Israel

...now browsing by tag

IRAN: DISCOVERY WILL COLLAPSE CHRISTIANITY

Wednesday, May 23rd, 2012

Says Turkish ‘Bible’ has Barnabas forecasting Muhammad’s coming

05/23/2012

By Reza Kahlili

Iran’s Basij Press is claiming that a version of the Gospel of Barnabas, found in 2000, will prove that Islam is the final and righteous religion and the revelation will cause the collapse worldwide of Christianity.

Turkey confiscated a leather-bound text, written on animal hide, in an anti-smuggling operation in 2000. Turkish authorities believe the text could be an authentic version of the Gospel of Barnabas, one of Jesus’ apostles and an associate of the apostle Paul.

This version of the Barnabas Gospel was written in the 5th or 6th century and it predicted the coming of the Prophet Mohammad and the religion of Islam, the Basij Press claims.

The Christian world, it says, denies the existence of such a gospel.

However, religious scholars have said another version of the Barnabas Gospel, discovered a century ago, was written less than 500 years ago, which would post-date Mohammad.

In Chapter 41 of the Barnabas Gospel, Basij claims, is this statement: “God has hidden himself as Archangel Michael ran them (Adam and Eve) out of heaven, (and) when Adam turned, he noticed that at top of the gateway to heaven, it was written ‘La elah ela Allah, Mohamad rasool Allah,’” meaning Allah is the only God and Mohammad his prophet.

The Turkish army has taken possession of the Barnabas Gospel because the “Zionists” and the governments of the West are trying to suppress its contents, Basij Press claims.

According to the Barnabas Gospel in Turkey’s hands, Basij Press says, Jesus was never crucified and that not only is He not the son of God, but that He himself predicted the coming of the Prophet Mohammad. The book even predicts the coming of the last Islamic messiah, the report says.

“The discovery of the original Barnabas Bible will now undermine the Christian Church and its authority and will revolutionize the religion in the world,” the Basij report says. “The most significant fact, though, is that this Bible has predicted the coming of Prophet Mohammad and in itself has verified the religion of Islam, and this alone will unbalance the powers of the world and create instability in the Christian world.”

The Basij report concludes that the discovery is so immense that it will affect the world’s politics and that the world powers are aware of the coming effects of this event.

Turkey plans to put the Bible on public display. Though Turkish authorities believe this could be an authentic version of the Gospel of Barnabas, others believe it only goes back to the 16th century and is a fake because it would have been written centuries after Mohammad’s life.

“The Iranian regime is committed to stamping out Christianity by any means necessary, whether that means executing Christian converts, burning Bibles or raiding underground churches,” said Erick Stakelbeck, host of the Christian Broadcasting Network’s “Stakelbeck on Terror” show and a close observer of Iranian affairs. “In promoting the so-called Barnabas Bible – which was likely written sometime in the 16th century and is not accepted by any mainstream Christian denomination – the regime is once again attempting to discredit the Christian faith. Record numbers of young Iranians are leaving Islam and embracing Christ, and the mullahs see Christianity as a growing threat to their authority.”

The Vatican has requested to see the scripture but it is unknown if Turkey has provided it access to the text.

Recently Iranian ayatollahs have been outspoken that Islam is the last and only righteous religion sent by God.

Grand Ayatollah Jafar Sobhani, in a recent statement, announced that since the Quran was the last holy book and provides the most complete religion to the world and Mohammad the last prophet as indicated in the Quran, there is no authority to abide by other books. The Quran clearly indicates that only those who have accepted the true religion of Islam are the guided ones, he said.

As reported recently, a former intelligence officer in the Revolutionary Guards revealed that tens of thousands of Bibles were confiscated and burned in Iran, under the order of Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who said the Bible is not a holy book and its burning is morally acceptable.

As the Islamic regime in Iran continues to suppress its people with violations of human rights and challenges the world over its nuclear program, Khamenei said, “In light of the realization of the divine promise by almighty God, the Zionists and the Great Satan (America) will soon be defeated. Allah’s promise will be delivered, and Islam will be victorious.”

Watch the following video describing the timing of the destruction of Israel:

Iran Leaders: The Coming is Upon Us – Israel Shall be Destroyed! (Watch the Video)

Posted in Iran Update | No Responses »
Tags: Ahmadinejad, America, Basij, Christ, Hezbollah, IAEA, Iran, Iranian nuclear program, Islam, Israel, Khamenei, Revolutionary Guards, Sanctions, Suicide bomber, Terror Plot, Terrorism, War

The Folly of Sanctions on Iran

Wednesday, May 23rd, 2012

American Thinker

May 23, 2012

By Clare M. Lopez

World powers are scrambling to find some magic formula that will ratchet back rising tensions over Iran’s nuclear weapons program. United Nations (U.N.) International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) secretary-general Yukiya Amano flew to Tehran on Sunday, 20 May 2012, for last-minute talks with Iran’s chief nuclear negotiator Saeed Jalili in advance of the P-5 + 1 talks scheduled to begin in Baghdad on Wednesday, 23 May 2012.

His trip follows by several days a remarkable op-ed, authored by a distinguished group of Western leadership figures, which appeared in the Wall Street Journal on 16 May 2012. Meir Dagan, August Hanning, and R. James Woolsey are former heads of the intelligence services of Israel, Germany, and the U.S., respectively; Gen. Charles Guthrie is a former chief of staff of the British armed forces, Ms. Kristen Silverberg is a former U.S. ambassador to the EU, and Mr. Mark D. Wallace is a former U.S. ambassador to the U.N. for management and reform. These people have joined together in a new initiative of the U.S.-based group United Against Nuclear Iran and the U.K.-based Institute for Strategic Dialogue. The urgent purpose that animates all of them — Secretary General Amano, the P-5 + 1, and this group — is to persuade Iran’s leadership to abandon its quest for a deliverable nuclear weapon before Israel, the U.S., or some combination of world powers decides that a military strike against Iran is the only way to halt its nuclear weapons program.

