tagged w/ persian
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Persepolis (Old Persian Pârsa, modern Takht-e Jamshid): Greek name of one of the capitals of the ancient Achaemenid empire, founded by the great king Darius (522-486 BCE). There were several satellite sites, like Naqš-i Rustam and Takht-e Rostam.
There are some indications that the site of Persepolis was already a government's center under Cyrus the Great (559-530) and his son Cambyses II (530-522), but there are no archaeological traces of this older phase. However this may be, it seems as if Darius 'invented' Persepolis as the splendid seat of the government of the Achaemenid empire and as its center for receptions and festivals. The wealth of Persia was to be visible in every aspect of its construction. Persepolis was a showcasePersepolis (Old Persian Pârsa, modern Takht-e Jamshid): Greek name of one of the... more
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By ALI AKBAR DAREINI, Associated Press Writer – 7 mins ago
TEHRAN, Iran – Security forces and militiamen clashed with thousands of protesters shouting "death to the dictator" outside Tehran University on Monday, beating them with batons and firing tear gas on a day of nationwide student demonstrations, witnesses said.
The protests were the largest in months, as university students — a bedrock of support for the pro-reform movement — sought to energize the opposition with rallies at campuses across the country. The opposition has been reeling under a fierce crackdown since turmoil erupted over the disputed presidential election in June.
Thousands of riot police, Revolutionary Guard forces and pro-government Basij militiamen flooded the area around Tehran University since the morning, vowing to prevent any unrest from spilling out into the streets.
Banners and signs bearing slogans from Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei blanketed the tall campus fence, hiding whatever took place inside. Cell phone networks around the universities were shut down, and police and members of the elite Revolutionary Guard surrounded all the university entrances and were checking IDs of anyone entering to prevent opposition activists from joining the students, witnesses said.
The heavy clampdown raised fears of an escalation of violence during Monday's clashes.
"There's anxiety that there will be violence and shooting. I shout slogans and demonstrate but try not to provoke any clash with the security," one Tehran University student, Kouhyar Goudarzi, told The Associated Press in Beirut by telephone. "We are worried."
Clashes erupted when thousands of protesters massed in the streets outside Tehran in support of the students. As they chanted "death to the dictator," riot police fired tear gas and Basij militiamen charged the crowds, the witnesses said.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20091207/ap_on_re_mi_ea/ml_iranBy ALI AKBAR DAREINI, Associated Press Writer – 7 mins ago
TEHRAN, Iran... more
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"Reality" is Kaye-Ree´s second single off her album "Endless Melody", produced by Andrew Meyer & Kaye-Ree for Reevolution Music 2009.
Kaye-Ree writes her own lyrics and works together with WEGOTSOUL Producer DJ Opossum. Her composing partner is Felix Justen and Production Team of Noizmakers Ent.
If you would like to see and hear more about this artist, please visit:
www.kaye-ree.com
www.myspace.com/kayeree"Reality" is Kaye-Ree´s second single off her album "Endless... more
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The global Muslim population stands at 1.57 billion, meaning that nearly 1 in 4 people in the world practice Islam, according to a report Wednesday billed as the most comprehensive of its kind.
The Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life report provides a precise number for a population whose size has long has been subject to guesswork, with estimates ranging anywhere from 1 billion to 1.8 billion.
The project, three years in the making, also presents a portrait of the Muslim world that might surprise some. For instance, Germany has more Muslims than Lebanon, China has more Muslims than Syria, Russia has more Muslims than Jordan and Libya combined, and Ethiopia has nearly as many Muslims as Afghanistan.
"This whole idea that Muslims are Arabs and Arabs are Muslims is really just obliterated by this report," said Amaney Jamal, an assistant professor of politics at Princeton University who reviewed an advance copy.
Pew officials call the report the most thorough on the size and distribution of adherents of the world's second largest religion behind Christianity, which has an estimated 2.1 billion to 2.2 billion followers...The global Muslim population stands at 1.57 billion, meaning that nearly 1 in 4 people... more
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The Iran Attack Plan
By ANTHONY H. CORDESMAN
When the Israeli army's then-Deputy Chief of Staff Dan Halutz was asked in 2004 how far Israel would go to stop Iran's nuclear program, he replied: "2,000 kilometers," roughly the distance been the two countries.
