Archive for the ‘Iran’ Category
Iran’s Ahmadinejad criticized over Chavez remarks
by Speranza Comments OffFiled under Ahmadinejad, Headlines, Iran, Venezuela at March 9th, 2013 - 8:52 am
All those lefties at Hugo Chavez’s funeral – the very definition of a target rich environment.
by Zahra Hosseinian
(Reuters) – Senior Iranian clerics have criticized President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad for saying Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez will be resurrected alongside Jesus Christ and the hidden imam who Shi’ite Muslims believe will rise up to bring world peace.
Iran declared a day of national mourning on Wednesday after the death of Chavez, who shared the Islamic Republic’s loathing for what they both called U.S. imperialism.
Ahmadinejad was among at least two dozen leaders travelling to Venezuela to attend Chavez’s funeral on Friday.
In a condolence letter posted on his personal website on Wednesday, Ahmadinejad said he was certain that Chavez “will return” along with Jesus Christ and Imam Mahdi, who devout Shi’ite Muslims believe went into hiding in the 10th century and will reappear one day to spread justice in the world.
But Ahmadinejad’s comments angered some religious officials in Iran.
“The terms Mr Ahmadinejad used to describe the Venezuelan president are not appropriate for us,” the semi-official Mehr news agency quoted Ghorbanali Dorri Najafabadi, a cleric and a senior member of the Assembly of Experts, as saying.
“One can naturally send a diplomatic letter without getting into religious discussions,” hardline Friday prayer leader Ahmad Khatami was quoted as saying by Iranian media, adding that he believed Ahmadinejad’s decision to do so was wrong.
According to the parliamentary news agency ICANA, lawmaker Mohammad Taqi Rahbar said on Thursday Ahmadinejad’s comments were “certainly wrong and exaggerated”.
While the return of the 12th imam is a core Shi’ite belief, the issue of which mortal souls will return with him on resurrection day is rarely discussed in the Islamic Republic.
Ahmadinejad, whose second and final term in office ends in June, has increasingly fallen foul of more conservative elements within Iran’s establishment. Among their criticisms is that Ahmadinejad and his close allies are overly preoccupied with the return of Imam Mahdi.
Ahmadinejad and Chavez had sought closer ties between their geographically distant countries, although action on joint social and military projects often lagged behind their rhetoric.
Chavez died on Tuesday at age 58 after a two-year battle with cancer.
The United States had looked askance at Venezuela’s warm relationship with Iran, fearing that Caracas could give Tehran an economic lifeline as it struggles to stave off pressure from sanctions over its nuclear activities.
Iran denies seeking a nuclear weapons capability and says it has the right to develop its own nuclear fuel cycle under its membership of the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.
Germans veering towards Anti-Semitism thanks to Progressives and Muslims
by Speranza ( 72 Comments › )Filed under Ahmadinejad, Anti-semitism, Germany, History, Holocaust, Israel, Leftist-Islamic Alliance, Palestinians, World War II at March 5th, 2013 - 8:00 am
Given the left-wing culture running rampant through Western Europe, combined with a long and sad history of Jew hatred, and a growing militant Muslim population, I cannot say that I am surprised. As the author states, Angela Merkel may be the last Chancellor of Germany even remotely sympathetic towards Jews and Israel.
by Isi Leibler
In the aftermath of the Holocaust, successive German governments have meticulously upheld their obligations to the Jewish people. Study of the Holocaust is a mandatory component of the German state education curriculum, Holocaust denial is classified as a crime and restitution commitments were honored and even exceeded.
Chancellor Angela Merkel is a genuine friend of the Jews and despite intense political pressures and occasional minor vacillations, has consistently supported Israel, describing its security as “part of my country’s raison d’etre”. However in recent years, as in other European countries, German public opinion has turned against Israel, perceiving it as the principal threat to global stability and peace. This hostility has increasingly assumed overt anti-Semitic tones.
There is growing resentment against Jews, who are blamed for imposing excessive emphasis on collective German national guilt for the Holocaust.
Anti-Jewish hostility is often expressed in the more ‘politically respectable’ demonization of the Jewish nation state, allegedly not related to anti-Semitism although the “Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe” (OSCE) explicitly defines such behavior as anti-Semitic.
The German left has accused Israel of war crimes, occupation and racism and also engages in inverse Holocaust imagery, enthusiastically condemning Israel for allegedly behaving towards the Palestinians as its Nazi forebears did to the Jews.
[.......]
These trends are fortified by the sizable Islamic migrant community – now numbering over four million – which aggressively agitates against Israel, utilizing obscene placards at demonstrations chanting “gas the Jews” or “death to the Jews”. Moslems are at the forefront of violence directed at identifiable Jews in urban areas, especially in Berlin, where some Jewish communal leaders are now recommending to avoid wearing kipot in public.
Yet, the government has welcomed the immigration of almost 200,000 former Soviet Jews and invested major funds to resurrect a vigorous Jewish communal life and foster Jewish education.
Despite receiving state subsidies, the Jewish leadership displays its independence and frequently speaks out if it considers the government is not fulfilling its obligations to the Jewish community or fails to act evenhandedly towards Israel.
However the intensification of extreme anti-Israeli hostility combined with a recent spate of disconcerting incidents has created angst within the Jewish community.
Last year, there was a traumatic national debate which assumed ugly anti-Semitic overtones after a judgment in Cologne ruled that male circumcision causes “bodily harm” and declared the practice illegal. The matter was only resolved following the direct intervention of Chancellor Merkel who initiated the passage of legislation legalizing circumcision.