What is so striking about all of these well-meaning efforts is their apparent foundation on the conviction that the Iranian leadership makes cost-benefit calculations the way Westerners do. Collectively, these authors are world leaders who represent some of the finest minds and real-world experience of their generation. And yet, their conviction that ”[i]t is still in Iran’s interest to change course and address international concerns regarding possible military aspects of its nuclear program” betrays a disturbing tendency to presume that the Iranian regime somehow shares with them a common perspective about the objectives of governance and the conduct of foreign affairs. This is mirror-imaging of the most dangerous kind.

Because the stringent sanctions imposed on Iran by the international community demonstrably “are having a tangible impact” and causing serious damage to the Iranian economy, judgments are made that, at some point, the Iranian leadership will conclude that it is either unable or unwilling to continue its drive for a deliverable nuclear weapons capability. While measures such as recommend by the WSJ op-ed team — denial of access to the international banking system, shipping, and insurance coverage — indeed could bring the Iranian economy to its knees if globally enforced, it is also just as likely that anticipation of such increasingly stringent measures would galvanize the Iranian regime to accelerate completion of its nuclear weapons program.

This is because a number of unsustainable assumptions underlie the sanctions plan. First and foremost is a failure to understand the ideological motivation that drives Iran’s current leaders, from the supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, himself to the commanders of the Iranian military forces, the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps and its affiliated Qods Force, and the most influential clerics identified with Khomeini’s revolution, such as chairman of the Expediency Council, Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani. Even though traditional Twelver Shi’ite doctrine holds that full-on jihad has been illegitimate since the Greater Occultation cut off communications with the Twelfth Imam (the Shi’ite Mahdi) in the 10^th century and that pious Shi’a neither can nor should do anything to force Allah’s hand (to send back the Mahdi or usher in the End Times scenario), it is precisely because Khomeini and his successors broke ranks in some ways with the historical, traditional Shi’a Islam — but reverted to it in others — that the current Tehran regime’s quest for the bomb is so threatening. Realization that Iran is working on a potentially devastating pre-emptive capability to deliver perhaps just one nuclear bomb of the Super-EMP variety should lend the utmost urgency to our focus on this ideology.

By institutionalizing jihad in the 1989 Iranian constitution as a policy of state to spread the Khomeini revolution, and designating the IRGC/Qods Force and a strategy of “striking terror into the hearts of the enemy” (Q 8:60) as the means to accomplish that, Tehran’s mullahs clearly challenge traditional Twelver doctrine in a number of ways. For example, even as Khomeini cracked down on the Hojatieh Society (established in the 1950s to counter Bahá’í beliefs) because its members presumed to expedite the return of the Twelfth Imam, he also permitted his own followers to bestow on him the title of “Imam,” which would have been blasphemous for anyone else (although Khomeini never claimed actually to be the Twelfth Imam). In fact, Khomeini’s ideology more accurately may be described as an extrapolation of traditional Shi’ite thought about the necessity of an all-powerful “Guardian Jurist” to guide Shi’a society in the period of waiting for the return of the Mahdi; but in arguing for an activist, frankly jihadist Imamate in the interim, he allowed the Shi’ite clergy significantly to stretch earlier bounds of theological inquiry and scholarship.

In other ways, Khomeini’s personification of the all-powerful Guardian Jurist hearkens back in time, for example, to the 16^th-century figure of Muhammad al-Baqir Majlesi, who was one of the most powerful and influential Shi’a clerics of all time. In his position as Sheikh al-Islam (Islamic Leader of the Land), a title given him by the Safavid ruler Sultan Husayn, al-Baqir was tasked with imposing Shi’a Islam on a Persian population theretofore Sunni. Certainly, Khomeini’s visceral Jew-hatred echoes that of his forbear. Under the rule of Khomeini’s successor as supreme leader, the Ayatollah Khamenei, though, it has been but a short ideological leap from “preparation” for the imminent return of the Mahdi to Ahmadinejad’s fervent formulation of “let my words and deeds hasten the return of the 12^thImam.” The Iranian president’s apparent fixation on his own role as a central figure in the Mahdi narrative and quarrels about this with Khamenei, however, should not obscure the very real devotion to that same narrative by the supreme leader, who sees himself as the mythical “Khurasani Sayyed,” foretold in the Shi’a ahadith as the leader who prepares the way for the 12^th Imam.

One of the most revealing glimpses the West has seen of this deeply internal Iranian worldview came to light by way of Reza Kahlili, the pseudonymous former IRGC Pasdar and CIA recruited agent, who obtained a copy of a disturbing Iranian video whose title translates as “The Coming is Upon Us.” Produced by Ahmadinejad’s office and screened for the supreme leader to apparent acclaim followed by wide distribution among the ranks of the IRGC, this film lays out the conviction of Iran’s current leadership that the 12^th Imam will return during their tenure in office and that they will play a central role in the cataclysmic events attendant to his reappearance on earth.

This brings us back to the unsustainable assumptions upon which current sanctions strategies appear to be based. Obviously, the current Iranian regime and a significant percentage of its power centers operate at least to some extent under a set of ideological beliefs all too often dismissed out of hand by “rational” Westerners, whose confidence that they can understand and even influence the behavior of these adversaries in ways that will deter them from acts hostile to U.S., Western, and international interests may be disastrously misplaced. Another unsustainable assumption about the existence of somehow “universal” definitions of national-level reason and rationality that inevitably must lead to a rejection of violent solutions[1] fails to take into account how doctrinally inspired mindsets deliberately can implement policy that appears to all outside the inner circle militarily impossible or even knowingly suicidal (ideologically driven martyrdom).

