Iran, Israel ratchet up tensions
White House spokeswoman Dana Perino has lambasted Iran's latest statements against Israel, calling Tehran's pledge to strike back at Israel if attacked by the Jewish state as "totally unprovoked". Perino said, "I can't tell you why someone in Iran would say something like that about Israel. It's totally unprovoked and unnecessary."

One must wonder about the closed universe that White House officials such as Perino inhabit, since even a cursory look at the nearly daily threat of attacks on Iran by Israeli officials and pundits leaves no doubt that Iran's reaction has, indeed, been provoked by such threats.

Israel's threats against Iran
What is remarkable about this issue is the depth, extensiveness and consistent recycling of military threats against Iran, both veiled and unveiled, by the Israelis. Having convinced themselves, and a good part of the Western world, that Iran is about to reach the "point of no return" in its nuclear program, Israeli civilian and military leaders and their allies in the Israeli and US media have ratcheted up the threat of a military strike on Iran as a rational and feasible option.

This is in complete disregard for international law and the principles of the UN Charter, which forbids member states "from using the threat or use of force" against each other. (Incidentally, even a liberal paper such as Ha'aretz, on April 21, 2006, explicitly endorsed the idea of Ahmadinejad's assassination, arguing that "his elimination is likely to contribute more to stability than to detract from it".)

On June 9, Israeli Deputy Prime Minister Saul Mofaz stated that "the military option is on the table". On January 21, 2006, Mofaz had stated publicly: "We are preparing for military action to stop Iran's nuclear program." His boss, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, told the press in April that "nobody is ruling out" a military strike on Iran by Israel, adding: "It is impossible perhaps to destroy the entire nuclear program, but it would be possible to damage it in such a way that it would be set back years ... it would take 10 days and involve the firing of 1,000 Tomahawk cruise missiles."

Nicolas Sarkozy backs US on Iran bomb

President Nicolas Sarkozy of France has directly accused Iran of seeking a nuclear bomb and urged "stronger sanctions" against Teheran.

It was the latest sign that Mr Sarkozy is positioning France as America's key European ally in tackling Teheran's nuclear ambitions.

Mr Sarkozy said France did not want a war, but flatly declared in a television interview that "Iran is trying to obtain an atomic bomb".

He added: "That is unacceptable and I tell the French people it is unacceptable."

Russia bolsters ties with Iran

Russia couldn't be unaware that France is playing a double game. On the one hand, Sarkozy is closing ranks with the Bush administration's policies toward Iran. On the other hand, France is using US-French rapprochement to share the spoils of Iraq's oil wealth with US oil interests. France's Total and the United States' Chevron have agreed to collaborate on the Majnoon oilfields in Iraq.

The San Francisco Chronicle recently wrote, "The building of a US-French consensus on Iraq is largely the result of the willingness of US oil interests to share the spoils with their European counterparts in exchange for their military and military backing of Washington's foreign policy in the Middle East." In the coming period, Moscow will have to factor the "trans-Atlantic partnership" in dealing with the Iran nuclear issue.

French warmongering aids Iran's cause

Regarding the latter, former US president Jimmy Carter recently penned an article in the Guardian of London, lamenting the US's policies, worth reading by French officials:
By abandoning many of the nuclear arms agreements negotiated in the last 50 years, the United States has been sending mixed signals to North Korea, Iran and other nations with the technical knowledge to create nuclear weapons. Currently proposed agreements with India compound this quagmire and further undermine the global pact for peace represented by the nuclear non-proliferation regime.
Unfortunately, it is the US's and France's own nuclear policies and postures which have done much to undermine the cause of non-proliferation, given Sarkozy's statement at the Group of Eight summit in June that "the value of nuclear weapons is deterrence". He added that "France's nuclear strategy and nuclear doctrine are based on the protection of France's vital interests".

General Says Iran Can Strike Back at Israel

TEHRAN, Sept. 19 — A senior military official warned on Wednesday that Iran had prepared a plan to attack Israel if Israel bombed Iran, the semiofficial Fars news agency reported.

“We have drawn up a plan to strike back at Israel with our bombers if this regime possibly makes a silly mistake,” said the official, Gen. Mohammad Alavi, the deputy commander of Iran’s air force.

General Alavi spoke in the wake of remarks by the French foreign minister, Bernard Kouchner, who said Sunday that nations should prepare for a possible war with Iran if it continued with its nuclear work. Mr. Kouchner and the French Foreign Ministry subsequently toned down the remarks.

Bush's 'proxy war' claim over Iran exposed

But Petraeus then shattered that carefully constructed argument by volunteering in answering a question that the Quds Force, an elite unit of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, had in essence left Iraq. "The Quds Force itself, we believe, by and large those individuals have been pulled out of the country, as have the Lebanese Hezbollah trainers that were being used to augment that activity."

Petraeus' contradictory statements on the Quds Force are emblematic of a US administration propaganda line that has in essence fallen apart because it was so obviously out of line with reality. Nine months after the George W Bush administration declared that it was going to go after Iranian agents in Iraq who were threatening US troops, the US military still has not produced any evidence that Quds Force operatives in Iraq were engaged in assisting the militias fighting against US troops.

Abizaid: World Could Abide Nuclear Iran



The Iranians are aware, he said, that the United States has a far superior military capability.

"I believe that we have the power to deter Iran, should it become nuclear," he said, referring to the theory that Iran would not risk a catastrophic retaliatory strike by using a nuclear weapon against the United States.

"There are ways to live with a nuclear Iran," Abizaid said in remarks at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a think tank. "Let's face it, we lived with a nuclear Soviet Union, we've lived with a nuclear China, and we're living with (other) nuclear powers as well."