In April 2012, in a provocative outburst, 84 year old Nobel Prize laureate Gunter Grass bitterly accused the Israeli government of seeking to obliterate the Iranian population. He warned that the Jewish state, which he considers ‘insane and unscrupulous’, represents the principal obstacle to peace in the region and called on his government to cancel delivery to Israel of the last Dolphin submarine.
Despite being discredited for having initially concealed that he had served as a member of the Nazi Waffen SS, Grass’s vicious attack on Israel, whilst condemned by numerous politicians and journalists, was enthusiastically endorsed by many Germans.
Shortly after that incident, the state-sponsored Berlin Jewish Museum invited Judith Butler, a notorious Jewish promoter of BDS against Israel, as a guest lecturer. Butler received enthusiastic applause from the 700-strong audience when, purporting to act in accordance with the highest Jewish moral values, she renewed calls to boycott Israel and ‘abolish political Zionism’ in order to create a bi-national Palestinian state.
To provide a platform for such an outspoken anti-Israeli activist at a state-sponsored Jewish Museum in Berlin is surely obscene but not unprecedented. Former Israeli communist Felicia Langer, lives in Germany where she condemns the German government for supporting Israel, constantly equates Israelis with Nazis, calls for Israeli leaders to be tried as war criminals, describes Israel as an apartheid regime and even praises Iranian President Ahmadinejad. In August 2009, German President Horst Kohler, who four years earlier had addressed the Knesset, shocked the Jewish community by honoring Langer with the Federal Cross of Merit, Germany’s most prestigious award.
In 2010, despite protests from the Israeli Embassy, Frankfurt’s Mayor Petra Roth invited Alfred Grosser, a German-born Jew known to be frenziedly hostile to Israel, to give the annual Kristallnacht oration in the Paul’s Church. He used the occasion to draw parallels between the behavior of Israelis and Nazis and was lauded by the media.
Another ongoing scandal prevails at the German Center on anti-Semitism in Berlin, considered the most important German institute engaged with the subject. Until last year it was headed by Professor Wolfgang Benz, who received his PhD from Professor Karl Bosl, a former Nazi storm trooper who maintains an ongoing association with right wing extremist groups. To this day, Benz continues defending his mentor.
Benz equates Islamophobia with anti-Semitism, alleging that critics of Islamic practice are reminiscent of Nazi anti-Semites attacking the Talmud. He recently challenged the fact that the Muslim terrorist murders in Toulouse had an “anti-Semitic dimension”. He dismisses concerns about the Moslem Brotherhood as being reminiscent of anti-Semitic phobias like the Protocols of the Elders of Zion and bizarrely complains that drawing attention to the fact that Moslems comprise 70% of Berlin prison inmates is comparable to Hitler’s ravings over “the fact that 89% of Berlin pediatricians in the 1930s were Jews”.
[.......]
The most recent upheaval erupted in response to a list compiled by the US-based Simon Wiesenthal Center, purporting to identify the ten worst anti-Semitic statements of 2012. It included President Ahmadinejad, the Moslem Brotherhood, Nation of Islam founder, Louis Farrakhan and European anti-Semites. Ninth on the list was Jakob Augstein, publisher of the magazine Der Freitag, who also provides columns to Der Spiegel, Germany’s leading weekly, founded by his father.
I have an aversion to simplistic lists prioritizing bigots and having reviewed some of Augstein’s outbursts, I consider that bracketing him with Ahmadinejad or Farrakhan absurdly magnifies his standing and impact. [.......]
Augstein alleges that when “Jerusalem calls, Berlin bows its will”; that US presidents were obliged to “secure the support of Jewish lobby groups”; that American Republicans and the Israeli government profit from violence in Libya, Sudan and Yemen; that “the Netanyahu government keeps the world on a leash with an ever swelling war chant”; that “Israel incubates its opponents in Gaza”; that the recent Prophet Mohammed video provoking riots was initiated by Israel; that ultra-Orthodox Jews are like Islamic fundamentalist terrorists and “follow the law of revenge”.
Even the broadest interpretation of the OSCE definition would qualify such demonization of Israel and allusions to Jewish global power as anti-Semitic.
[.......]
Prominent German Jewish writer and commentator, Henryk Broder, was sufficiently outraged to describe Augstein as “a pure anti-Semite… who only missed the opportunity to make his career with the Gestapo because he was born after the war”.
The president of the Jewish Central Council of Jews, Dieter Graumann, whilst condemning his “horrible, hideous” articles on Israel, criticized his placement on such a list. His vice president, Salomon Korn, went further and foolishly defended Augstein against charges of anti-Semitism.
Juliane Wetzel from the German Center on anti-Semitism was amongst those who rejected suggestions that Augstein was disseminating hatred of Jews. Overall, the bulk of the German media, as well as both leftist and CDU politicians defended him, insisting that he was merely expressing legitimate criticism of Israel.
It was significant that in 2010, two Bundestag leftist representatives were aboard the Turkish Marvi Marmara and that for the first time, the left and the right united in parliament to carry a unanimous resolution censuring Israel for the Gaza flotilla episode. [.......]
For Jews, the positive side of Germany is the evident abundance of pro-Israeli and even philo-Semitic rank and file Germans in all walks of life. Yet, simultaneously the intensifying efforts by left wing activists uniting with Moslem extremists and occasionally even Nazis, to demonize Israel and promote anti-Semitism, provide valid grounds for concern about a future for Jews in Germany.
The situation is likely to further deteriorate drastically after the culmination of Angela Merkel’s term as Chancellor.