None of this is to assert that the current Iranian regime is definitely, without any doubt, a “suicide bomber in macrocosm,” as Louis Rene Beres, professor of political science and international law at Purdue University, would put it. It is to acknowledge, however, that irrationality and barbarism quite routinely overwhelm more idyllic visions of human nature. Jihadis around the world almost daily choose to place their individual human mortality on the sacrificial altar to a deity they believe promises in return both personal immortality in Paradise and the survival and triumph of Islam on earth. Not confined to the totalitarian paradigm of Islamic metaphysical belief, apparent irrationality occurs in the secular but equally totalitarian world, too: during the 1962 Cuban missile crisis, Cuban dictator Fidel Castro actually urged Moscow to initiate nuclear war with the U.S. rather than give in to President Kennedy’s demands to remove its missiles, in the full knowledge that retaliatory strikes from the U.S. would obliterate Cuba.

Difficult as it may be for those who see themselves as enlightened thinkers of the 21^st century to accept that a totalitarian dictatorship, whether of the Islamic or secular variety, may be willing to sacrifice not just its own people (economically or existentially), but its own very existence, in the quest for an ideological higher value, when dealing with this Iranian regime, it is imperative that we do so. Supposing that Khamenei or his Islamic revolutionary cohorts can be convinced by any means to abandon the quest for what has been the sine qua non of their 33-year reign of power — the acquisition of deployed nuclear weapons with which to impose their will upon and perhaps annihilate their ideological enemies — is not realistic. While increasingly harsh economic sanctions may well convince the mullahs that their window of opportunity to complete Iran’s nuclear weapons program is closing rapidly, it does not follow that such a realization would convince them to relinquish the quest. Quite to the contrary, that realization would more than likely spur them to accelerate the program with every resource at their disposal to achieve what they seek before it gets even more difficult. Additionally, it must be noted that the regime’s firm belief in its own place in the Shi’ite eschatology of the 12^th Imam also comes with temporal boundaries. Ahmadinejad’s term of office ends in 2013.

The bottom line is this: the Iranian regime cannot, by any means, be induced to give up its intent and motivation to “get the bomb.” Intent cannot be changed. But the regime can and should be.

Posted in Iran Update | No Responses »
Tags: Ahmadinejad, America, Basij, China, Hezbollah, IAEA, Iran, Iranian nuclear program, Islam, Israel, Jihad, Khamenei, Revolutionary Guards, Russia, Sanctions, Suicide bomber, Terror Plot, Terrorism, UN, War

Iran Begins Talks with World Powers

Wednesday, May 23rd, 2012

VOA News

May 23, 2012

Six world powers have opened talks with Iran in Baghdad with a proposal aimed at resolving international concerns about potential military dimensions to the Iranian nuclear program.

An EU spokesman said the six-nation proposal addresses the group’s concern about Iran’s enrichment of uranium to 20 percent purity.

Iran says its enrichment work is meant for medical research and generating electricity. Western nations fear Iran could quickly upgrade its uranium to the 90 percent purity needed for nuclear weapons.

EU spokesman Michael Mann gave no other details of the proposal by the six-nation group, which is led by EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton. The group includes the five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council plus Germany.

Ashton was in the Iraqi capital to represent the world powers in talks with Iran’s chief nuclear negotiator Saeed Jalili.

It is the second round of a dialogue that resumed last month in Istanbul after a break of more than a year.

Published reports say the six-nation group is reviving a 2009 proposal for Iran to ship out its stockpiles of low-enriched uranium in return for higher-enriched fuel for a medical research reactor in Tehran.

Iran is seeking pledges from the world powers to ease U.N. and Western sanctions imposed on the country for defying international demands for a suspension of enrichment.

Mann said he does not expect any “dramatic happenings” in Baghdad.

But Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said Moscow believes Iran is ready to seek an agreement with the six-nation group on concrete actions to resolve the nuclear dispute. He made the comment in Moscow.

Israel sees a nuclear-armed Iran as a threat to its existence and refuses to rule out military action against the Iranian nuclear program.

Israeli officials have urged the world powers not to compromise on their demand for a stop to Iranian enrichment work. Those officials also have expressed concern that Iran will make empty promises of concessions to buy more time to covertly develop nuclear weapons.

Iranian Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi said Wednesday that Western policies of pressure and intimidation toward Iran are futile. Speaking in Tehran, he said the West must adopt policies that show good will.

Some information for this report was provided by AP, AFP and Reuters.

Posted in Iran Update | No Responses »
Tags: Ahmadinejad, America, Basij, Hezbollah, IAEA, Iran, Iranian nuclear program, Islam, Israel, Jihad, Khamenei, Revolutionary Guards, Sanctions, Suicide bomber, Terror Plot, Terrorism, UN, War

Iran talks in Baghdad: Western naiveté

Tuesday, May 22nd, 2012

The Christian Science Monitor

As world powers head into nuclear talks with Iran in Baghdad on Wednesday, is Obama so naive as to hang on to a fake fatwa promising no nukes? With enough enriched uranium to eventually make six nuclear bombs, Tehran is simply stalling for time. Recent chronology bears this out.

By Reza Kahlili / May 22, 2012

It’s hard to overestimate the degree of naiveté on the part of the West as it heads toward another round of nuclear talks with Iran in Baghdad on Wednesday.

Clearly, Iran is stalling for time to develop a nuclear weapon. One example: In talks last month in Istanbul,Tehran seems to have convinced international negotiators of the sincerity and weight of a fatwa, or religious edict, by the Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei that a nuclear bomb is haram – forbidden – in Islam.

Last week, for instance, former French Prime Minister Michel Rocard said the fatwa will help promote confidence about Iran’s nuclear activities.

The ayatollah is not beholden to keep his word, but that doesn’t seem to be of much concern. At the Istanbul talks, the West agreed for the first time to Iran’s demand that it may enrich uranium, with restrictions – despite UN resolutions to the contrary.

The Islamic regime has continuously believed that the more its nuclear program is expanded and progress is achieved, the less likely the West will demand a halt to the program – and if Iranian leaders remain steadfast in the face of all threats, the more likely the West will eventually accept a nuclear Iran.

Recent chronology bears this out.

When President Obama took office in 2009, Iran was under several UN sanctions conditioned on its suspension of all uranium enrichment-related and reprocessing activities. At the time, Iran had 1,200 kilos of low-enriched uranium at its Natanzfacility.

