery system, the missiles which, just yesterday, Iran demonstrated their successful development of.

The media almost universally reported that the 2007 NIE reversed previous estimates that Iran was working on a bomb, and declared that the report proved Iran had ceased its nuclear weapons program. It did no such thing. The report, however, misleadingly focused on dubiously sourced intelligence that Iran had stopped one of the three aspects of their nuclear program in 2003: the weapons design aspect. Dubiously sourced because it seemed to be based on electronic surveillance intercepts of Iranian scientists and the Iranians. No fools (like our “intelligence community”), they could easily have deliberately planted the smoking gun conversation –”Oh, we are so upset we can no longer work on nuclear bomb design.”

And even if they did stop it, it could just as easily have been because they had all the know-how they needed thanks to A.Q. Khan by then. They stopped because they were finished. Now they needed the fuel and the misleading NIE gave them time to escape close surveillance and establish secret uranium enrichment sites (do you really think there was only one?). Two years to move closer to a bomb.

But the disgraceful 2007 NIE minimized the other two aspects of nuclear weapons making.

It should be a major intelligence scandal and despite efforts by the heads of US intelligence to walk it back after the fact, it became the conventional wisdom of all too much of the wonk and pundit community. When are they going to fess up that they were had?

Shouldn’t the journalists who were conned by the 2007 NIE (just about all of them), fooled again so soon after the Iraq intelligence fiasco, be doing everything they can to see who suckered them and why? Or are they afraid it will just further expose their ignorance?

It’s a huge intelligence scandal and we should demand answers because the Iranian preparations for nuclear war were given a free ride and we may never know — until it’s too late — just how terrible the consequences will be.

 

[CougarKing]

We'll see how this turns out:

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20091001/ap_on_re_eu/eu_iran_nuclear_talks

By GEORGE JAHN, Associated Press Writer George Jahn, Associated Press Writer – 18 mins ago
GENTHOD, Switzerland – Diplomats say Iran and six world powers are considering meeting again after their present talks on Iran's nuclear program and other issues end.

The diplomats say the two sides are discussing a follow-up meeting in the closing minutes of Thursday's talks during which the big-powers attempted to persuade Tehran to freeze a program that could create nuclear weapons.

A decision to meet again would be significant. The last such seven-nation talks before Thursday's gathering occurred more than a year ago and ended in failure.

The diplomats demanded anonymity for reporting on the closed meeting in Genthold, Switzerland.

THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. Check back soon for further information. AP's earlier story is below.

GENTHOD, Switzerland (AP) — A senior U.S. official met Iran's top atomic negotiator for face-to-face talks on Thursday — the first such encounter in years of big-power attempts to persuade Tehran to freeze a program that could create nuclear weapons.

While diplomats and officials disclosed no details of the meeting, they appeared to be concrete proof of President Barack Obama's commitment to engage Iran directly on nuclear and other issues — a sharp break from previous policy under the Bush administration.

More broadly, the meeting suggested that Obama was putting his concept of U.S. foreign policy into action, with its emphasis on negotiating even with nations that are the most hostile to the United States.

The change in approach may go down well with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who on Wednesday made pointed comments about other nations needing to respect Iran's rights.

Iran-U.S. bilateral talks have been extremely rare since the two nations broke diplomatic relations nearly 30 years ago, following the Iran's Islamic revolution and the ensuing U.S. Embassy hostage crisis. U.S. and Iranian negotiators met in Baghdad two years ago to discuss Iraq. But those were three-way talks, hosted by Iraq.

"On the margins of the meeting, Undersecretary (William) Burns, who is heading our delegation, met with his Iranian counterpart," U.S. State Department deputy spokesman Robert Wood told reporters Thursday. He did not elaborate.

Two Western diplomats separately told The Associated Press that Burns and top Iranian negotiator Saeed Jalili discussed issues during a lunch break at Thursday's seven-nation talks in Geneva. The diplomats demanded anonymity for discussing the confidential information.

Though held at the same venue, the bilateral talks were formally outside of the main meeting in Geneva — talks where the U.S. and five other world powers hope to persuade Iran to at least consider discussing its nuclear program, and in particular its refusal to freeze its uranium enrichment efforts.