Israel's political and military leaders have long made it clear that they are considering taking decisive military action if Iran continues to develop its nuclear program. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu warned at the United Nations this week that "the most urgent challenge facing this body is to prevent the tyrants of Tehran from acquiring nuclear weapons."
Reporting by the International Atomic Energy Agency and other sources has made it clear that whether or not Iran ties all of its efforts into a formal nuclear weapons program, it has acquired all of the elements necessary to make and deliver such weapons. Just Friday, Iran confirmed that it has been developing a second uranium-enrichment facility on a military base near Qom, doing little to dispel the long-standing concerns of Britain, China, France, Germany, Russia, and the U.S. that Iran is developing nuclear weapons.
Bryan Christie
Iran has acquired North Korean and other nuclear weapons design data through sources like the sales network once led by the former head of Pakistan's nuclear program, A. Q. Khan. Iran has all of the technology and production and manufacturing capabilities needed for fission weapons. It has acquired the technology to make the explosives needed for a gun or implosion device, the triggering components, and the neutron initiator and reflectors. It has experimented with machine uranium and plutonium processing. It has put massive resources into a medium-range missile program that has the range payload to carry nuclear weapons and that makes no sense with conventional warheads. It has also worked on nuclear weapons designs for missile warheads. These capabilities are dispersed in many facilities in many cities and remote areas, and often into many buildings in each facility—each of which would have to be a target in an Israeli military strike.
It is far from certain that such action would be met with success.The Iran Attack Plan
By ANTHONY H. CORDESMAN
When the Israeli army's... more
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Michael Muhammad Knight's 2003 novel, The Taqwacores, imagined punk rockers who practiced Islam on their own terms. At the time he was writing, Knight, a convert to Islam, had grown disillusioned with his faith.
The word taqwacorewas made up, a portmanteau of the Arabic word for "God-consciousness" and hardcore. The novel sold more than 15,000 copies worldwide. It made its way to Texas, where a teenager of Persian descent — Kourosh Poursalehi — read the book and thought the characters were real.
"It came together for me like, 'Wow — I'm not the only one experiencing this,'" Poursalehi says. "There are other kids out there into all this kind of music."Michael Muhammad Knight's 2003 novel, The Taqwacores, imagined punk rockers who... more
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Keep quiet under all circumstances, the circular advises those planning to march in Thursday's unauthorized demonstrations in Iran cities.
"The heaviest weapon to carry is one rose in the hand," it says.
As Iranians prepare for what could be another violent day of confrontations Thursday between demonstrators and security forces, including pro-government plainclothes Basiji militias, supporters of opposition candidate Mir-Hossein Mousavi have distributed instructions to try to keep any anticipated violence to a minimum.
One video making its way around the Internet shows demonstrators how to make devices to disable the motorcycles used by truncheon-wielding Basiji and Ansar-e-Hezbollah militiamen.
The marches, which are taking place amid continued political discord over the June 12 election of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, are meant to mark the 10-year anniversary of the storming of Tehran University dormitories by pro-government militias and subsequent weeks of unrest.
The circular urges marchers to avoid wearing the green that has become the official color of the Mousavi campaign or "flashy make-up" in order to demonstrate the marchers' serious intent.
It suggests demonstrators leave cellphones and jewelry at home and carry only an identification card and relatives' phone numbers.
If protesters decide it's too risky to take part in the rally, the circular advises them to walk or drive around in their own neighborhoods, flashing the "victory" sign with their fingers.
"Bear in mind the most important point is to walk to the destination and not follow the exact path," the message advises. "Wherever you see the anti-riot police or militia ... hindering you ... change your path ... the goal is to keep on going."