Read the rest – Germans lurching towards Anti-Semitism
Argo cheats Canada and Britain
by Speranza ( 160 Comments › )Filed under Cold War, History, Iran, Islamic Terrorism, Leftist-Islamic Alliance, Movies at March 1st, 2013 - 5:00 pm
“Argo” is one of the most fatuous movies ever made which claims to depict historical events. As the author notes, Jimmy Carter and his C.I.A. director Stansfield Turner (anticipating by 34 years John Brennan) had so gutted the C.I.A. that, as in the words of some wonk “They (the C.I.A.) could not find their (male genitals) with both their hands”. It was the Canadians and the British who were responsible for first hiding the Americans and then secondly getting them out of Iran, the C.I.A. had little to do with it. As for Ben Affleck’s introduction and ending quotes, all it does is reinforce the image of him as a clueless Boston leftie with no real knowledge of history. Mohammad Mossadegh (for example) was never elected Prime Minister, he was appointed by the Iranian parliament, and to say that the Shah for all his faults was no better then the genocidal mullahs who now run Iran is akin to saying that Mohammad Morsi of Egypt is preferable to Hosni Mubarak.
by Abraham H. Miller
I guess it’s fair to say that Ben Affleck is not doing a documentary … or is he? In a recent interview by Terry Gross with Affleck that I caught on National Public Radio, he notes how he studied the Middle East in college and wanted to include the information on Mohammed Mossadeg and the US intervention in Iranian affairs to bring Shah Palavi to power. Affleck left me with the impression that accuracy was very important to the project.
To underscore the film’s commitment to reality, Affleck included information in the film’s front cards that was important to him as a student of the Middle East. This consisted of the historical context concerning the violent overthrow of Mohammed Mosaddegh and the successful CIA plot to consolidate the power of the shah, Mohammed Pahlava. This coup ultimately, according to many observers, led to the 1979 Iranian Revolution.
Is Argo a story that is fundamentally true but appropriately tweaked to create the successful commercial venture, or is it a dramatization that while inspired by real events is largely a work of fiction with a political message? And, if the latter, as Hillary Clinton might say, “Who cares?”
[.......]
Affleck’s Argo with its endnotes attempts to resuscitate the corpse of Jimmy Carter’s incompetent presidency. Carter has said that it was too bad he couldn’t tell the story of these events because if he had, he probably would have defeated Ronald Reagan in the 1980 presidential contest. This is simply another disingenuous statement from a man given to making them.
Anyone who has studied the relationship between the Carter administration and the CIA knows that Carter was averse to the entire notion of covert operations. Carter’s DCI, Stansfield Turner, is ignominiously remembered among those who served in the intelligence community in those years for what has become known as the Halloween Massacre. This was the wholesale evisceration of much of the covert branch of the agency, with the summary pink-slipping of some 800 to 2800 — depending on whose numbers one accepts — seasoned and well-trained operatives. Carter and his DCI believed that human intelligence (humint) was a remnant of the past.
The first thing that is wrong with this historical revision is the idea that Jimmy Carter’s bashed and crippled CIA could pull off this rescue. Moreover, Carter’s destruction of the effectiveness of the covert branch of the agency meant that with the termination of covert officers, their foreign networks went with them.
The real workings of intelligence are — with obvious exceptions — nothing remotely like what you see in the movies. Espionage is based on a long, slow, and patient process of establishing trust and creating networks among foreigners who will work for you at tremendous risk. Why people spy is a matter far beyond this writing, but suffice it to say that it takes a good intelligence officer, in a foreign post, years to build a reliable espionage network. Fire the officer and the entire network collapses with him. Fire a large number of intelligence officers and foreigners engaged in the game on our behalf will justifiably worry about being exposed and quit.
So, by 1979, it was safe to say that because of Carters’ policies, the CIA had limited covert capabilities and limited human assets in Iran or anywhere else. The British, French, and Israelis were engaged in trying to recruit from our decapitated networks, but how successful they were is largely unknown. There is, however, hardly any chance that whatever intelligence their networks could have gathered would have been shared with the highly disdained Carter-era CIA or that they would have used their intelligence assets to come to our aid.
The real story of Argo is that six members of the State Department escaped initially to the summer residence of Sir John Graham, the British ambassador, before going to the residence of the Canadian ambassador and his first secretary. Contrary to Affleck, the Brits did not turn away our people.
Since people will think Affleck’s movie is more reality-based than it is, we should cut away from the glitz of the Oscars and acknowledge the role of the Brits, and the risks that they took in coming to the aid of our diplomats. America does not have enough friends in the world to squander the ones we do have. That’s something Barack Obama was too immature to understand when he pointedly returned the bust of Churchill that was a gift from Britain not to him but to the American people.
[.......]
Anyone who has studied the relationship between the Carter administration and the CIA knows that Carter was averse to the entire notion of covert operations. Carter’s DCI, Stansfield Turner, is ignominiously remembered among those who served in the intelligence community in those years for what has become known as the Halloween Massacre. This was the wholesale evisceration of much of the covert branch of the agency, with the summary pink-slipping of some 800 to 2800 — depending on whose numbers one accepts — seasoned and well-trained operatives. Carter and his DCI believed that human intelligence (humint) was a remnant of the past.
The first thing that is wrong with this historical revision is the idea that Jimmy Carter’s bashed and crippled CIA could pull off this rescue. Moreover, Carter’s destruction of the effectiveness of the covert branch of the agency meant that with the termination of covert officers, their foreign networks went with them.
