Iran:The Next War

[Rasputin]

A surprise American or Israeli air strike on Iranian nuclear sites could cause a large number of civilian as well as military casualties, says a report published today.
The report, Iran: Consequences of a War, written by Professor Paul Rogers and published by the Oxford Research Group, draws comparisons with Iraq. It says the civilian population in that country had three weeks to prepare for war in 2003, giving people the chance to flee potentially dangerous sites. But Prof Rogers says attacks on Iranian facilities, most of which are in densely populated areas, would be surprise ones, allowing no time for such evacuations or other precautions.

"Military deaths in this first wave of attacks would be expected to be in the thousands," he says. "Civilian deaths would be in the many hundreds at least, particularly with the requirement to target technical support for the nuclear and missile infrastructure, with many of the factories being located in urban areas."
The death toll would eventually be much higher if Iran took retaliatory action and the United States responded, or if the US took pre-emptive military action in addition to strikes on nuclear sites.

Prof Rogers, of the University of Bradford's peace studies department, says: "A military operation against Iran would not ... be a short-term matter but would set in motion a complex and long-lasting confrontation. It follows that military action should be firmly ruled out and alternative strategies developed."

US and other western critics of Tehran say the government there is intent on securing a nuclear weapons capability. The Iranians deny this, saying they are pursuing civilian nuclear energy. The issue could still be resolved diplomatically, but both the US and Israel have said the option of air strikes remains open.

Prof Rogers says the aim of an attack would be to set back Iran's nuclear programme by at least five years. He says Britain could be drawn in as US aircraft would probably use UK bases.

He lists the expected targets as the Tehran Research Reactor, a radioisotope production facility, a range of nuclear-related laboratories, and the Kalaye Electric Company, all in Tehran, and facilities in Isfahan and Natanz.

"The new reactor nearing completion at Bushehr would be targeted, although this could be problematic once the reactor is fully fuelled and goes critical some time in 2006," he says. "Once that has happened, any destruction of the containment structure could lead to serious problems of radioactive dispersal affecting not just the Gulf coast but west Gulf seaboards in Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates."

He adds: "All the initial attacks would be undertaken more-or-less simultaneously, in order to kill as many of the technically competent staff as possible, therefore doing the greatest damage to longer-term prospects."

[Rasputin]

Iran would be unable to prevent such an attack, as it has only limited air defences. But Prof Rogers says it has a large arsenal of responses. It could:

· withdraw from the Non-Proliferation Treaty and pursue speedy development of nuclear weapons capability;

· encourage retaliatory action against Israel by the Lebanese-based Hizbullah group, which has missiles capable of hitting Haifa and several other Israeli cities;

· close the Strait of Hormuz, one of the main access routes for oil from the Gulf;

· send Iranian paramilitary units into states such as Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates;

· or order Iranian Revolutionary Guards to step up links with insurgents in Iraq.

Prof Rogers says a US or Israeli attack could also help al-Qaida by increasing the anti-US mood in the region and beyond.

[prncesskr]

A surprise American or Israeli air strike on Iranian nuclear sites could cause a large number of civilian as well as military casualties, says a report published today.

Does it really take a professor to say this??? (she said sarcasticaly)

[Rasputin]

Does it really take a professor to say this??? (she said sarcasticaly)

is my article and i must to write sometimes my sources .

Thx for your reply .

[Rasputin]

Attacking Iran May Trigger Terrorism

As tensions increase between the United States and Iran, U.S. intelligence and terrorism experts say they believe Iran would respond to U.S. military strikes on its nuclear sites by deploying its intelligence operatives and Hezbollah teams to carry out terrorist attacks worldwide.

Iran would mount attacks against U.S. targets inside Iraq, where Iranian intelligence agents are already plentiful, predicted these experts. There is also a growing consensus that Iran's agents would target civilians in the United States, Europe and elsewhere, they said.