-- Los Angeles TimesKeep quiet under all circumstances, the circular advises those planning to march in... more
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By MUHAMMAD SAHIMI in Los Angeles | 5 July 2009
[TEHRAN BUREAU] Elections in Iran, whether presidential, parliamentary, or even for city councils, are always preceded by great debates over a simple issue: to vote or not to vote. The typical turnout in Iranian elections is around 60% of eligible voters. Turnout has never exceeded 85%, which was attained in the presidential election of June 12, 2009. (One exception is the April 1979 referendum right after the revolution, which holds the record for turnout. Iranians were asked to cast a vote either in favor of the continuation of the monarchy or an Islamic Republic, which was not defined.) So, the vote-or-not debates are generally aimed at encouraging or discouraging the 20% of eligible voters who decide to vote on certain occasions (as they did last month, and also in 1997 and 2001, the two times in which Mohammad Khatami was elected president).
Iran’s presidential election of June 12 was no different. But that debate in Iran was practically settled as soon as Khatami announced several months ago that he would run for president. Huge crowds greeted him everywhere he went. After Khatami announced that he would withdraw in favor of Mir Hossein Mousavi and threw his support behind him, the same huge crowds began greeting Mousavi, which gave rise to the Green Movement. A great majority of Iranians came to reason that by voting they could remove Mahmoud Ahmadinejad from the presidency, and hence create a possibility for a better future.
The situation was different outside Iran. A part of the exiled opposition (if they can be called such), which included hard-core royalists, supporters of the Mojahedin-e Khalgh, and a group of politicians and journalists who emigrated from Iran in the past few years, called for boycotting the election. Given that the MEK is nothing more than a terrorist cult, I will not discuss them any further. The royalists, who are after regime change in Iran, and others, who were vehemently opposed to voting, argued, as they always do, that elections in Iran are not meaningful, and that it does not matter whether the people vote or not. But after the surge in the popularity of Mousavi, they mostly fell silent.
Among the War Party in the United States, made up of those Republican and Democrats who favor a militaristic approach to foreign policy, the debate about Iran’s presidential election was, up to 2005, always the same. Prior to Ahmadinejad becoming Iran’s president in 2005, and particularly when Khatami was president, the neoconservatives, the War Party and others always mocked him for being powerless. On the eve of Iran’s presidential election of 2005, George W. Bush declared that in Iran power is held by “an unelected few,” meaning that elections were inconsequential. But after Ahmadinejad was elected and began using his incendiary, but inconsequential rhetoric about the Holocaust and Israel, the War Party and the Israel lobby transformed him into the most powerful man in Iran, even comparing him to Adolph Hitler.
It is well known that Iran’s president, while influential to some extent, is not the ultimate decision maker when it comes to foreign policy. But, regardless, the War Party, the neoconservatives, and the Israel lobby transformed Ahmadinejad into the most powerful man on earth, a mad man who, if he got his hands on a nuclear weapon, would not hesitate to use it against Israel. They even prayed that the U.S. would attack Iran, even though there is no evidence that Iran is interested in making nuclear weapons.
ContinuedBy MUHAMMAD SAHIMI in Los Angeles | 5 July 2009
[TEHRAN BUREAU] Elections in Iran,... more
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Persians are known for their poetry. So it is not surprising that following Iran's disputed elections, many Iranians have tweeted poetically. Meet 26-year-old Parham Baghestani, whose tweets range from the mundane to the spiritual.Persians are known for their poetry. So it is not surprising that following... more
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EXCERPTS:
Jailed Iranian reformists have been tortured in an attempt to force them into TV "confessions" of a foreign-led plot against the Islamic regime, it was allegedtoday, as the country's guardian council buried hopes for any significant revision of the disputed presidential election.
According to Iranian opposition websites, the "confessions" are aimed at implicating Mir Hossein Mousavi and Mehdi Karroubi, the defeated reformist candidates, in an alleged conspiracy.
Mostafa Tajzadeh, Abdollah Ramezanzadeh and Mohsen Aminzadeh, all Mousavi supporters, are reported to have undergone "intensive interrogation" sessions in Tehran's Evin prison since Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's disputed re-election.
They are among several hundred activists, academics, journalists and students detained in a crackdown coinciding with the brutal suppression of street protests.