The real workings of intelligence are — with obvious exceptions — nothing remotely like what you see in the movies. Espionage is based on a long, slow, and patient process of establishing trust and creating networks among foreigners who will work for you at tremendous risk. Why people spy is a matter far beyond this writing, but suffice it to say that it takes a good intelligence officer, in a foreign post, years to build a reliable espionage network. Fire the officer and the entire network collapses with him. Fire a large number of intelligence officers and foreigners engaged in the game on our behalf will justifiably worry about being exposed and quit.
So, by 1979, it was safe to say that because of Carters’ policies, the CIA had limited covert capabilities and limited human assets in Iran or anywhere else. The British, French, and Israelis were engaged in trying to recruit from our decapitated networks, but how successful they were is largely unknown. There is, however, hardly any chance that whatever intelligence their networks could have gathered would have been shared with the highly disdained Carter-era CIA or that they would have used their intelligence assets to come to our aid.
The real story of Argo is that six members of the State Department escaped initially to the summer residence of Sir John Graham, the British ambassador, before going to the residence of the Canadian ambassador and his first secretary. Contrary to Affleck, the Brits did not turn away our people.
[..........]
The people who got the real short end of the stick in Argo were the Canadians. It was First Secretary John Sheardown who took the call from the fleeing Americans and without hesitation granted them a place to hide. Some were hidden in his home. Sheardown died recently, and his wife found the movie disappointing for characterizing him as an observer to an historical event in which he played a fundamental role.
If Affleck wanted to take the high ground, he would run a series of adverts stating that Argo is fiction and the real heroes of the movie were the Canadians, who put their lives on the line for their American cousins and got scarce acknowledgement in return. It wasn’t Tony Mendez or the bashed CIA that got the Americans out, but the Canadians who arranged the vital Canadian passports and the airline tickets through Swiss Air and two other airlines. The Argo cover was unnecessary, and the cliff-hanger scene at the airport was pure invention. The Americans armed with their Canadian papers and with reservations made by Canadian diplomats walked out of Iran without challenge and on to the safety of airplanes.
[.......].
As for Jimmy Carter, he had nearly nothing to do with this. Carter bungled Iran as he bungled nearly everything else. He failed to understand the threat of the ayatollahs, and, according to Robert Dreyfus’s version of events, he sent Air Force General Robert Huyser to further destabilize the shah’s regime. Carter believed that there was a democratic center that was coming to power. He made the same mistake with Iran that Obama made with the Arab Spring.
Neither Argo nor Jimmy Carter’s crude attempts to rewrite history nor Michelle Obama presenting an Oscar for a movie that makes us feel good about what other nations really did in Iran will change what happened. And to the British and especially the Canadians, many of us long for a day when America will apologize to you and appropriately reaffirm the risks and heroism of your people on behalf of ours.
Read the rest - Argo: with apologies to Britain and Canada
How the ‘Iranian jackal’ was killed
by Speranza ( 226 Comments › )Filed under Hezballah, IDF, Iran, Islamic Terrorism, Israel, Lebanon, Syria at February 13th, 2013 - 7:00 pm
A fascinating story and I urge every one to read the complete article. Real life is far more interesting then fiction. The Frederick Forsyth fictional character “Jackal” from the 1971 novel would have approved.
Imad Mughniyah pictured on an Interpol warrant
by Erol Araf
On the fifth anniversary of the assassination of Imad Mughniyah, a.k.a. “The Iranian Jackal,” much new information about the hunt for the terrorist most wanted by Mossad and the FBI has emerged. It’s a story of high-tech surveillance and old-fashioned espionage, and it’s just starting to be truly told now.
Imad Mughniyah was 20 years old when he made his debut on the international terrorist scene in 1983, with a series of spectacular and deadly bombings aimed at Western forces in Lebanon. The 1983 Beirut suicide bombings included those on April 18 at the U.S. Embassy (63 killed); on Oct. 23 at the U.S. Marine barracks (241 killed); and on Oct. 23 at the French paratrooper barracks (58 killed). A litany of bombings, hijackings, kidnappings and assassinations followed, with an ever-increasing body count. A list of the attacks he is believed to have been involved in, directly or in a leadership capacity, reads like an index of late-20th-century terrorism: Car bombings of the Israeli embassy and the Jewish cultural center in Argentina (124 killed) in the early 1990s; the World Trade Center bombing of 1993 (6 killed); the Khobar Towers suicide bombing in Saudi Arabia in 1996 (19 killed); the U.S. embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998 (223 killed); the 2000 suicide attack on the USS Cole in Aden, Yemen (17 killed).
And perhaps even the Sept. 11 attacks in 2001. The 9/11 Commission Report references “a senior Hezbollah operative” shepherding the future hijackers in and out of Iran. Some terrorism experts believe this was almost certainly Mughniyah. Indeed, according to Peter Lance’s book Triple Cross, Osama bin Laden spoke admiringly of Mughniyah’s lethal handiwork and in 1993 met with him in Khartoum, Sudan, to form a working alliance. That historic meeting, according to Lance, was brokered by Ali Mohamed, bin Laden’s master spy and double agent inside the FBI. Kenneth R. Timmerman, in Countdown to Crisis, quotes Major General Amos Malka, a senior Israeli military intelligence official, saying that before Sept. 11, the Israelis had picked up on numerous signs that bin Laden and Mughniyah were planning new operations against Israel and the U.S. “within the next few weeks.”
Even after the Sept. 11 attacks, Western intelligence agencies continued to track Mughniyah with interest. According Ronen Bergman, author of The Secret War with Iran, in 2005 Mossad informed both the CIA and the Canadian Security Intelligence Service that Mughniyah had established a Hezbollah network in Montreal to “prepare for the execution of terrorist attacks should the U.S.A. strike at Iranian nuclear installations.” He surfaced again as the prime Hezbollah strategist in the 2006 Lebanon War. [........]He enters by one door, exits by another, changes his cars daily, never makes appointments on a telephone, never is predictable. He uses only people that are related to him that he can trust.”