Mr. Obama chose to engage the Islamic regime, believing that an extended hand would yield better results than threats. He reasoned that a new US approach would be welcomed by Tehran because it was a complete change from the Bush administration.

However, the radicals ruling Iran saw this extended hand as weakness. They engaged the Obama administration while enriching uranium beyond the benign 3.5 percent level, as it had been limited to for many years, to the 20 percent level. While that is not a high enough enrichment level for a nuclear weapon, it is high enough to get to bomb-grade very quickly – in a matter of weeks if Tehran decides to do so.

Early in 2010, Obama, realizing his defeat in the negotiation phase, moved to a sanctions phase. But instead of the crippling sanctions he had promised, he started step-by-step sanctions that Iran’s clerics saw as further proof of America’s inability to stop Iran, which emboldened them to speed up their program.

Today Iran, under further sanctions by the United Nations, United States, and European Union, has over 5.5 tons of enriched uranium – enough to eventually make six nuclear bombs. It continues to enrich uranium with more than 9,000 centrifuges at Natanz, both at the 3.5 and 20 percent levels, and at the previously secret site, the Fordow facility, deep in a mountain near the city of Qom, to the 20 percent level.

All the while Iran is expanding the number of centrifuges at both sites, with a possibility that there are more sites unknown to the West or the International Atomic Energy Agency.

This takes us to the current set of negotiations. In Instanbul, the West handed the Islamic regime a historic win. For the first time in the negotiations over Iran’s nuclear program, the West offered Iran full acceptance of its nuclear enrichment process if Iran stopped the 20-percent enrichment.

Most interesting is an Iranian analysis of Khamenei’sfatwa: “If the Obama administration realizes the importance of the place of the supreme leader in Iran and understands the fatwa, then most of their problem [with Iran’s nuclear issue] will be solved.”

The analysis ominously stated: “There will be no other guarantee beyond the fatwa to the West” – meaning that the West will only get the word of a leader whose regime has been based on lies and deceit, a leader who has ordered the slaughter of thousands of Iranians – and also Americans – in Iraq and Afghanistan, and a leader who constantly threatens the existence of Israeland the “defeat” of America.

Khamenei is not a grand ayatollah, or a marja, and therefore cannot issue a fatwa. Many in Iran’s Islamic leadership know this. He was elevated to ayatollah status overnight to replace Ruhollah Khomeini when he died in 1989. Even if a marja issues a fatwa, he can overturn it if it benefits Islam. So Khamenei’s fatwa can be tossed out at the right time.

Interestingly, the regime’s interpretation of the Quran is to deceive its enemy, i.e. the West, until such time as the regime is strong enough to confront it.

Is Obama so naive as to hang on to a fake fatwa in return for accepting a nuclear Iran?

His secretary of state, Hillary Rodham Clinton, says she has discussed the fatwa with Turkey’s prime minister, experts, and religious scholars. “If it is indeed a statement of principle, of values, then it is a starting point for being operationalized, which means that it serves as the entryway into a negotiation as to how you demonstrate that it is indeed a sincere, authentic statement of conviction,” she said last month.

According to media reports, the US is expected to push Iran to close its Fordow facility and send its stockpile of medium-enriched uranium out of the country.

Iran has ruled out the closure of Fordow, even announcing that it will increase the number of centrifuges at that facility. And so far, its strategy of expanding its nuclear program while wearing down the West has already proved successful.

It is clear that after a decade of negotiations and sanctions, the leaders of the Islamic regime will not accept a full halt to their nuclear program. But given that Iran now has the know-how to make a bomb, that is the only outcome that should be acceptable to the West.

Reza Kahlili is a pseudonym for a former CIA operative in Iran’s Revolutionary Guard and the author of the award winning book “A Time to Betray: The Astonishing Double Life of a CIA Agent Inside the Revolutionary Guards of Iran.” He teaches at the US Department of Defense’s Joint Counterintelligence Training Academy (JCITA) and is a member of the Task Force on National and Homeland Security.

Posted in Iran Update | No Responses »
Tags: Ahmadinejad, America, Hezbollah, IAEA, Iran, Iranian nuclear program, Islam, Israel, Jihad, Khamenei, Revolutionary Guards, Sanctions, Suicide bomber, Terror Plot, Terrorism, UN, War

The John Batchelor Show

Monday, May 21st, 2012

The John Batchelor Show

Discussion on the visit by the U.N. nuclear watchdog chief, Yukiya Amano, to Tehran for talks on the nuclear issue and the statement by the Islamic regime’s military chief of staff, Maj. Gen. Hassan Firouzabadi, that Iran is committed to the annihilation of Israel.

May 21, 2012

Listen Here

Posted in Radio Shows | No Responses »
Tags: Ahmadinejad, America, Basij, Hezbollah, IAEA, Iran, Iranian nuclear program, Islam, Israel, Jihad, Khamenei, Revolutionary Guards, Sanctions, Suicide bomber, Terror Plot, Terrorism, UN, War

Iran committed to ‘full annihilation of Israel,’ says top Iranian military commander

Monday, May 21st, 2012

The Daily Caller

05/21/2012

By Reza Kahlili

Iran is dedicated to annihilating Israel, the Islamic regime’s military chief of staff declared Sunday.

“The Iranian nation is standing for its cause and that is the full annihilation of Israel,” Maj. Gen. Hassan Firouzabadi said in a speech to a defense gathering Sunday in Tehran.

His remarks came on the day International Atomic Energy Agency director Yukiya Amano flew to Tehran to negotiate for inspections of Iran’s nuclear program. They were reported by the Fars News Agency, the media outlet of the Revolutionary Guards Corps.

While many within the Islamic regime, including President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, have often stated that Israel should be annihilated, until Sunday no one in the nation’s leadership has announced Iran’s determined intention to carry it out. (RELATED: Iran rattles sabers: ’11,000 missiles ready to launch’ at Israel, US targets)

Josh Block, a Middle East expert and former spokesman for the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, told The Daily Caller that it’s unwise to shrug off the threats of a top Iranian military commander.