Prisoners reportedly heard screams from Tajzadeh and Ramezanzadeh in Evin's section 209, which is reserved for political prisoners and is run by the hardline intelligence ministry. Aminzadeh, a former deputy foreign minister, was heard shouting: "I am not going to give interviews."
Amnesty International said the reports came from "very credible sources".
The guardian Council has declared there were no major violations in the vote, which it described as the "healthiest" since the 1979 Islamic Revolution. It had already rejected a call by Mousavi, for the election to be annulled because of suspected vote rigging.
a senior cleric, Ayatollah Ahmad Khatami, told worshippers at Tehran University: "I want the judiciary to ... punish leading rioters firmly and without showing any mercy to teach everyone a lesson." Ominously, he used the term "mohareb" – "one who wages war against God" – a crime punishable by death.
Khatami's sermon, broadcast live on state TV, included accusations that the unrest was supported by Israel and the US, and that foreign journalists had reported falsely. He claimed Neda Agha Soltan, who became a symbol of the opposition when her death was caught on video, was a victim of protesters, not the security forces. "Government forces do not shoot at a lady standing in a side street," he said.
Protests have continued for nearly two weeks, but faded in recent days after a crackdown by security forces and a perceived lack of leadership by Mousavi. About 20 people have been killed and hundreds beaten and arrested.
This week, state television broadcast interviews with several people admitting to being "terrorists" after purportedly taking part in street demonstrations. But forced "confessions" have been used before to humiliate and discredit opponents of the regime.
Tajzadeh's wife, Fakhrosadat Mohtashamipour, told the pro-reform website Emruz that she and a lawyer had been denied access to him since his arrest the day after the 12 June election. "Any quote or remarks made by these people in the current situation has no credibility. My husband's only crime is his efforts to secure a high turnout," she said.
Tajzadeh, 53, a member of the pro-reform Islamic Participation Front and the Islamic Revolution Mojahedin Organisation, has been a staunch critic of Ahmadinejad. Renewed fears have been voiced over the health of another jailed reformist, Saeed Hajarian, a former adviser to the reformist president Mohammed Khatami who is severely disabled from a failed assassination attempt nine years ago. Reports of Hajarian's death were dismissed by the reformist website Parlemannews, which quoted "informed sources" as saying he was in "relative health" and being given essential medication and care.
Photo of Saaed Mortazavi ‘Torturer of Tehran’EXCERPTS:
Jailed Iranian reformists have been tortured in an attempt to force them... more
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This is beyond belief! The world must stand up against such brutality!
TEHRAN, Iran (CNN) -- Security forces wielding clubs and firing
weapons beat back demonstrators who flocked to a Tehran square
Wednesday to continue protests, with one witness saying security forces
beat people like "animals."This is beyond belief! The world must stand up against such brutality!
TEHRAN, Iran... more
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(CBS/AP) Last Updated 1:48 p.m. EDT
A demonstration near Iran's parliament turned into a "bloodbath" Wednesday, a source in Tehran told CBSNews.com.
Thousands gathered at the parliament building for a silent protest, reported the unnamed source. But scene took a violent turn when more than 1,000 police and Basij militia arrived to disperse the crowd.
"It turned into a bloodbath ... they threw some people off the bridges...after the Basijis came, they began to use tear gas, sticks and shooting," he said.
Earlier Wednesday, Iran's supreme leader said that the government would not give in to pressure over the disputed presidential election, effectively closing the door to compromise with the opposition.
But reformist leader Mir Hossein Mousavi's official Web site said that a protest was planned nonetheless outside Iran's parliament Wednesday afternoon. It distanced him at the same time, calling the demonstration independent and saying it had not been organized by Mousavi.
Mousavi's mixed messages about the demonstration reflected the dilemma facing the unlikely opposition leader, a longtime supporter of Iran's government thrust to the head of a pro-democracy protest movement.
Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has ordered protests to end, leaving Mousavi with the choice of restraining followers or continuing to directly challenge the country's ultimate authority despite threats of escalating force.
Other reports of the violent crackdown flooded the Internet Wednesday, though accounts of the clashes could not be confirmed.
