From intelonlie.net
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->A new adventure
Americaâs campaign against Iran will have dangerous consequences in the region.
20 January 2005: There is something unhinged about the gathering American campaign against Iran. Despite the Pentagon denial of Seymour Hershâs story in the New Yorker, president George W.Bush has as good as confirmed it, saying that action against Iran is not off the table. <b>Yesterday, we published independent corroboration of Hershâs researches (Intelligence, âUS operating against Iran from Baluchistan,â 19 January 2005), and disastrously, it would appear, Pakistan seems a central US ally in this new Middle-East adventure. </b>
<b>According to our intelligence, using the cover of a rural employment programme in Baluchistan, called the Pakistan Special Human Resources Development Commission, the US is sending Afghan and Pakistani Pushtun spies into neighbouring Iran. Their brief is to collect intelligence on Iranâs nuclear and military assets, and details of military-industrial complexes and sensitive government and security establishments in Teheran and Isfahan. </b>
At least one group of spies, about twenty Pushtuns posing as traders, were intercepted with sensitive papers on Iranian nuclear and military installations as they were about to reenter Baluchistan. Upon their interrogation, the whole story came out, and the Iranian defence minister, Ali Shamkhani, confronted his Pakistani counterpart, Rao Sikander Iqbal, who flatly denied the spying, and walked out of their meeting. The MMA government in Baluchistan is party to this activity indirectly, saying it would let it proceed unhampered provided the US does not pursue its cadres. <b>Yesterday, a news agency reported US and British special forces training in Karachi locations resembling Iranian cities. </b>
The mistakes of the Iraq War are being repeated all over again, and in addition for America, the consequences look very similar to tacitly siding with Saddam Hussein in the Iran-Iraq war. Victorious Saddam went on to become a dictator who chemically obliterated all opposing populations, occasionally Shias, often and predominantly Kurds, and he and his sons went on to specialise in torture techniques against opposition politicians. The Saddam who Donald Rumsfeld clandestinely interacted with and armed during the war became Americaâs enemy number one, and the same classical errors are being made in the coming Iranian campaign, commanded by Rumsfeld.
<b>For General Pervez Musharraf, if he is the unaware ally of America in this campaign, a fate very similar to Saddam awaits, in addition to a civil-war-like situation, a city-to-city, kasbah-to-kasbah, Shia-Sunni clash, in case Pakistan attacks Iran with the United States. </b>A terrible, horrible situation is building up in the Persian Gulf, and the answer to Iranâs reckless weaponisation programme cannot be more American bloodymindedness after Iraq.
In the 2004 round up, one Western commentator succinctly argued that the USâs credibility as a hyperpower was under question, because of its failure to contain the terrorism and nationalistic upsurge in Iraq after Saddamâs deposition. Saddamâs deposition was the easiest thing, but everything thereafter went messy. The consequences of this failing hyperpower, and the recession from memory of the 9/ 11 tragedy, has left America, on one hand, with few friends, count Britain only among the biggies, and on the other hand, it has made traditional rivals France, Germany and Russia in and outside Western Europe more inimical against the US, and more daring to test its resolve and strength.
<b>The latest is big Russian and French plans to rearm China against the US. Diplomats say China is very willing to be used, for once dropping its cover for its hostility to the perceived unilateralism of America. </b>China, as we have previously reported, is in the forefront of the campaign to permit Iran its nuclear weapons. <b>It tried and probably failed to get India on this plank, but it has apparently not given up with Russia and possibly Western Europe. In return, Iran has promised vast oilfield interests. </b>
This short tour of the building opposition to US unilateralism would suggest that the American campaign in Iran wonât be easy or frightfully successful. <b>Opposition to it from Europe, Russia and China would be of a higher order than even against the Iraq War, and Pakistan could well go under in the campaign. </b>Saddam could keep Iraqi Shias down despite the war with Shia Iran, but <b>Pakistani Shias have grown very militant since the rise of Sunni fundamentalism in the Eighties under the late General Zia-ul-Haq. They wonât stand for Shias being attacked in Iran by the Pakistan army, and the Pakistan army is in any case growingly divided on Shia-Sunni lines. </b>
What is the way out? While Iran has to be denuked, this is not possible until Saudi Arabia remains a threshold nuclear power with Pakistani proliferation, and nuclear Pakistan continues its blow-hot-blow-cold relationship with Iran. <b>Since money has no colour or creed, Pakistanâs monster scientist, A.Q.Khan, proliferated at will to Iran, besides Libya, North Korea, Saudi Arabia, and possibly to the Al-Qaeda. </b>Instead of going to the root of the proliferation disease called Pakistan, America has senselessly chosen to attack the symptoms which have appeared in Iran and could well appear in other states as well.
Once Pakistan is rid of nuclear arsenals, and Saudi Arabiaâs atomic programme, at whatever stage, is scrapped, Iran will have no worthwhile excuse to hold on to its weaponsâ project. The Israelis constitute a threat, but since they have never resorted to nuclear blackmail in all these decades, that cannot be a valid reason for Iranâs weaponisation.
Admittedly, European negotiations with Iran to denuke unconditionally have hit a roadblock if not entirely failed, but with two predominantly Sunni neighbours possessing or near to possessing nuclear weapons, Iran cannot be expected to act differently. But with caps on Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, the European negotiations will enter a different plane of seriousness, with the threat of US intervention in the background adding to Iranâs pressure. Now, it has become a test of wills, and a messy war looms ahead, with disastrous consequences for everyone in the region.
<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
The US needs Munna and will keep him in power. Munna might get torn asunder but that is not India's problem. What China does with Russia and France is their own business.
India needs to keep a watchful eye and contain any blowback inside it among its minorities. AMybe get the Imam Bukhari to speak to his followers.
