Is IRAN Next For The US Military ???

[pittspilot]

Back on topic: As I said before, Iran as informed the IAEA that they are going to resume enriching uranium, and that the IAEA needs to take the steps to put monitors in place to observe the enrichment activities. All these actions are the steps that are supposed to happen under the NPT. Iran is playing by the rules they agreed to, and rules the U.S. stated it would respect and observe. If the U.S. feels it is no longer bound by the NPT, why should any OTHER nation feel bound by it?

As for Iran's supposed Nuclear Weapons program, where is it? What evidence is there of such, other than the assertions coming out of the Bush Administration?

You see the trouble is that while you buy the English version, I watch what the Iranian government says within its borders

Example (http://memritv.org/search.asp?ACT=S9&P1=805)

Was this guy just saying this for a laugh?

The simple fact is that Iran is going for nuclear weapons. They have zero reason for peaceful nuclear power. Why would they with the natural gas reserves they have? Natural gas is a much cleaner, cheaper and more efficient energy source then nuclear.

And look at this from the Iranian point of view. They have the Yanks next door. The Americans wacked Saddam in a little over a month, something they never were able to pull off, while suffering horrendous casualties on their side. The Mullahs surely do not want a ????e majoritarian democracy right next to them, considering the unhappiness of their population. The only way to grab power back is to become nuclear capable. It makes complete sense.

And so does the manner in which they are going about it. They need time. So they are getting it by negotiating with the Europeans who have no other choice but to negotiate since they do not have a military option.

Iran is a hellish problem. There is no way that the Israeli's can tolerate a nuclear Iran. One of the most powerful politicians in Iran was recently publicly speculating that wacking the Jewish nation was well worth a few hundred thousand muslim casualties. That kind of talk makes me nervous. But what can the Israeli's do?

We choose to ignore this problem when it first became plainly apparent in 1979. They kicked us in the shins in Beiruit, and have done some other crappy stuff. We choose to ignore the threat, and now it has become such a problem that there is a stiff price to pay to fix the problem.

 

[Sindawe]

Very interesting. However, the video clips and transcripts there are excerpts, NOT the entirety of the broadcast. That makes it rather difficult to make an objective determination of intent of Mr. Musavian's in his statements. I'd like to see the ENTIRE transcript.

I did some digging on MEMRI, and found the following:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/elsewhere/journalist/story/0,7792,773258,00.html

Evidence from Memri's website also casts doubt on its non-partisan status. Besides supporting liberal democracy, civil society, and the free market, the institute also emphasises "the continuing relevance of Zionism to the Jewish people and to the state of Israel". I'm still looking for that one - Sin

That is what its website used to say, but the words about Zionism have now been deleted. The original page, however, can still be found in internet archives.

The reason for Memri's air of secrecy becomes clearer when we look at the people behind it. The co-founder and president of Memri, and the registered owner of its website, is an Israeli called Yigal Carmon.

Mr - or rather, Colonel - Carmon spent 22 years in Israeli military intelligence and later served as counter-terrorism adviser to two Israeli prime ministers, Yitzhak Shamir and Yitzhak Rabin.

Retrieving another now-deleted page from the archives of Memri's website also throws up a list of its staff. Of the six people named, three - including Col Carmon - are described as having worked for Israeli intelligence.

Relevant to Col Carmon, there is this....

http://www.antiwar.com/cole/?articleid=4047

I just checked my campus mail and found a letter in it from Colonel Yigal Carmon, late of Israeli military intelligence, now an official at the Middle East Media Research Organization, or MEMRI. He threatened me with a lawsuit over blog comments I made at Informed Comment. This technique of the SLAPP, or Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation, has already been pioneered by polluting industries against environmental activists, and now the pro-Likud lobby in the U.S. has apparently decided to try it out against people like me.

Attempting to stiffle dissenting opion via the threat of a lawsuit is not really "cricket", now is it? 'Specially when that one's organization's state aim is to..

The Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI) explores the Middle East through the region's media. MEMRI bridges the language gap which exists between the West and the Middle East, providing timely translations of Arabic, Farsi, and Hebrew media, as well as original analysis of political, ideological, intellectual, social, cultural, and religious trends in the Middle East.

Founded in February 1998 to inform the debate over U.S. policy in the Middle East, MEMRI is an independent, nonpartisan, nonprofit, 501 (c)3 organization. MEMRI's headquarters is located in Washington, DC with branch offices in Berlin, London, and Jerusalem, where MEMRI also maintains its Media Center. MEMRI research is translated to English, German, Hebrew, Italian, French, Spanish, Turkish, and Russian.

Source: http://www.memri.org/aboutus.html

But thanks for the link to MEMRI, it is always good to have more than one perspective on world issues.

 

[DRZinn]

It'll make the point that you're a deranged lunatic, man oh man you should imagine what the news footage of you would look like, helicopters circling you, police on megaphones shouting, you being roughly handled for the "perp walk" as you're taken away for violating airspace or disturbing the peace or whatever. Fk maybe they charge you with terrorism, you tried to alter American policy through promoting fear, right? I read the new definition of terrorism, and that's one of the descriptions.

Unbunch your panties, joe, and pay attention. A hot-air balloon is a perfectly normal thing. No-one would even notice. No-one would even know it had been done until the videotape surfaced.

 

[pittspilot]

I notice that you completely duck my other points trying to attack the character of the Memri site.

Classical Ad Hominem.

Try to address the points in my argument.

 

[Sindawe]

Was this guy just saying this for a laugh?

Not possible to make an objective determination with quotes taken out of context.

The simple fact is that Iran is going for nuclear weapons.

What evidence is there of this aside from the quotes from MEMRI and Iran's activities that are in line with the NPT?

They have zero reason for peaceful nuclear power.

How about a source of electrical power that does not burn up a commodity that the West greatly needs, values and will pay top Dollar/Euro for?

And so does the manner in which they are going about it. They need time. So they are getting it by negotiating with the Europeans who have no other choice but to negotiate since they do not have a military option

Again, they are negotiating to preserve the right to peacefull, self sufficient nuclear uses which they are entitled to.

One of the most powerful politicians in Iran was recently publicly speculating that wacking the Jewish nation was well worth a few hundred thousand muslim casualties.

Citation? Not that I doubt that some hothead has said such, but then all nation have hotheads.

Show me some concrete evidence that Iran is working to build nuclear weapons in violation of the NPT, and I'll have no problem with sanctions from the IAEA, the UN and the rest of the planet. Wild theories from an administration that has shown itself to be untrustworthy (where are the WMD that Iraq supposedly had?) and more than willing to ignore its charter to serve the ends of a few, do not suffice. The IAEA (the folks in charge of verifying adherence to the NPT) have found no evidence of such. http://www.cnn.com/2004/WORLD/meast/09/01/iran.nuclear/