CNN interviewed a female witness to the clashes who hysterically described the violence.
"They beat a woman so savagely that she was drenched in blood," she said.
The woman also said she saw "security forces shooting on people."
There were rumors a young girl was taken to the hospital after being shot by security forces, though that report could not be confirmed.
State media continued to insist Wednesday that the dissent was being stoked by outside groups bent on destabilizing the country, including the CIA. State TV also reports that two terrorists have been arrested in connection with the protests.
Mousavi's wife, Zahra Rahnavard, a former university dean who campaigned beside her husband, said on one of his Web sites that his followers had the constitutional right to protest and the government should not deal with them "as if martial law has been imposed in the streets."
She called for the release of all activists and others arrested at protests.
Meanwhile, Tehran's mayor is calling for Iranian authorities to legalize peaceful opposition protests, according to a report on Iran's PressTV.
In an interview on Iranian TV, Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf said easing restrictions on rallies would prevent "saboteurs who draw weapons and kill people."
Mousavi, a former prime minister, saw his campaign transform into a protest movement after the government declared that hardline President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was the overwhelming winner of the June 12 election.
Mousavi said the result was fraudulent and Western analysts who have examined available data on the vote said there were indications of manipulation.
His supporters flooded the streets of Tehran and other cities after the vote, massing by the hundreds of thousands in protests larger than any since Iran's 1979 Islamic Revolution. Security forces initially stood by and permitted the demonstrations.
Khamenei ordered an end to protests on Friday and security forces beat protesters and fired tear gas and water cannons at rallies the next day. At least 10 protesters were shot, according to official tallies.
continued on link(CBS/AP) Last Updated 1:48 p.m. EDT
A demonstration near Iran's parliament... more
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Excerpts:
Opposition a reaction to measures pushing females to the sidelines
Jun 24, 2009 04:30 AM
Comments on this story (21)
Cathal Kelly
STAFF REPORTER
The brutal death of the young Tehran woman Neda Agha-Soltani continued to prompt revulsion inside and outside Iran yesterday, but it also drew more attention to the role the women's movement has played in the current uprising.
"We have seen courageous women stand up to brutality and threats, and we have experienced the searing image of a woman bleeding to death in the streets," U.S. President Barack Obama said at a White House news conference yesterday, noting the recent events in Iran.
"While the loss is raw and painful, we also know this: those who stand up for justice are always on the right side of history."
The 26-year-old woman, who is widely known simply as Neda, was shot dead Saturday near the scene of clashes between pro-government militias and demonstrators who allege rampant vote-count fraud in the re-election of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
Her final seconds of life were captured in a widely distributed Internet video.
"It's heartbreaking," Obama said of the video. "I think that anybody who sees it knows that there's something fundamentally unjust about it."
Since the first embers of the pro-democracy demonstrations in Iran flared 10 days ago, women have been at the front of the battle line. Photographs show them confronting security forces and urging others in the crowd – many of them men – to press forward.
"There is an unfortunate distorted image of Iranian women. Everybody (in the West) is surprised at what's happening in Iran because they have this image of women victimized by their state, by their husbands," said Farzeneh Milani, a University of Virginia professor who has studied the Iranian women's movement for three decades.
"The truth of the matter is that the women's movement in Iran goes back to the middle of the 19th century."
Women have played a role in each one of Iran's cultural spasms. Many of the pro-Islamic activists during the 1979 Islamic Revolution were women. But the current reformist movement is a reaction to government measures aimed at pushing women to the sidelines of public life.
In 2005, the regime began a modesty campaign, the goal being a stricter enforcement of veiling.
"I call it gender apartheid, the separation of men and women in all spheres," said Shahrzad Mojab, an activist who fled Iran in 1983 and now teaches at the University of Toronto. "It really has been building up over the last 30 years."
As it followed a period of relative liberalization under former president Mohammad Khatami, the modesty campaign provoked a backlash. In 2006, a demonstration of women in Tehran was attacked by security forces. That spawned the so-called "one million signature" campaign aimed at reversing the new laws. Nobel Peace Prize winner Shirin Ebadi is one of the leaders of that movement.