The fact that the Geneva meeting is taking place at all offers some hope, reflecting both sides' desire to talk, despite a spike in tensions over last week's revelations by Iran that it had been secretly building a new uranium enrichment plant and recent tests of its long-range missiles.

While the West fears that Iran's nuclear program aims to make a bomb — and that the country is developing missiles to carry nuclear warheads — Iran insists the program is strictly for peaceful use and has refused to negotiate any limits on it.

Iran is bringing a broad range of geopolitical issues to the table, while the six powers — the permanent U.N. Security Council members plus Germany — are seeking to soften Iran's resistance to freezing its uranium enrichment program. The process can make both nuclear fuel and fissile warhead material.

Wood said the six would also raise concerns about Iran's recent revelation it is building a second enrichment plant, alongside one that is under supervision by the International Atomic Energy Agency to make sure it makes only fuel and not weapons-grade uranium.

Iran says it has done nothing wrong, saying it reported the facility, near the Shiite holy city of Qom, voluntarily. But the West says Tehran came clean only because it feared that others would reveal the existence of the plant before it did.

IAEA chief Mohamed ElBaradei has publicly said Tehran was "on the wrong side of the law" because it should have revealed its plans as soon as the decision was made to build the plant.

"We would like Iran to basically tell us what it knows about previous nuclear activities and current ones, including information it has about the Qom facility, which we're very concerned about," Wood said.

In a separate development, Iran complained to U.N. chief Ban Ki-moon about a list of Iranians it said have been arrested by the United States, Iran's state news agency IRNA reported. Among them were two figures connected to Iran's military or nuclear program, suggesting Tehran feared they have leaked information to the West, the Arab newspaper Asharq al-Awsat reported Thursday.

One of them was Shahram Amiri, a nuclear physicist who Iran's Foreign Ministry has said disappeared during a visit to Saudi Arabia in late May or early June. Amiri was researching medical uses of nuclear technology at a Tehran university, according to family members cited in Iranian media.

The second was Ali Reza Asghari, an Iranian deputy defense minister and a prominent leader of the Revolutionary Guards, who disappeared two years ago in Turkey and whose whereabouts since is unknown.

Iran is under three sets of Security Council sanctions for refusing to freeze enrichment. Diplomats at U.N. headquarters in New York said there has been no discussion of a new sanctions resolution.

Still, Wood said while Washington was focused on diplomacy for now "we're not going to do it forever."

U.S. and other Western officials said the Americans, British and French are already exploring how to tighten existing sanctions against Iran and propose new ones, should the talks fail. Those deliberations, they say, include joint new U.S.-European sanctions in case Russia and China — the other two permanent Security Council members — again block U.N. sanctions.

(...)

 

[CougarKing]

Here are two stories from the last 24 hours which provide an interesting and glaring contrast of the direct talks between the US and Iran in Geneva this week:

McClatchy, reporting on yesterday's meeting with Iran in Geneva:

Iran also pledged that within weeks it would allow the inspection of a previously covert uranium enrichment facility near the holy city of Qom, and the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, Mohamed ElBaradei, announced that he'd head to Tehran to work out the details.

Eli Lake, The Washington Times, this morning:

President Obama has reaffirmed a 4-decade-old secret understanding that has allowed Israel to keep a nuclear arsenal without opening it to international inspections, three officials familiar with the understanding said.

The officials, who spoke on the condition that they not be named because they were discussing private conversations, said Mr. Obama pledged to maintain the agreement when he first hosted Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the White House in May.

Under the understanding, the U.S. has not pressured Israel to disclose its nuclear weapons or to sign the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), which could require Israel to give up its estimated several hundred nuclear bombs.

In addition to agreeing to allow full inspections of its Qum facility, Iran yesterday also did this:

Iran agreed in principle Thursday to ship most of its current stockpile of enriched uranium to Russia, where it would be refined for exclusively peaceful uses, in what Western diplomats called a significant, but interim, measure to ease concerns over its nuclear program. . . .