“When they say it, they mean it,” Block said. “That is the lesson of history. We had best heed that reality. You can be sure the Israelis already understand it.”

Block is a senior fellow at the Progressive Policy Institute who worked in the Clinton administration’s State Department. He told TheDC that the U.S. should be concerned about “an Iran that could give nuclear technology to their terrorist allies, including those like Al Qaeda and Hezbollah.”

In a statement, American Jewish Committee executive director David Harris said Firouzabadi’s comments “should also put to rest, once and for all, the fanciful views of those remaining political leaders, diplomats, and journalists who contend that Iran is a ‘peaceful’ nation which has simply been ‘misunderstood’ by the global community.”

Meir Dagan, the former head of Israel’s Mossad, and U.S. chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Martin Dempsey, have both said recently that Iran is a rational actor in the international arena and that the Iranians will consider the implications of their actions.

Block also told TheDC that “the radicals and pseudo-experts at places like Plowshares, Media Matters, NIAC [the National Iranian American Council], writers for ThinkProgress, the New America Foundation and on and on” are “useful idiots and regime apologists” for Iran who continue to believe irrationally that Iran does not have the capacity to build a nuclear weapon. (RELATED: TheDC’s Jamie Weinstein: More proof Israel cannot tolerate a nuclear Iran)

They “are the same cranks,” he said, “who claim Iran has been ‘misquoted’ or ‘mistranslated’ and never called for the ‘annihilation’ of Israel. Well, I am sure they will find some way to continue their charade, but only to their further discredit.”

On Sunday, Iranian Gen. Firouzabadi also pointed to Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s emphasis on the necessity of supporting Palestinians who fight against the “Zionist regime” Israel. Khamenei considers defending Israel’s enemies a religious duty.

The Fars News Agency quoted earlier statements by Khamenei that Iran was directly involved with helping Hezbollah and Hamas during Lebanon’s 33-day war in 2006 and the 22-day Gaza war of 2008-09, which he proclaimed were stinging defeats for Israel.

“In the future too, we will support and help everyone who opposes the Zionist regime,” Khamenei said in February. “The Zionist regime is a real cancerous tumor that should be cut and will be cut, God willing.”

The mullahs leading Iran’s Islamic regime believe in the messianic return of the 12th and last Islamic messiah, Imam Mahdi. According to Shiite belief, Mahdi will reappear at the time of Armageddon, and his coming — as the Iranian documentary “The Coming Is Upon Us” revealed – will be triggered by the destruction of Israel.

In a recent statement, Grand Ayatollah Jafar Sobhani, a religious authority and a top Iranian “Twelver Shia” — one who believes in the 12th Imam — addressed the future world described in the Quran. “The Quran is the proof that the world will be controlled and managed by the forces of truth and that there will be one government ruling everyone throughout the world,” he explained.

The Quran promises — twice — the worldwide rule of Islam and its victory over all other religions, Sobhani said, and this will only happen when the last descendant of Muhammad, Imam Mahdi, returns and takes the rule of Islam across the world.

Ayatollah Khamenei referred to this prophecy in a recent speech. “In light of the realization of the divine promise by almighty God,” he said, “the Zionists and the Great Satan [America] will soon be defeated. Allah’s promise will be delivered, and Islam will be victorious.”

In February, conservative Muslims writing on a website tied to Khamenei told their followers that the Quran’s promises were “a ‘jurisprudential justification’ to kill all the Jews and annihilate Israel, and in that, the Islamic government of Iran must take the helm.”

Additional reporting contributed by David Martosko

Reza Kahlili is a pseudonym for a former CIA operative in Iran’s Revolutionary Guard and the author of the award winning book ”A Time to Betray.” He teaches at the U.S. Department of Defense’s Joint Counterintelligence Training Academy (JCITA) and is a member of the Task Force on National and Homeland Security.

Posted in Iran Update | No Responses »
Tags: Ahmadinejad, Basij, Hezbollah, IAEA, Iran, Iranian nuclear program, Islam, Israel, Jihad, Khamenei, Revolutionary Guards, Sanctions, Suicide bomber, Terror Plot, Terrorism, UN, War

General: Allies on ‘best path’ with Iran

Saturday, May 19th, 2012

05/19/2012

Joint Chiefs chairman says global cooperation is needed

By Wailin Wong, Chicago Tribune reporter

The United States is ready to respond to an escalation in tensions with Iran but will continue working with its allies on an approach that includes military preparedness and economic sanctions, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff told the Tribune on Friday.

Speaking to the Tribune editorial board ahead of theNATO summit in Chicago, Army Gen. Martin Dempsey said he believes “the path we’re currently on with Iran is the best path.”

The U.S. and European Union have imposed sanctions on Iran’s central bank and oil industry over the country’s nuclear program, which Iran says is for civilian purposes. The U.S. says it is a cover for developing the capability to build atomic bombs.

Global cooperation needs to be “evident in the way we approach the diplomatic piece” of the Iran relationship, Dempsey said. Iran and six countries, including the U.S., are scheduled to hold nuclear talks this week in Baghdad.

“If the president were to ask me what we could do to respond to an Iranian provocation, I would have a menu of options,” Dempsey said. He added: “Our stance, if you will, is one of preparedness and deterrence. It’s not a stance that’s based on offensive action.”

On the subject of Afghanistan, expected to be a major focus for the world leaders convening in Chicago, Dempsey said he expects discussion on how the alliance will meet the objectives laid out at the NATO summit in Lisbon in 2010. A key target is for local Afghan forces to take responsibility for security by the end of 2014.

French President Francois Hollande, who took office Tuesday, campaigned on an early pullout from Afghanistan and reiterated Friday in a visit to the White House that he will withdraw French combat troops by the end of the year.

The timeline is a “28-nation issue, not a U.S.-France issue,” Dempsey said when asked about Hollande’s stance. “I’m sure it will be part of the conversations this week.”