Another key figure has been Zahra Rahnavard, wife of opposition candidate Mir Hossein Mousavi.
"(Rahnavard) has been a major force, sometimes much more important than her husband," said Gholam Reza Afkhami, of Washington's Foundation for Iranian Studies.
Much of the current network has blossomed inside educational institutions in large cities. Despite efforts to marginalize them, Iranian women still make up 65 per cent of all students at universities.
"Iran must be the only country in the world that's thinking of affirmative action for men," Milani said.
continuedExcerpts:
Opposition a reaction to measures pushing females to the sidelines
Jun... more
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Iranian students were shot while protesting in Iran after a suspicious outcome to the Iranian election. This is amateur video that was upload by a fellow protester. The world is watching don't let these students die in vain, let your voice be heard.Iranian students were shot while protesting in Iran after a suspicious outcome to the... more
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A young woman who was standing aside with her father watching the protests was shot by a basij member hiding on the rooftop of a civilian house. The world is watching don't let these students die in vain, let your voice be heard.A young woman who was standing aside with her father watching the protests was shot by... more
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Commentators in Israeli papers interpreted US President Barack Obama's address to the Muslim world as marking a clear shift in ties between the US and Israel, and possibly the end of a special relationship.
One writer called on the Israeli government to adapt to the new winds blowing from Washington or face a storm, while several said the US president had given the government notice that it would now have to honour commitments made towards reaching peace with the Palestinians.
At least one interpreted this as meaning that Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu would have to reshape his cabinet.
Several writers referred respectfully to the US leader and saw his words in a positive light, while others were disparaging. One saw him as a sycophant.
Continued at link:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/8085167.stmCommentators in Israeli papers interpreted US President Barack Obama's address to... more
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How sad and racist these Israeli's react to the most genuine reach out by President Obama's trip to Egypt and Saudi Arabia.How sad and racist these Israeli's react to the most genuine reach out by... more
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Report Ties Dubious Iran Nuclear Docs to Israel
by Gareth Porter, June 04, 2009
http://original.antiwar.com/porter/2009/06/03/report-ties-dubious-iran-nuclear-docs-to-israel/
Excerpts:
A report on Iran’s nuclear program issued by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee last month generated news stories publicizing an incendiary charge that U.S. intelligence is underestimating Iran’s progress in designing a "nuclear warhead" before the halt in nuclear weapons-related research in 2003.
That false and misleading charge from an intelligence official of a foreign country, who was not identified but was clearly Israeli, reinforces two of Israel’s key propaganda themes on Iran – that the 2007 U.S. National Intelligence Estimate on Iran is wrong, and that Tehran is poised to build nuclear weapons as soon as possible.
But it also provides new evidence that Israeli intelligence was the source of the collection of intelligence documents which have been used to accuse Iran of hiding nuclear weapons research.
The Committee report, dated May 4, cited unnamed "foreign analysts" as claiming intelligence that Iran ended its nuclear weapons-related work in 2003 because it had mastered the design and tested components of a nuclear weapon and thus didn’t need to work on it further until it had produced enough sufficient material.
That conclusion, which implies that Iran has already decided to build nuclear weapons, contradicts both the 2007 National Intelligence Estimate on Iran, and current intelligence analysis. The NIE concluded that Iran had ended nuclear weapons-related work in 2003 because of increased international scrutiny, and that it was "less determined to develop nuclear weapons than we have been judging since 2005."
The report included what appears to be a spectacular revelation from "a senior allied intelligence official" that a collection of intelligence documents supposedly obtained by U.S. intelligence in 2004 from an Iranian laptop computer includes "blueprints for a nuclear warhead."
It quotes the unnamed official as saying that the blueprints "precisely matched" similar blueprints the official’s own agency "had obtained from other sources inside Iran."
No U.S. or IAEA official has ever claimed that the so-called laptop documents included designs for a "nuclear warhead." The detailed list in a May 26, 2008 IAEA report of the contents of what have been called the "alleged studies" – intelligence documents on alleged Iranian nuclear weapons work — made no mention of any such blueprints.