Despite his prolific terrorism career and the keen interest in the West, it was not until June, 2007, that Mossad caught a break. The lead came from his birthplace, Tayr Dibba, a small town in south Lebanon, some 15 miles from Israel. It came from one of the operatives of the Ali al-Jarrah network, operated by Mossad. Al-Jarrah himself had been recruited while serving time in an Israeli prison, and his cousin Ziad Jarrah was the hijacker pilot of United Airlines Flight 93. [.......]All of this information he passed back to Israel, collecting perhaps as much as $500,000 for his services.
It was money well spent. A member of al- Jarrah’s network lived in the same village as some of Mughniyah’s family. The informer reported that the terrorist had been moving around major European cities to avoid detection, and that he had changed his appearance. He also had apparently been sending his family occasional postcards from the cities he was hiding in. It wasn’t much to go on, but Israel still sent in a special unit of undercover agents. Blending in with the locals, they worked to verify the intelligence and tap the phones of Mughniyah’s friends and relatives. [........]
Israel also paid particular attention to former East German Stasi agents who had maintained contacts with their Palestinian allies even after the fall of communism. When East Germany collapsed, many of its spies packed up whatever sensitive documents they could obtain and then vanished. [.......]Israel set about locating them and offering generous payments to anyone with useful information. Before long, a former Stasi agent reached out to a Mossad agent in Berlin: He had the Stasi file on Mughniyah, and it was available for a price. The meeting between Mossad representatives and the ex-Stasi spy took place at the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church in Berlin. A large file containing Mougniyeh’s latest photographs was exchanged for a brief case containing $250,000. [......]
This was a major coup in the hunt for Mughniyah, but it required a further lucky break to give Israel the information it needed to bring Mughniyah down. As recounted by David Markovsky in his article “The Silent Strike,” published last fall in The New Yorker, in 2007, Israeli agents infiltrated the home of Ibrahim Othman, head of the Syrian Atomic Energy Commission. Once inside, they bugged his computer. While Israel had been looking for information about the Syrian nuclear weapons program (and indeed, in September of 2007, bombed a nascent nuclear reactor inside Syria), access to this computer allowed Israel to compromise other computers inside the supposedly secure networks of Syria’s rulers. Among the information obtained through this operation were details of weapons transfers from Syria to Mughniyah.
These Syrian files, the ex-Stasi documents and the intelligence trickling in from Mossad’s spies in Lebanon began to provide a detailed picture of Mughniyah’s recent locations and activities. Israel was getting closer, and in January of 2008 made a breakthrough — it developed intelligence indicating that Mughniyah was having an affair with a woman in Damascus, and would often spend time with her inside a luxury condo in the Syrian capital. [.......] It is believed that Mossad was able to get photos of Mughniyah as he came and went from this condo, and that they matched the Stasi files.
In early 2008, Mughniyah received an invitation to attend celebrations of the Iranian Revolution at the Iranian Cultural Centre and meet with his Syrian and Iranian contacts. [.......] Through means yet to be revealed (though perhaps related to Israel’s compromising of the Syrian computer networks), the Mossad found out about this meeting. This meant that they not only knew where he would be, and when, but also, in all likelihood, had up-to-date intelligence on what the target currently looked like.
The exact sequence of what happened next is still a secret. But enough is known, both about this operation and about Mossad’s modus operandi, to make some educated guesses. A team would be prepared, safe houses established and communications arranged. It’s believed that a squad consisting of four members was assigned to the operation. One member was charged with tracking the target while remaining in constant communication with command and the safe houses. Another member was responsible for arranging transportation and logistics inside Damascus. The third member was tasked with “cover” — monitoring potential and emerging threats to the operation and, if necessary, creating a diversion. The last member was the executioner.
Out of the safe houses, agents monitored the Iranian Cultural Centre and every place Mughniyah was believed likely to visit. The Damascus safe house had a large garage for wiring vehicles with remotely controlled explosives and altering their appearance, as well as installing mobile command, control and communication equipment. [......] Days before the assassination, Mossad obtained priority access to a recently launched Israeli satellite. State of the art, it was capable of feeding the strike team real-time intelligence 24 hours a day.
The strike team took up positions outside the Iranian Cultural Centre in Damascus, waiting for Mughniyah. At the same time, a few rented vehicles with remote controlled explosives placed inside headrests were parked, at intervals, along the street. Guests began to arrive at 7:30 p.m., with the Iranian ambassador himself arriving at 8. At 9 p.m., a silver Mitsubishi Pajero turned into the street and parked close to where two strike team members were waiting. [......] Then the passenger door opened and Imad Mughniyah emerged. He wore a dark suit and his beard had been neatly trimmed. He started to walk up the street, passing one of the cars the Israelis had planted there. It exploded, beheading Mughniyah.
By the time the bomb went off, most of the Israeli agents had already packed up and left. Their mission was accomplished. They shut down the safe houses, removed any incriminating evidence, and calmly left the country under false IDs, escaping before there was any reason for Syria to suspect their presence. The two agents who had been on the street with Mughniyah when the bomb exploded had a harder time getting out — with Syrian security on high alert, especially at the airports, the agents are reported to have crossed into Lebanon and then sailed out into the Mediterranean in inflatable boats, to be rescued by an Israeli submarine hiding beneath the waves.
