Washington Warns Israel Not To Launch Pre-Emptive Strike Against Iran
“U.S. Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta visited Israel Monday with a clear message from his boss in Washington: The United States opposes any Israeli attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities,” reported the Israeli newspaper Haaretz.
“The United States, he said, is ‘very concerned, and we will work together to do whatever is necessary” to keep Iran from posing “a threat to this region.’ But doing so ‘depends on the countries working together,’ he added. He repeated the word ‘together’ several times in this context.
”Panetta’s strong-arm tactics towards Israel was likely overlooked by most Americans, who are currently focused on high unemployment, surging foreclosures, anemic growth, skyrocketing national debt, the 2012 presidential campaign, and final days of the Major League Baseball season. But it was certainly noticed by the people of the Middle East who are growing increasingly concerned about the prospects of a major new regional war.
So, in other words, the U.S. expects Israel to sit and wait until Iran finalizes their nuclear ambitions, and await the incoming missiles.
The facts:
- The latest U.N. report found credible evidence that Iran is moving steadily towards building and deploying nuclear weapons.
- Iran’s leaders continue to espouse apocalyptic beliefs about the End of Days, the coming of the Twelfth Imam, and the rise of an Islamic caliphate, even as they long for the annihilation of Israel (the so-called “Little Satan”) and the United States (the so-called “Great Satan”).
- Yet while Western diplomats keep talking and talking about restraining the Iranian threat, the world is not taking decisive action to actually stop Iran from getting the Bomb.
Israeli leaders state the obvious:
A senior Israeli general in September warned that Iran is getting closer to the Bomb and the “Arab Spring” could turn into a “radical Islamic winter” and that “this raises the likelihood of an all-out, total war, with the possibility of weapons of mass destruction being used.”
And this:
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu warned in his U.N. speech last month. “If Iran is not stopped, we will all face the specter of nuclear terrorism, and the Arab Spring could soon become an Iranian winter….The world around Israel is definitely becoming more dangerous.”
Report: Iranian Warship Route To U.S. Coast
Last week, an Iranian Naval Commander threatened to deploy ships off the U.S. coast as a provocative show of force.
Now it looks like Iran might actually be serious.
A new map that allegedly shows the expected path of the Iranian Naval expedition to the U.S has leaked online from an Iranian website, according to MEMRI.
Sarkozy: It is silly to talk about a Jewish state
French President Nicolas Sarkozy has always described himself as a true friend of Israel. However, according to unusual statements attributed to him in the French magazine Le Canard Enchaîne, he unequivocally sides with the Palestinians.
"It is silly to talk about a Jewish state," Sarkozy said while referring to the Israeli demand that the Palestinians recognize Israel as the Jewish state. "It would be like saying that this table is Catholic. There are two million Arabs in Israel."
According to the report, the French president told the ministers that he fully supports the establishment of a Palestinian state. "The Palestinians have been waiting for a state they deserve for 60 years now," he said. "Is it not fair that Palestine is recognized by the UN even in an observer status?"
Syria's Assad intent on dragging Israel into his mess
Syrian President Bashar Assad on Tuesday reportedly threatened to bombard Tel Aviv with ballistic missiles if NATO or other Western powers dare to interfere with his violent crackdown on Syrian pro-democracy demonstrations.
Iran's Fars news agency reported that Assad made the threat during a meeting with Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmad Davutoglu. According to Assad, he would "not need more than 6 hours to transfer hundreds of rockets and missiles to the Golan Heights to fire them at Tel Aviv."
Were that scenario to play out, Assad is said to be confident that Iran would launch an attack on US warships in the Persian Gulf.
While the situation is wholly out of Israel's hands, there is concern in the Jewish state over what Assad may interpret as Western interference.
And this represents the big fear - raising the issue of whether Assad is capable of actually taking actions that would trigger either UN troops or NATO troops to take action, such as entering into Lebanon or Turkey. Assad's troops are already dangerously close to both borders.
Israeli commentators have already stressed that if Assad feels he is going to be toppled, he will have nothing to lose by launching a last minute attack on Israel. In fact, by doing so he has much to gain, as a missile assault on Tel Aviv would solidify Assad's legacy as a dedicated enemy of the hated "Zionist entity."
Middle East unrest spreads to Saudi Arabia
Saudi police sealed off the village of al-Awamiya in the east of the country on Monday night after using live fire to disperse Shia protesters, according to exiled Saudi dissidents.
A group calling itself arabianrevolution have posted videos on YouTube which they claim show Saudi security forces in al-Awamiya, home to much of the Sunni kingdom's Sunni minority, firing on protesters on Monday evening.
Saudi reinforcements rushed to oil regions to quell machine-gun toting Shiites
Has the 11-month Arab revolt reached Saudi Arabia? Or been imported? This week saw weeks of simmering unrest in the Shiite-populated eastern oil regions boiling over.
Wednesday, Oct. 5, the Saudi Ministry of Interior warned it would "strike with an iron fist" against any breaches of the country's stability and security after security officers came under automatic fire and Molotov bombs fired from motorbikes in Saudi Arabia's richest oil center in the eastern region of Qatif.
Saudi officials blamed "a foreign country" and "mercenaries" after demonstrators fought the police with classical Iranian Revolutionary Guards tactics in the Shiite town of al Awamiya
Of course, we all know who this country would be:
Although Iran is not named in official Saudi communiqués – only "a foreign country seeking to undermine the security and stability of the homeland in blatant interference in national sovereignty," no one in Riyadh doubts Tehran's hand in the unrest, using its own and Hizballah undercover agents to smuggle the guns through neighboring Bahrain to Shiite activists in Al-Awamiya and teaching them assault tactics.
EU calls for global tax
The European Commission said on Wednesday it would push next month's G20 summit to agree on a global financial transaction tax, but Canada said it may have enough support to block such a move.
Flanked by German Chancellor Angela Merkel at a news conference in Brussels, European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso said it was time to push ahead with the initiative.
Earthquake Swarm Keeps Iceland's Katla Rocking
We’ve been keeping an eye on Iceland’s Katla for quite a while now and over the past year; the volcano has been showing signs that magma is moving under the ice-capped edifice. There have been frequent seismic swarms around and within the caldera that is currently filled with the Mýrdalsjökull (glacier) and on at least two occasions, small glacial outburst floods (jokulhlaups) have issued from Katla.
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