In using the phrase "blueprints for a nuclear warhead," the unnamed official was evidently seeking to conflate blueprints for the reentry vehicle of the Iranian Shehab missile, which were among the alleged Iranian documents, with blueprints for nuclear weapons.
When New York Times reporters William J. Broad and David E. Sanger used the term "nuclear warhead" to refer to a reentry vehicle in a Nov. 13, 2005 story on the intelligence documents on the Iranian nuclear program, it brought sharp criticism from David Albright, the president of the Institute for Science and International Security.
"This distinction is not minor," Albright observed, "and Broad should understand the differences between the two objects, particularly when the information does not contain any words such as nuclear or nuclear warhead."
The Senate report does not identify the country for which the analyst in question works, and the Senate Foreign Relations Committee staff refused to respond to questions about the report from IPS, including the reason why the report concealed the identity of the country for which the unidentified "senior allied intelligence official" works.
Reached later in May, the author of the report, Douglas Frantz, told IPS he is under strict instructions not to speak with the news media.
ContinuedReport Ties Dubious Iran Nuclear Docs to Israel
by Gareth Porter, June 04, 2009... more
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EXCERPTS
By Patrick J. Buchanan
On Sept. 20, 2002, as the War Party was beating the drum for preventive war on Iraq, lest we wake up to “a mushroom cloud over an American city,” The Wall Street Journal introduced an eminent voice to confirm that, yes, Saddam was driving straight for an atomic bomb.
“This is a dictator who is … feverishly trying to acquire nuclear weapons,” wrote Bibi Netanyahu, former prime minister of Israel.
“Saddam’s nuclear program has changed. He no longer needs one large reactor to produce the deadly material necessary for atomic bombs. He can produce it in centrifuges the size of washing machines that can be hidden throughout the country — and Iraq is a very big country. Even free and unfettered inspections will not uncover these portable manufacturing sites of mass death. …
“(I)f action is not taken now, we will all be threatened by a much greater peril … (for) no gas mask and no vaccine can protect against nuclear weapons.”
This was horse manure of a high grade, as high as that which Richard Perle deposited on the podium of the Foreign Policy Research Institute a year earlier, when he informed a stunned audience that Saddam “is busily at work on a nuclear weapon.”
Perle had it straight from Saddam’s “Bomb Maker,” “a man named Kadir Hamza.” Hamza, said Perle, told him that after the Osirak reactor was destroyed by Israel in 1981, Saddam “began to build uranium enrichment facilities, many facilities, and we built 400 of them, and they’re all over the country. Some of them look like farmhouses, some of them look like classrooms, some of them look like warehouses. You’ll never find them. They don’t turn out much, but every day they turn out a little bit of nuclear materials.”
“So,” Perle warned his riveted audience, “it’s simply a matter of time before he acquires nuclear weapons.”
Washing-machine centrifuges in uranium enrichment facilities disguised as barns and chicken coops! And Americans believed it. And so we were stampeded into war against a nation that did not threaten or attack us, to strip it of weapons it did not even have.
That war has cost 4,500 American dead and 35,000 wounded. It has brought death to perhaps a hundred thousand Iraqis. Four million people have been driven from their homes, 2 million, including half the Christians, into exile. Hundreds of thousands of fatherless Iraqi children are being raised by women widowed by that war.
Undaunted, the War Party has a new war planned for us.
Target: Tehran. And Obama may just have boxed himself in.
In return for Bibi’s willingness to talk to the Palestinians, Obama agreed to a December deadline for progress in talks with Iran. If the talks are not fruitful by then, America will step on the escalator.
“I’ve been very clear that I don’t take any options off the table with respect to Iran,” said the president.
Bibi got what he came for.
By setting a six-month deadline, Obama has given an incentive to Israel, AIPAC, the neocons and even al-Qaida, which wants Shia Iran bombed back to the stone age, to provoke collisions with Iran, until December, then demand that Obama keep his word, suspend talks, impose severe sanctions and start us on the escalator to war.EXCERPTS
By Patrick J. Buchanan
On Sept. 20, 2002, as the War Party was beating... more
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