The risky end to the mission, however, did little to obscure the obvious — it had been a complete success. [......] And, best of all, one of the most dangerous terrorists of our time had been killed, his body so thoroughly shattered that parts were found dozens of metres away from the bomb site.
“The world is a better place without this man in it,” U.S. State Department spokesman Sean McCormack. “One way or the other he was brought to justice.” Indeed. The man who had lived by the car bomb, died by one, too.
Read the rest - Death of a master terrorist: How the ‘Iranian Jackal ‘was killed
Argentina’s involvement in a cynical plot to whitewash the murder of its own citizens
by Speranza ( 165 Comments › )Filed under Argentina, Hezballah, Iran, Islamic Terrorism, Israel at February 13th, 2013 - 11:00 am
Cristina Kirchner is rapidly becoming one of the more repellant leaders in Latin America. The Iranian tentacles in South America thanks to Hugo Chavez seem to be growing.
by Isi Liebler
Argentina’s President Cristina Kirchner has jettisoned whatever was left of her country’s moral standing by consummating a devil’s pact with Iran, whose leaders were responsible for having inflicted the worst ever act of terrorism on her citizen.
In March 1992, the Israeli Embassy in Buenos Aires suffered a terrorist bombing attack which killed 29 and wounded 242 people. Two years later, in July 1994, a second bombing attack targeted the Jewish community center (AMIA) killing 85 and injuring hundreds.
There were protracted investigations and eventually two Argentinian prosecutors, Alberto Nisman and Marcelo Burgos, formally accused the Iranian government of orchestrating the attacks. In 2007 the Argentinian government even issued arrest warrants for six Iranians accused of involvement, one of whom is currently the Defense Minister, Ahmad Vahidi and another is former President Ali Rafsanjani. [.....] None of them were apprehended and, not surprisingly, Iran adamantly refused to cooperate.
Over time, evidence emerged exposing corruption and indicating that a cover up had taken place. A judge was impeached for bribery and there were allegations that the Iranian intelligence service had deposited $10 million in a Swiss bank account held by former President Carlos Menem in return for his hushing up the affair. In March 2012, Menem was ordered to stand trial for obstruction of justice, but to date there has been no further progress.
In 2005, President Nester Kirchner, the late husband of the current president, described Argentina’s failure to move forward in this matter as a “national disgrace”.
But now, his widow and successor, President Cristina Kirchner, in a shocking reversal, has brought Argentinian political decadence to a climax by consummating a pact with the Iranians to create a joint “truth commission” in order to investigate the AMIA terrorist attack by the “judicial authorities of Argentina and Iran… and issue a report with recommendations about how the case should proceed”. Lest there were any doubts as to the outcome, the statement unashamedly stressed that the project would be “based on the laws and regulations of both countries”.
Ironically, President Kirchner announced this diabolical pact with the murderers of Argentinian civilians who were targeted as Jews – on January 27, International Holocaust Memorial Day.
Furthermore, in her statement President Kirchner stressed that she would “never allow the AMIA tragedy to be used as a chess piece in a game of faraway geopolitical interests” – clearly conveying Argentina’s opposition to efforts to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear bomb.
That the Argentinian leaders could collaborate with such a cynical whitewashing of the murder of their own citizens and create a “truth commission” with a wretched despotic regime promoting Holocaust denial, should lead to the condemnation of the Argentinian government by the civilized world. [........]
Underlying this move are the economic problems Argentina is facing in relation to its debts to the World Bank and other global institutions. As far back as March 2011, there were media reports alleging that Argentinian Foreign Minister Hector Timmerman had offered to freeze the AMIA inquiry in return for an upgrade in economic relations with Iran. It was also alleged that Timmerman had proposed that Syrian President Bashar Assad could act as an intermediary to facilitate such a deal. A purportedly leaked cable from Iranian Foreign Minister Ali Salehi was quoted stating “Argentina is no longer interested in solving those two attacks, but in exchange prefers improving its economic relations with Iran”.
The current Argentinian Jewish communal leaders are a far cry from their courageous predecessors who led the community until the 1980s. Yet, despite being intimidated by Timmerman, they still conveyed muted distress concerning their government’s shameful whitewash of the Iranians responsible for cold-blooded murder of their kinsmen.
[..........]
According to a report in Ha’aretz, this resulted in an enraged almost hysterical response by Foreign Minister Timmerman who summoned the Israeli ambassador, Dorit Shavit, and accused her government of providing “ammunition to anti-Semites who accused Jews of dual loyalties”. He added “Israel has no right to demand explanations. We are a sovereign state and Israel is not entitled to speak on behalf of the Jewish people and does not represent it”.
Shavit responded that Israel was entitled to be concerned about the welfare of Jews throughout the world and reminded Timmerman about his own family’s relationship with Israel.
Timmerman’s father Jacobo, an Argentinian Jew, had been the editor of “La Opinion” a leftist weekly newsmagazine. His involvement with a questionable investment banker was either the basis or the pretext for being arrested by the right wing military junta controlling the country at the time. He was subject to torture and held in solitary confinement. He alleged, probably with just cause, that anti-Semitism was a factor in his arrest but lost the plot when he argued that the right-wing military dictatorship represented a genocidal threat to the Jews.
It was as a result of the secret intervention of Israeli authorities, including the ambassador, that he was released in 1979 and came to Israel where he wrote a book outlining his persecution in Argentina titled “Prisoner without a Name, Cell without a Number”.
However, a few years later in 1983 he published a second book brutally attacking Israel’s policies in relation to the Lebanon war and accusing Prime Minister Menahem Begin of destroying the moral integrity of the Jewish people and transforming Israelis into “efficient criminals”. [........] Shortly after publishing his tirade, he left Israel and died in Buenos Aires in 1999.