NATO partners also will discuss plans to build Afghan security forces to 352,000 members by the end of the year, Dempsey said. He acknowledged difficulty in reconciling disparate views of the local forces’ readiness by military commanders on the ground and intelligence groups, but his own assessment was optimistic.

“Based on my observations, I am incredibly confident in the Afghan security forces to maintain security locally,” Dempsey said.

Among NATO members, one challenge military leaders will address this weekend is how to adapt strategy to a tighter fiscal environment, he said. Declining financial and military resources could pose a risk to NATO’s “ability to project power beyond the borders of Europe,” Dempsey said.

And within Europe, he said, he continues to back a missile defense system. This plan has strained relations with Russia.

“I think it’s very important,” Dempsey said of the system. “Missile defense shields are important so we’re not dragged into conflict on someone else’s terms.”

Iran drills first large-scale paratroop drops for offensive action

Saturday, May 19th, 2012

DEBKAfile Special Report May 16, 2012

Special operations units of the Iranian army and Revolutionary Guards (IRGC) Tuesday, May 14, began a two-day practice of offensive tactics, for the first time dropping large-scale forces from the air deep behind enemy lines. The many war games Iran has conducted until now focused on defenses of strategic and nuclear locations and repelling invaders. This drill displayed its aggressive capabilities. Codenamed Ja’far Tayyar, it was staged in remote Khorasan near the Afghan border, so as not to expose the commando tactics it employed.

In announcing the exercise, Gholam-Ali Gholamian, Dep. Commander for Operations for the IRGC Ground Forces, cagily called it another routine exercise for “maintaining the preparedness and promoting the combat capability of units stationed in the region.”

DEBKAfile’s military sources disclose that there was nothing routine about it. The units taking part were not stationed in the region but flown in especially.

Western intelligence sources observing the exercise report that its offensive nature was evident: Air transports coming in from the rest of the country dropped large numbers of paratroopers and special forces; Air Force fighter-bombers practiced intense bombardments of small targeted locations; and helicopters drilled rapid transfers of forces between points and air cover for the units reaching the ground.

Monday, the Persian Gulf rulers invited to Riyadh by Saudi King Abdullah for a summit on the Iranian threat dwelt long and hard on the exercise and concluded the threat had been exacerbated and that Tehran had more in store for them than closing the Strait of Hormuz to oil traffic in the event of war. They saw special forces being prepared by Iran to strike deep inside their countries up to and including their oil-producing regions.

The exercise also served the ongoing trade of war signals between Washington and Tehran. Staging a special forces exercise not far from the US military presence in Afghanistan was meant as a rejoinder to US-led special forces maneuver taking place in Jordan across the border with Syria with the participation of 17 nations.

Iranian and Syrian media made much of the fact that the US-led war game was named Eager Lion 12 as a deliberate insult to Bashar Assad, whose name is the Arabic for Lion.

Iran attack decision nears, Israeli elite locks down

Friday, May 18th, 2012

Yahoo News

05/17/2012

By Michael Stott | Reuters

JERUSALEM (Reuters) – A private door opens from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office in central Jerusalem directly into a long, modestly furnished, half-paneled room decorated with modern paintings by Israeli artists and a copy of Israel’s 1948 declaration of independence. It contains little more than a long wooden table, brown leather chairs and a single old-fashioned white projector screen.

This inner sanctum at the end of a corridor between Netanyahu’s private room and the office of his top military adviser, is where one of the decade’s most momentous military decisions could soon be taken: to launch an Israeli attack on Iran’s nuclear program.

Time for that decision is fast running out and the mood in Jerusalem is hardening.

Iran continues to enrich uranium in defiance of international pressure, saying it needs the fuel for its civilian nuclear program. The West is convinced that Tehran’s real objective is to build an atomic bomb – something which the Jewish state will never accept because its leaders consider a nuclear armed-Iran a threat to its very existence.

Adding to the international pressure, U.S. ambassador to Israel Daniel Shapiro said this week American military plans to strike Iran were “ready” and the option was “fully available”.

The central role Iran plays in Netanyahu’s deliberations is reflected in the huge map of the Middle East hanging by the door of his office. Israel lies on one edge, with Iran taking pride of place in the centre.

Experts say that within a few months, much of Iran’s nuclear program will have been moved deep underground beneath the Fordow mountain, making a successful military strike much more difficult.

LOCKDOWN

As the deadline for a decision draws nearer, the public pronouncements of Israel’s top officials and military have changed. After hawkish warnings about a possible strike earlier this year, their language of late has been more guarded and clues to their intentions more difficult to discern.

“The top of the government has gone into lockdown,” one official said. “Nobody is saying anything publicly. That in itself tells you a lot about where things stand.”

Last week Netanyahu pulled off a spectacular political surprise, creating a coalition of national unity and delaying elections which everyone believed were inevitable. The maneuver also led to speculation that the Israeli leader wanted a broad, strong government to lead a military campaign.

The inclusion of the Iranian-born former Israeli chief of staff and veteran soldier, Gen. Shaul Mofaz, in the coalition, fuelled that speculation – even though both Mofaz and Netanyahu deny that Iran was mentioned in the coalition negotiations.

“I think they have made a decision to attack,” said one senior Israeli figure with close ties to the leadership. “It is going to happen. The window of opportunity is before the U.S. presidential election in November. This way they will bounce the Americans into supporting them.”

Those close to Netanyahu are more cautious, saying no assumptions should be made about an attack on Iran – an attack with such potentially devastating consequences across the volatile Middle East that Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas even went so far as to predict in an interview with Reuters last week that it would be “the end of the world”.

Israelis particularly fear retaliation from Iran’s proxy militias – the Hezbollah guerrillas in southern Lebanon and the Hamas fighters in the Gaza Strip. Both are believed to possess large arsenals of rockets which could hit major Israeli towns and cities.

Hezbollah’s deputy leader Sheikh Naim Qassem told Reuters in February that an Israeli attack on Iran would set the whole Middle East ablaze “with no limit to the fires”. “Gone are the days when Israel decides to strike, and the people are silent,” he said.