Under the tentative uranium deal, Iran would ship what a U.S. official said was "most" of its approximately 3,000 pounds of low-enriched uranium to Russia, where it would be further refined, to 19.75 percent purity. That is much less than the purity needed to fuel a nuclear bomb.

French technicians then would fabricate it into fuel rods and return it to Tehran to power a nuclear research reactor that's used to make isotopes for nuclear medicine.

Steve Hynd explains why Iran's willingness to agree to this was both so surprising and so significant.  As is true for any tentative agreement with anyone, there is always the possibility that something could happen prior to compliance, but this was a deal reached after a single-day meeting.  Just consider that, as Hynd said on Twitter, the "Obama WH already got more from one buffet lunch with Iran than Bush WH did in 8 years of saber-rattling."  For that reason, it's hard to disagree with this:  "In Washington, President Barack Obama said the talks marked 'a constructive beginning' and showed the promise of renewed engagement with Iran . . . ."  Charles Krauthammer picked a bad day to haul out the tired neocon "appeasement" platitude and apply it to Obama, claiming -- as always -- that negotiations and diplomacy can accomplish nothing."

http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/

 

[a_majoor]

While Iranian missiles have the potential to hit targets in Europe, Israeli missiles have the range to reach targets in Russia as well....

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/middle_east/article6860161.ece

Israel names Russians helping Iran build nuclear bomb
Uzi Mahanimi in Tel Aviv, Mark Franchetti and Jon Swain

Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu gestures during his meeting with German President Horst Koehler

Israel's prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, has handed the Kremlin a list of Russian scientists believed by the Israelis to be helping Iran to develop a nuclear warhead. He is said to have delivered the list during a mysterious visit to Moscow.

Netanyahu flew to the Russian capital with Uzi Arad, his national security adviser, last month in a private jet.

His office claimed he was in Israel, visiting a secret military establishment at the time. It later emerged that he was holding talks with Vladimir Putin, the Russian prime minister, and President Dmitry Medvedev.

“We have heard that Netanyahu came with a list and concrete evidence showing that Russians are helping the Iranians to develop a bomb,” said a source close to the Russian defence minister last week.

“That is why it was kept secret. The point is not to embarrass Moscow, rather to spur it into action.”

Israeli sources said it was a short, tense meeting at which Netanyahu named the Russian experts said to be assisting Iran in its nuclear programme.

In western capitals the latest claims were treated with caution. American and British officials argued that the involvement of freelance Russian scientists belonged to the past.

American officials said concern about Russian experts acting without official approval, had been raised by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in a report more than a year ago.

“There has been Russian help. It is not the government, it is individuals, at least one helping Iran on weaponisation activities and it is worrisome,” said David Albright, a former weapons inspector who is president of the Institute for Science and International Security.

However, Israeli officials insist that any Russian scientists working in Iran could do so only with official approval.

Robert Einhorn, the special adviser for non-proliferation and arms control to Hillary Clinton, the US secretary of state, is understood to believe that Russian companies have also supplied material that has been used by Iran in the production of ballistic missiles.

The disclosures came as Iran agreed at talks in Geneva to submit to IAEA inspections of its newly disclosed enrichment plant, which is being built under a mountain on a military base at Qom. Iran revealed the plant to the IAEA to pre-empt being caught out by an imminent announcement from western governments, which had discovered its existence.

The West says the plant is tailor-made for a secret weapons programme and proves Iran’s claim that its nuclear programme is intended only for peaceful purposes is a lie. The plant is designed to hold 3,000 centrifuges — enough to produce the material needed for one bomb a year.

Iran’s conduct over the next few weeks will determine whether the West continues its new dialogue or is compelled to increase pressure with tougher United Nations and other sanctions.

Ephraim Sneh, a former Israeli deputy defence minister, warned that time was running out for action to stop the programme. “If no crippling sanctions are introduced by Christmas, Israel will strike,” he said. “If we are left alone, we will act alone.”

A key test for the West will be whether Iran allows IAEA inspectors unfettered access to the Qom plant. Mohamed ElBaradei, the head of the IAEA, was in Tehran this weekend to discuss this and Iran’s agreement, in principle, to ship most of its current stocks of low-enriched uranium to Russia so it can be used in medical research. President Barack Obama has told Iran he wants to see concrete results within two weeks.