His hatred and lack of appreciation to Israel for saving his life was bequeathed to his son Hector. Prior to becoming Foreign Minister, Hector’s Jewish background is alleged to have been a major factor contributing to his appointment as Argentina’s Consul General in New York where he developed relations with influential members of the Jewish community.
As Foreign Minister, Timmerman presents himself as a devoted supporter of human rights. Yet he played a central role on behalf of the Argentinian regime in sanitizing the Iranian murderers of his own people. Orchestrating such a pact with one of the world’s worst abusers of human rights makes a mockery of his fake moral pretensions.
He also clearly relishes attacking Israel, seemingly oblivious to the fact that the Jewish state was responsible for saving his father’s life. Only last month, he compared the UK’s control of the Falkland Islands, which Argentina claims, to Israel’s “colonial” control of the West bank.
It is nauseating to see such despicable behavior by the Argentinian government being implemented by a politically far left Jewish scoundrel.
Read the rest – Argentina’s pact with the devil
Aviation experts say new Iranian stealth jet is a pathetic hoax that can’t even fly
by Speranza ( 7 Comments › )Filed under Ahmadinejad, Headlines, Iran at February 8th, 2013 - 6:44 pm
Color me surprised – not!!
by Andy Soltis
From the loony regime that just figured how to shoot a monkey into space: Iran now claims it has its own homemade, radar-beating stealth fighter jet.
But aviation and defense experts say the tiny one-seater looks like a toy and might not even be able to fly — calling it a “laughable fake.”
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad unveiled the Qaher F313 at a Tehran hangar last week and called it “one of the most advanced” aircraft in the world.
But the experts said it was too small for a human pilot — and the controls and wiring looked too simple for a real jet.
FLOP GUN: Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Iranian brass proudly unveil the Qaher F313 — which US aviation experts dismiss as an embarrassing joke that doesn’t even have bolts or rivets.Ahmadinejad boasted it had “almost all the positive features” of the world’s most sophisticated jets. But among the features that seem to be missing are bolts and rivets — found on the simplest planes.
“It looks like the Iranians dumped some rudimentary flight controls and an ejection seat into a shell molded in what they thought were stealthy angles,” reporter John Reed wrote in the journal Foreign Policy.
“It looks like it might make a noise and vibrate if you put 20 cents in,” joked Andrew Davies of the Australian Strategic Policy Institute. “I can see (almost) how North Korea gets away with transparent nonsense due to isolation, but Iran has a population that’s much more switched on and connected, at least in the cities.
“I guess a possible explanation is that it plays well in the provinces, where people aren’t as savvy.”
Iran can’t buy new jets or even spare parts for its air force — much of it aging shah-era planes made in the US — because of the Western embargo designed to deter Tehran from developing nuclear weapons.
Ahmadinejad said the Qaher — which means “Conqueror” — “carries a message of peace, friendship and brotherhood. Our military achievements do not pose a threat to anyone.”
Last week, in another propaganda bid, Iran claimed it had sent a monkey 75 miles above the Earth in a suborbital flight that would pave the way for the Islamic Republic’s first manned flights into space.
Contrary to popular beliefs, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is not the cause of Middle East instability
by Speranza ( 130 Comments › )Filed under Al Qaeda, Egypt, Iran, Islamists, Israel, Libya, Muslim Brotherhood, Palestinians, Syria, Taliban at February 8th, 2013 - 7:00 am
The vast majority of conflicts in the Middle East have little or nothing to do with the Palestinians or Israel. I wish I had a dollar for every time I heard or read some “expert” claiming that “Palestine is the key to peace”. There is no linkage between Israel-Palestine and peace throughout the Middle East. If Arafat had signed an agreement in 2000 and actually lived up to it, al Qaeda, Hezbollah, Hamas, et al would still continue to exist and Iran would still be trying to get a nuclear weapon.
by Jeffrey Goldberg
Among many Middle East analysts, particularly those of the so-called “realist” school of foreign policy thought, “linkage” is a holy doctrine. It holds that peaceful compromise between Israel and the Palestinians will lead to a generally placid Middle East. But it’s a false notion. One of its more famous advocates is Chuck Hagel, President Obama’s nominee to be secretary of defense.
In my Bloomberg View column, I look at Hagel’s views, and try to understand how linkage became such a dominant doctrine when it is so provably false:
“The core of all challenges in the Middle East remains the underlying Arab-Israeli conflict,” Hagel said in 2006. “The failure to address this root cause will allow Hezbollah, Hamas, and other terrorists to continue to sustain popular Muslim and Arab support — a dynamic that continues to undermine America’s standing in the region and the Governments of Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, and others, whose support is critical for any Middle East resolution.”As Martin Kramer wrote: “The vocabulary here — ‘core,’ ‘root cause,’ ‘underlying’ — is taken from the standard linkage lexicon, which elevates the Arab-Israeli or Palestinian-Israeli conflict to a preeminent status.” [.........]
In his 2008 book, “America: Our Next Chapter,” Hagel wrote that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict “cannot be looked at in isolation. Like a stone dropped into a placid lake, its ripples extend out farther and farther. Egypt, Syria, Jordan, and Lebanon feel the effects most noticeably. Farther still, Afghanistan and Pakistan; anything that impacts their political stability also affects the two emerging economic superpowers, India and China.”