The Israeli Prime Minister and his key allies repeat for public consumption the mantra that economic sanctions against Iran must be given time to work and that now is not the time to speak about military options.

Top officials explain the new coalition on purely domestic grounds, saying it was needed to tackle the thorny and divisive issue of pressing Orthodox Jews into military service – in other words, that its formation has much more to do with the agenda inside Israel than abroad.

BURIED NUCLEAR STATES

Diplomats are divided. “I think the Iran thing is a red herring,” said one senior Western envoy. “This is 98 percent about domestic politics”. Others are less convinced.

Mofaz himself refuses to speak about military action against Iran, even in the theoretical.

A military veteran with almost 40 years’ operational experience, whose office in the Israeli parliament displays a poster of Israeli warplanes flying low over the Auschwitz concentration camp, he scoffs at the idea that his Iranian descent gives him special influence on an Iran attack decision. He derides the idea any serious official in the know would talk to visiting journalists about such a sensitive military subject.

But behind the carefully evasive language of top officials, basic facts are clear. Time is running out. Iran’s nuclear program – regarded by Netanyahu as an existential threat to the state of Israel – will soon be buried deep enough underground to render an Israeli attack impossible. The Jewish state’s options are narrowing.

“I think they’ve gone into lockdown mode now,” the senior Western diplomat said. “Whatever happens next, whatever they decide, we will not find out until it happens.”

There are indeed those who see in Israeli posturing over Iran only bluff intended to press world powers into harsher sanctions and avoid war. Some military experts openly doubt how much damage Israel could inflict. The risk of a fiasco is big.

Perhaps the strongest clue as to Israel’s real intentions is to be found in Netanyahu’s private office, behind his desk. Officials say the Israeli premier was strongly influenced by his father, who died last month at the age of 102.

Benzion Netanyahu was a distinguished scholar of Jewish history and his strong sense of the past lives on in Benjamin, who laments to visitors that “most people’s sense of history goes back to breakfast time”.

On a shelf behind Netanyahu’s desk, along with pictures of his family, is a photograph of Winston Churchill. Netanyahu admires the British wartime premier because he saw the true dangers posed by Nazi Germany to the world at a time when many other politicians argued for appeasing Hitler.

The parallels with modern-day Iran are obvious and Netanyahu is explicit about the dangers he believes are posed by militant Islam: as he puts it, its convulsive power, its cult of death and its ideological zeal.

But Churchill, although eloquent on the dangers posed by the rise of Nazi Germany during the 1930s, ultimately failed to prevent Hitler’s ascent to power, the world war he unleashed or the Holocaust in which six million Jews were murdered.

Netanyahu, those who know him say, is determined to avoid going down in history as the man who shirked his opportunity to stop Iran going nuclear. (Additional reporting by Samia Nakhoul and Crispian Balmer; editing by Ralph Boulton)

(Created by Michael Stott)

Israel Is Using American Stealth Choppers To Ferry Iranian Spies Into Iraq

Tuesday, May 15th, 2012

businessinsider.com

F. Michael Maloof, G2 Bulletin | May 15, 2012, 9:35 AM

Israel is using bases in the Sunni Kurdish portion of northern Iraq to launch missions inside Shi’ite Iran to gather intelligence on the Islamic republic’s nuclear program, according to a number of informed sources.

With the help of recruited Iranian dissidents in Kurdistan, the Israelis are attempting to gather sufficient information to convince the United States and the United Nations that Iran is involved in using its nuclear development program to make nuclear weapons.

Iraq’s Kurdistan Regional Government officially has denied claims by Iranian officials regarding the missions. But various reports including a recent Times of London report suggest that Israel is using specially modified U.S.-supplied Black Hawk helicopters to carry 12-member armed teams with sensitive equipment to monitor radioactivity and the magnitude of explosives tests. The helicopters may be similar to the specially modified stealth Black Hawks which were used in the May 2011 assassination of al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden by U.S. Navy SEALS in Abbottabad, Pakistan.

One of those specially-modified helicopters crashed and was only partially destroyed, giving the Pakistanis access to the stealth technology which then was passed on to China, Iran and Russia, according to informed sources. In undertaking missions inside Iran, sources suggest that the commandos are dressed as members of the Iranian military and use Iranian military vehicles.

In separate activities, the Israelis also may be teaming up with members of the Mujahadeen-e-Khalq, or MEK, who use northern Iraq as a safe haven against Iran when they launch their own attacks. The MEK, which is a group comprised of militant anti-government Iranians, also has been implicated in working with the Israelis to assassinate Iranian nuclear scientists. Separately, Middle East expert David Wurmser, who worked at the Department of Defense, State Department and for former Vice President Dick Cheney during the administration of President George Bush, told the open source intelligence service Lignet that despite Israel’s new coalition government of Likud and Kadima parties, the chances of an Israeli strike remains high, and perhaps more so, since there is a developing consensus among various political parties in the country to back Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu should he decide to launch an attack.

Wurmser, who has been an adviser to the Israeli government and has close personal ties with Netanyahu, sees such an attack occurring once the Israelis are convinced that their operational capability to undertake such an attack will result in minimal losses. He expects an attack by the end of this summer. “The Israelis, having little faith that diplomacy at the end of the day will end Iran’s nuclear program and losing faith that (U.S.) President (Barack) Obama will do something to end the program, they will wait only as long as their military options remain viable,” Wurmser said.

The key to a decision, Wurmser said, will be whether the scheduled May 23 discussions in Baghdad between Western countries and Iran will produce concrete results. The Israelis, he said, are showing a “nervousness” about prospects for multilateral talks with Iran and do not want an outcome that only drags out negotiations beyond Israel’s window to strike. He pointed out that representatives of the new Netanyahu government, including the Likud and Kadima parties, now give Netanyahu a substantial majority in the Knesset. They met in Jerusalem last week with European Union foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton and expressed “broad concern across political parties in Israel” about Iran’s “nuclear weapons program.”