While there is consensus in the West that Iran is trying to acquire the capability to build a weapon, the progress of its weaponisation programme is a matter of fierce debate among intelligence agencies.

The Americans believe secret work to develop a nuclear warhead stopped in 2003. British, French and German intelligence believe it was either continuing or has restarted. The Israelis believe the Iranians have “cold-tested” a nuclear warhead, without fissile material, for its Shahab-3B and Sejjil-2 rockets at Parchin, a top-secret military complex southeast of Tehran.

The vast site is officially dedicated to the research, development and production of ammunition, rockets and explosives. Satellite imagery as early as 2003 has shown Parchin to be suitable for research into the development of a nuclear weapon, say western experts.

The Shahab-3B, which the Iranians test-fired last Monday, is capable of carrying a 2,200lb warhead. Its 1,250-mile range puts parts of Europe, Israel and US bases in the Middle East within its reach.

According to the Israelis, Russian scientists may have been responsible for the nuclear warhead design. But western experts have also pointed the finger at North Korea.

Additional reporting:

Michael Smith, Christina Lamb

 

[CougarKing]

Signs this US administration may be preparing for an Iran strike?

http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/us-preparing-bomb-iran/story?id=8765343

Is the U.S. Preparing to Bomb Iran?
Is the U.S. Stepping Up Preparations for a Possible Attack on Iran's Nuclear Facilities?
By JONATHAN KARL
Oct. 6, 2009—


Is the U.S. stepping up preparations for a possible attack on Iran's nuclear facilities?

The Pentagon is always making plans, but based on a little-noticed funding request recently sent to Congress, the answer to that question appears to be yes.

First, some background: Back in October 2007, ABC News reported that the Pentagon had asked Congress for $88 million in the emergency Iraq/Afghanistan war funding request to develop a gargantuan bunker-busting bomb called the Massive Ordnance Penetrator (MOP). It's a 30,000-pound bomb designed to hit targets buried 200 feet below ground. Back then, the Pentagon cited an "urgent operational need" for the new weapon.

Now the Pentagon is shifting spending from other programs to fast forward the development and procurement of the Massive Ordnance Penetrator. The Pentagon comptroller sent a request to shift the funds to the House and Senate Appropriations and Armed Services Committees over the summer.

Click here to see a copy of the Pentagon's request, provided to ABC News.

The comptroller said the Pentagon planned to spend $19.1 million to procure four of the bombs, $28.3 million to accelerate the bomb's "development and testing", and $21 million to accelerate the integration of the bomb onto B-2 stealth bombers.


'Urgent Operational Need'
The notification was tucked inside a 93-page "reprogramming" request that included a couple hundred other more mundane items.

Why now? The notification says simply, "The Department has an Urgent Operational Need (UON) for the capability to strike hard and deeply buried targets in high threat environments. The MOP is the weapon of choice to meet the requirements of the UON." It further states that the request is endorsed by Pacific Command (which has responsibility over North Korea) and Central Command (which has responsibility over Iran).


Is the U.S. Preparing to Bomb Iran?
The request was quietly approved. On Friday, McDonnell Douglas was awarded a $51.9 million contract to provide "Massive Penetrator Ordnance Integration" on B-2 aircraft.

This is not the kind of weapon that would be particularly useful in Iraq or Afghanistan, but it is ideally suited to hit deeply buried nuclear facilities such as Natanz or Qom in Iran.


Copyright © 2009 ABC News Internet Ventures

 

[a_majoor]

The flash point may not be where we think it is:

http://www.michaeltotten.com/archives/2009/10/in-the-crosshai.php

In the Crosshairs of the Syrian-Iranian Axis

The South Lebanon border area is what Robert D. Kaplan calls a "shatter zone," a region where government authority is either diluted or non-existent and where conflict is therefore all the more likely, if not inevitable. "Like rifts in the Earth's crust that produce physical instability," he wrote in Foreign Affairs, "these shatter zones threaten to implode, explode, or maintain a fragile equilibrium. And not surprisingly, they fall within that unstable inner core of Eurasia: the greater Middle East, the vast way station between the Mediterranean world and the Indian subcontinent that registers all the primary shifts in global power politics."