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->A new adventure
Americaâs campaign against Iran will have dangerous consequences in the region.
20 January 2005: There is something unhinged about the gathering American campaign against Iran. Despite the Pentagon denial of Seymour Hershâs story in the New Yorker, president George W.Bush has as good as confirmed it, saying that action against Iran is not off the table. <b>Yesterday, we published independent corroboration of Hershâs researches (Intelligence, âUS operating against Iran from Baluchistan,â 19 January 2005), and disastrously, it would appear, Pakistan seems a central US ally in this new Middle-East adventure. </b>
<b>According to our intelligence, using the cover of a rural employment programme in Baluchistan, called the Pakistan Special Human Resources Development Commission, the US is sending Afghan and Pakistani Pushtun spies into neighbouring Iran. Their brief is to collect intelligence on Iranâs nuclear and military assets, and details of military-industrial complexes and sensitive government and security establishments in Teheran and Isfahan. </b>
At least one group of spies, about twenty Pushtuns posing as traders, were intercepted with sensitive papers on Iranian nuclear and military installations as they were about to reenter Baluchistan. Upon their interrogation, the whole story came out, and the Iranian defence minister, Ali Shamkhani, confronted his Pakistani counterpart, Rao Sikander Iqbal, who flatly denied the spying, and walked out of their meeting. The MMA government in Baluchistan is party to this activity indirectly, saying it would let it proceed unhampered provided the US does not pursue its cadres. <b>Yesterday, a news agency reported US and British special forces training in Karachi locations resembling Iranian cities. </b>
The mistakes of the Iraq War are being repeated all over again, and in addition for America, the consequences look very similar to tacitly siding with Saddam Hussein in the Iran-Iraq war. Victorious Saddam went on to become a dictator who chemically obliterated all opposing populations, occasionally Shias, often and predominantly Kurds, and he and his sons went on to specialise in torture techniques against opposition politicians. The Saddam who Donald Rumsfeld clandestinely interacted with and armed during the war became Americaâs enemy number one, and the same classical errors are being made in the coming Iranian campaign, commanded by Rumsfeld.
<b>For General Pervez Musharraf, if he is the unaware ally of America in this campaign, a fate very similar to Saddam awaits, in addition to a civil-war-like situation, a city-to-city, kasbah-to-kasbah, Shia-Sunni clash, in case Pakistan attacks Iran with the United States. </b>A terrible, horrible situation is building up in the Persian Gulf, and the answer to Iranâs reckless weaponisation programme cannot be more American bloodymindedness after Iraq.
In the 2004 round up, one Western commentator succinctly argued that the USâs credibility as a hyperpower was under question, because of its failure to contain the terrorism and nationalistic upsurge in Iraq after Saddamâs deposition. Saddamâs deposition was the easiest thing, but everything thereafter went messy. The consequences of this failing hyperpower, and the recession from memory of the 9/ 11 tragedy, has left America, on one hand, with few friends, count Britain only among the biggies, and on the other hand, it has made traditional rivals France, Germany and Russia in and outside Western Europe more inimical against the US, and more daring to test its resolve and strength.
<b>The latest is big Russian and French plans to rearm China against the US. Diplomats say China is very willing to be used, for once dropping its cover for its hostility to the perceived unilateralism of America. </b>China, as we have previously reported, is in the forefront of the campaign to permit Iran its nuclear weapons. <b>It tried and probably failed to get India on this plank, but it has apparently not given up with Russia and possibly Western Europe. In return, Iran has promised vast oilfield interests. </b>
This short tour of the building opposition to US unilateralism would suggest that the American campaign in Iran wonât be easy or frightfully successful. <b>Opposition to it from Europe, Russia and China would be of a higher order than even against the Iraq War, and Pakistan could well go under in the campaign. </b>Saddam could keep Iraqi Shias down despite the war with Shia Iran, but <b>Pakistani Shias have grown very militant since the rise of Sunni fundamentalism in the Eighties under the late General Zia-ul-Haq. They wonât stand for Shias being attacked in Iran by the Pakistan army, and the Pakistan army is in any case growingly divided on Shia-Sunni lines. </b>
What is the way out? While Iran has to be denuked, this is not possible until Saudi Arabia remains a threshold nuclear power with Pakistani proliferation, and nuclear Pakistan continues its blow-hot-blow-cold relationship with Iran. <b>Since money has no colour or creed, Pakistanâs monster scientist, A.Q.Khan, proliferated at will to Iran, besides Libya, North Korea, Saudi Arabia, and possibly to the Al-Qaeda. </b>Instead of going to the root of the proliferation disease called Pakistan, America has senselessly chosen to attack the symptoms which have appeared in Iran and could well appear in other states as well.
Once Pakistan is rid of nuclear arsenals, and Saudi Arabiaâs atomic programme, at whatever stage, is scrapped, Iran will have no worthwhile excuse to hold on to its weaponsâ project. The Israelis constitute a threat, but since they have never resorted to nuclear blackmail in all these decades, that cannot be a valid reason for Iranâs weaponisation.
Admittedly, European negotiations with Iran to denuke unconditionally have hit a roadblock if not entirely failed, but with two predominantly Sunni neighbours possessing or near to possessing nuclear weapons, Iran cannot be expected to act differently. But with caps on Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, the European negotiations will enter a different plane of seriousness, with the threat of US intervention in the background adding to Iranâs pressure. Now, it has become a test of wills, and a messy war looms ahead, with disastrous consequences for everyone in the region.
<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
The US needs Munna and will keep him in power. Munna might get torn asunder but that is not India's problem. What China does with Russia and France is their own business.
India needs to keep a watchful eye and contain any blowback inside it among its minorities. AMybe get the Imam Bukhari to speak to his followers.