I would love to hear Hagel’s views on this subject today, because his theory of linkage — and his belief that a Middle East freed from the Israeli-Palestinian dispute would be a “placid lake” — has been utterly discredited by events. [........] But these same terrorists are unalterably opposed to a compromise that would allow two states, Israel and Palestine, to live side by side, because they are opposed to the very existence of Israel. They try to subvert the peace process because they fear it will legitimize the existence of a country they hate.
[........]The past two years have proved the theory of linkage to be comprehensively false anyway.
Come with me on a quick tour of the greater Middle East. The Syrian civil war? Unrelated to the Palestinian-Israeli peace process. The slow disintegration of Yemen? Unrelated. Chaos and violence in Libya? Unrelated. Chaos and fundamentalism in Egypt? The creation of a Palestinian state on the West Bank would not have stopped the overthrow of Hosni Mubarak, nor would it have stopped the rise of the Muslim Brotherhood. Terrorism in Algeria? Unrelated. The Iranian nuclear program? How would the creation of a Palestinian state have persuaded the Iranian regime to cease its pursuit of nuclear weapons? Someone please explain. Sunni-Shiite civil war in Iraq? The unrest in Bahrain? Pakistani havens for al-Qaeda affiliates? All unrelated.
Read the rest -Is Palestinian-Israeli peace the key to happiness in the Middle East ?
The Hruska defense of mediocrity
by Speranza ( 130 Comments › )Filed under Iran, Israel, Russia at February 7th, 2013 - 7:00 am
A mediocre Defense Secretary to join up with a mediocre Secretary of State, a mediocre C.I.A. Director all under the nominal tutelage of a less then mediocre President of the Untied States.
by Bret Stephens
Once upon a time, a Republican senator from Nebraska spoke up for the right of mediocrities to occupy eminent positions of public trust.
“Even if he were mediocre, there are a lot of mediocre judges and people and lawyers,” said Sen. Roman Hruska in 1970 as a defense of G. Harrold Carswell, Richard Nixon’s ill-fated nominee to the Supreme Court. “They are entitled to a little representation, aren’t they, and a little chance? We can’t have all Brandeises, Frankfurters and Cardozos.”
Right. And at the Pentagon, we can’t have all Stimsons, Forrestals and Marshalls. Which is why America needs another senator from Nebraska to vindicate the cause of the mediocre man.That man is Chuck Hagel.
Until his confirmation hearing last week, Mr. Hagel was touted as a courageous tribune of the hard but necessary truth. His nomination, according to one sycophant, “may prove to be the most consequential foreign-policy appointment of [ Barack Obama's] presidency.” He was hailed as a latter-day Dwight Eisenhower, a military hero mindful of the appropriate limits of U.S. power, a real American bold enough to tell the chicken-hawk neocon pretenders where they could stick it.As for his claim about the Jewish lobby intimidating people, it was no more than a gaffe in the sense of accidentally telling the naked truth. “I am certain,” said another prominent Hagel defender, “that the vast majority of U.S. senators and policy makers quietly believe exactly what Hagel believes on Israel.” [.......]
After the hearings, what’s left of that defense?
Chuck Hagel at his Senate confirmation hearing last week.Courageous Chuck is done for. He simply folded in the face of questions about his previous positions on Israel, Iran, nuclear Global Zero, Pentagon overspending and so on. [.......]If he’s insincere, then he’s little more than a dissembler trying to advance his career.
Deep-thinking Chuck is no more, either. His befuddlement on Obama administration policy toward Iran—the flubbed remark about containment, the passed note, the re-flub, the coaching from committee Chairman Carl Levin—was almost the least of it. [.......]
Chuck-in-Charge is also not in the cards. “I won’t be in a policy-making position,” he said, astonishingly, to a question from West Virginia Democrat Joe Manchin. To be the secretary of defense, you see, is a bit like being the grand marshal at an Independence Day parade: You wear a sash, you hold a baton, you say a few words, you smile, wave and walk the route.
It says something about the political state of play that Mr. Hagel’s defenders are now whispering that he just won’t matter all that much. Serious defense policy will be run by the grown-ups in the White House, people like Ben Rhodes, Valerie Jarrett, Denis McDonough and, of course, the president. That’s reassuring.It also says something about the political moment that Republicans seem prepared to let Mr. Hagel through now that they have drawn a bit of blood. Nebraska’s Mike Johanns and Mississippi’s Thad Cochran have declared their support for Mr. Hagel. John McCain opposes a filibuster on the grounds that the president deserves an up-or-down vote on his nominee. [.......] But a political party that can’t press a political advantage when it has one is a loser. And who wants an opposition that thinks its honor lies in losing honorably?
In the meantime, it will come as a comfort to America’s enemies to know what they’ll be getting in a second Obama term.One is a cabinet without a single hawk or even semi-hawk, whereas only a year ago there were three: Leon Panetta, David Petraeus and even Hillary Clinton. Another is a secretary of defense with an unsteady grasp of a department that may, within a month, be facing a historic and blunt reduction in its budgets. A third is a vice president who has just agreed to yet another round of negotiations with Tehran. And finally there’s a president whose second inaugural address was entirely devoted to calling America home for the collective tasks he believes lie ahead.
Ask yourself how Vladimir Putin, Ali Khamenei and Bashar Assad are likely to feel about all of that. Shouldn’t America have at least one officer of cabinet rank who scares the daylights out of these people?
If Mr. Hagel had a sense of the seriousness of the office he is now likely to enter, he would withdraw his name from consideration. But the essential characteristic of mediocre people is that they are the last to recognize mediocrity, either in themselves or in others. That our legislators in their wisdom may soon make this man secretary of defense says as much about them as it does about him. Truly, it’s a Roman Senate.
Read the rest – Hagel’s Hruska Defense