I've visited a number of these shatter zones in the lands of the former Ottoman Empire, sometimes while they're on fire and other times afterward. The conflicts in these places almost always seem to be fought along ethnic or religious-sectarian lines -- between Turks and Kurds in Anatolia, Arabs and Kurds in Northern Iraq, Sunnis and Shias in Mesopotamia, Slavic Christians and Muslims in Bosnia-Herzegovina, Serbs and Albanians in Kosovo, Turks and Greeks on the island of Cyprus, Arabs and Israelis in the Holy Land, and between just about every ethnic and sectarian faction imaginable in Lebanon.

After the Syrians were thrown out of Lebanon in 2005 and the central government reclaimed most of its sovereignty, the south along the frontier with Israel remained strictly off-limits and under Hezbollah control. While sovereignty in that area is now technically shared with the state, Hezbollah can still do what it wants without interference. The "March 14" government would adhere to the de-facto armistice between Lebanon and Israel if it could, but it can't. The Lebanese-Israeli border therefore remains a potentially hot front-line in the Arab-Israeli conflict.

And because Hezbollah is nothing if not a proxy for the Islamic Republic regime in Iran, South Lebanon is a potentially explosive front-line in the Iranian-Israeli conflict. If Israel launches air strikes against Tehran's nuclear weapons facilities, or if Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Ali Khamenei believe a nuclear weapons arsenal means they can activate Hezbollah and Hamas with impunity, South Lebanon may become one of the two most dangerous shatter zones in the entire Middle East. (The other would be Iran itself.)

Last time I visited Beirut, before the Hezbollah-led "March 8" bloc lost the recent election, I spent several hours with Eli Khoury, one of the smartest regional political analysts I have yet met. I try to see him every time I'm in country to discuss this stuff because his analysis almost always turns out to be right when everyone else's -- including my own -- turns out to be wrong.

He's the president of the Lebanon Renaissance Foundation, publisher of NOW Lebanon, and an informal advisor to a number of Lebanese political leaders. This time we discussed, among other things, the war in Iraq, the election of Barack Obama, how to engage and not engage Syria, and Iran's imperial ambitions in the Middle East.

A long interview follows

 

[CougarKing]

Another source of dissent in Iran:

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20091018/ap_on_re_mi_ea/ml_iran_bombing

TEHRAN, Iran – A suicide bomber killed five senior commanders of the elite Revolutionary Guard and at least 26 others in an area of southeastern Iran that has been at the center of a simmering Sunni insurgency, state media reported.

The official IRNA news agency said the dead included the deputy commander of the Guard's ground force, Gen. Noor Ali Shooshtari, as well as a chief provincial Guard commander for the area, Rajab Ali Mohammadzadeh. The other dead were Guard members or local tribal leaders. More than two dozen others were wounded, state radio reported.

The commanders were on their way to a meeting with local tribal leaders in the Pishin district near Iran's border with Pakistan when an attacker with explosives around his waist blew himself up, IRNA said. The explosion occurred at the entrance of a sports complex where the meeting was to be held.

(...)

 

[CougarKing]

And surprise, surprise, Tehran blames the US, the UK and the West as a result of this bombing(  : )....so Iran's Revolutionary Guards vow "retaliation":   

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20091019/wl_nm/us_iran_guards_attack

TEHRAN (Reuters) – The head of Iran's Revolutionary Guards on Monday vowed to "retaliate" against the United States and Britain after accusing them of backing the perpetrators of a suicide bombing that killed six Guards commanders.

Iranian media say the Sunni Muslim insurgent group Jundollah (God's soldiers) has claimed responsibility for Sunday's bombing in Sistan-Baluchestan province, which killed 42 people in all.

The incident threatened to overshadow talks between Iran and global powers in Vienna on Monday intended to tackle a standoff about Iran's nuclear ambitions.

Guards commander-in-chief Mohammad Ali Jafari said Iranian security officials had presented documents indicating "direct ties" from Jundollah to U.S., British and, "unfortunately," Pakistani intelligence organizations, the ISNA news agency said.

(...)