There are separate concerns among analysts that with Israelis attempting to search for a “smoking gun” regarding Iran’s alleged nuclear weapons program, there is the prospect that such evidence can be fabricated and used to launch a pre-emptive strike, as was seen in the so-called intelligence on Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction program. Reached for comment, an Iranian official told G2Bulletin that if the Israelis want to launch an attack, “they should do so and get it over with. The Zionists (Israelis) are acting like people who want to commit suicide.”

Iran to execute ‘Mossad spy’ on Tuesday

Monday, May 14th, 2012

timesofisrael.com

Press TV reports that 13 others convicted of spying for Israel

By ASHER ZEIGER May 13, 2012

Majid Jamali Fashi, who was accused by Iran of being an Israeli spy and convicted of the 2010 killing of nuclear scientist Massoud ali-Mohammadi, is to be executed in Tehran on Tuesday, according to media reports.In addition to the murder charge, Fashi, who was arrested in January 2011, was also convicted of visiting Israel, where he allegedly received instruction and training from the Mossad as well as $120,000 for the assassination of Mohammadi.

In a video interview aired in Iran in January 2011, Fashi confessed to the Mossad connection and the killing. He also claimed he only received half of what the Mossad had promised to pay him. He was tried and convicted in Tehran in August 2011.

Mohammadi was killed on January 12, 2010 by a booby-trapped motorcycle that exploded near his Tehran home.

Iranian state-owned Press TV reported on Sunday that a court had convicted 13 other people accused of spying for Israel. According to Press TV, the defendants were lured into spying for the Mossad by overseas-based satellite television networks and clever advertising campaigns, and they accepted large sums of money from Mossad and CIA agents.

Iranian defectors: Khamenei said anti-nuke ‘fatwa’ won’t matter

Monday, May 14th, 2012

The Daily Caller

05/14/2012

By Reza Kahlili

A group of defectors from Iran has cautioned that Iranian authorities believe the West has been lulled into a false sense of security by a fatwa — a pronouncement of Muslim law — by Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who has said that a “nuclear bomb is a sin in Islam.” It is based on a lie, they warned, despite the Obama administration’s apparent reliance on this declaration to guide its foreign policy.

According to the Green Embassy Campaign, a collection of former Iranian diplomats who have sought political asylum abroad, Khamenei recently told an important meeting of his regime’s security and intelligence officials that his fatwa will not restrict Shiite Muslims in Iran from pursuing and building a nuclear weapon. The campaign is tied to the Green Movement in Iran, which opposes Khamenei’s reign and favors free elections.

“While God is with us and has forced Russia and China on our side, America cannot do anything,” they reported that Khamenei told the officials. “The fatwa which I gave years ago that a nuclear bomb is haram, a sin, has now become a statement of fact for the West, and because of their own needs and fears of Israel, they are emphasizing that statement.”

“However,” Khamenei continued, “the Imam’s hidden soldiers, based on their religious obligation under Shiite Islam, will continue in total secrecy and in other locations to attain the most advanced arms to defend the regime.”

The Iranian regime often refers to those who work in total secrecy as “The hidden Imam soldiers,” including intelligence agents, scientists and others busy advancing the goals of the regime and protecting it militarily. The “Imam” refers to the promised final Islamic Messiah, the Shiites’ 12th Imam Mahdi, who Shiites believe will return to Earth when Armageddon begins.

The Green Embassy report indicated that Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and his associates were not present at the meeting because Khamenei suspected they might leak information to the outside.

The Obama administration signaled last month that Khamenei’s fatwa prohibiting nuclear weapons under Islam could — and should — be used as a lever when talks with Iran continue in Baghdad. Days later, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton again raised the fatwa during a NATO conference in Norfolk, Va., as a launching point for guiding U.S. policy.

Clinton remarked on “the repetition by the supreme leader, the Ayatollah Khamenei, that he had issued a fatwa against nuclear weapons, against weapons of mass destruction.”

“[Turkish] Prime Minister Erdogan and I discussed this at some length,” she said, ”and I’ve discussed it with a number of experts and religious scholars. And if it is indeed a statement of principle, of values, then it is a starting point for being operationalized, which means that it serves as the entryway into a negotiation as to how you demonstrate that it is indeed a sincere, authentic statement of conviction.”

The anti-nuclear-weapon fatwa itself was called into question by an April 19 report from the Washington, D.C.-based Middle East Media Research Institute that concluded it does not exist. “No such fatwa ever existed or was ever published,” the organization wrote, “and … media reports about it are nothing more than a propaganda ruse on the part of the Iranian regime apparatuses.”

Even if the fatwa does exist, some commentators have derided the U.S. government for relying on it.

“Our allies, even in the Muslim world, wonder why the Obama Administration would bother taking seriously a fatwa from a state sponsor of terror,” Weekly Standard senior editor Lee Smith wrote on April 25. “After all, the regime has issued numerous outrageous fatwas, including one that opined on the permissibility of sex with chickens, and another that called for the head of novelist Salman Rushdie.”

Meanwhile, new arguments have surfaced to support the contention that Iran is pursuing its nuclear-arms ambitions while cajoling the West that it has no such aims.

According to a report from the Mujahedin-e Khalq (MEK) Iranian opposition group, obtained Friday by newspapers in Europe and Israel, Iran is accelerating its nuclear bomb program.

The expansive report reveals that Iranian scientists at a facility near Tehran called the Center for Explosives, Blast Research and Technologies are engaged in building high explosives for nuclear detonators. It also details Iran’s extensive activities aimed at building nuclear warheads.

And late on Sunday the Associated Press published a lengthy analysis of a computer-generated drawing, provided by an official of an unnamed nation, that shows an explosives containment chamber allegedly inside Iran — the type of chamber required for nuclear arms-related testing.

U.N. inspectors suspect Iran has conducted that specific kind of testing, although the Islamic republic has denied it.

The drawing, the AP reported, was based on information related by an informant who saw the weapons-testing chamber at the Parchin military site near Tehran.