U.S. officials would not discuss what evidence they have indicating Iran would undertake terrorist action, but the matter "is consuming a lot of time" throughout the U.S. intelligence apparatus, one senior official said. "It's a huge issue," another said.

Citing prohibitions against discussing classified information, U.S. intelligence officials declined to say whether they have detected preparatory measures, such as increased surveillance, counter-surveillance or message traffic, on the part of Iran's foreign-based intelligence operatives.

But terrorism experts considered Iranian-backed or controlled groups -- namely the country's Ministry of Intelligence and Security operatives, its Revolutionary Guards and the Lebanon-based Hezbollah -- to be better organized, trained and equipped than the al-Qaeda network that carried out the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

The Iranian government views the Islamic Jihad, the name of Hezbollah's terrorist organization, "as an extension of their state. . . . operational teams could be deployed without a long period of preparation," said Ambassador Henry A. Crumpton, the State Department's coordinator for counterterrorism.

The possibility of a military confrontation has been raised only obliquely in recent months by President Bush and Iran's government. Bush says he is pursuing a diplomatic solution to the crisis, but he has added that all options are on the table for stopping Iran's acquisition of nuclear weapons.

Speaking in Vienna last month, Javad Vaeedi, a senior Iranian nuclear negotiator, warned the United States that "it may have the power to cause harm and pain, but it is also susceptible to harm and pain. So if the United States wants to pursue that path, let the ball roll," although he did not specify what type of harm he was talking about.

Government officials said their interest in Iran's intelligence services is not an indication that a military confrontation is imminent or likely, but rather a reflection of a decades-long adversarial relationship in which Iran's agents have worked secretly against U.S. interests, most recently in Iraq and Pakistan. As confrontation over Iran's nuclear program has escalated, so has the effort to assess the threat from Iran's covert operatives.

U.N. Security Council members continue to debate how best to pressure Iran to prove that its nuclear program is not meant for weapons. The United States, Britain and France want the Security Council to threaten Iran with economic sanctions if it does not end its uranium enrichment activities. Russia and China, however, have declined to endorse such action and insist on continued negotiations. Security Council diplomats are meeting this weekend to try to break the impasse. Iran says it seeks nuclear power but not nuclear weapons.

Former CIA terrorism analyst Paul R. Pillar said that any U.S. or Israeli airstrike on Iranian territory "would be regarded as an act of war" by Tehran, and that Iran would strike back with its terrorist groups. "There's no doubt in my mind about that. . . . Whether it's overseas at the hands of Hezbollah, in Iraq or possibly Europe, within the regime there would be pressure to take violent action."

Before Sept. 11, the armed wing of Hezbollah, often working on behalf of Iran, was responsible for more American deaths than in any other terrorist attacks. In 1983 Hezbollah truck-bombed the U.S. Marine barracks in Beirut, killing 241, and in 1996 truck-bombed Khobar Towers in Saudi Arabia, killing 19 U.S. service members.

[Rasputin]

Iran's intelligence service, operating out of its embassies around the world, assassinated dozens of monarchists and political dissidents in Europe, Pakistan, Turkey and the Middle East in the two decades after the 1979 Iranian revolution, which brought to power a religious Shiite government. Argentine officials also believe Iranian agents bombed a Jewish community center in Buenos Aires in 1994, killing 86 people. Iran has denied involvement in that attack.

Iran's intelligence services "are well trained, fairly sophisticated and have been doing this for decades," said Crumpton, a former deputy of operations at the CIA's Counterterrorist Center. "They are still very capable. I don't see their capabilities as having diminished."

Both sides have increased their activities against the other. The Bush administration is spending $75 million to step up pressure on the Iranian government, including funding non-governmental organizations and alternative media broadcasts. Iran's parliament then approved $13.6 million to counter what it calls "plots and acts of meddling" by the United States.

"Given the uptick in interest in Iran" on the part of the United States, "it would be a very logical assumption that we have both ratcheted up [intelligence] collection, absolutely," said Fred Barton, a former counterterrorism official who is now vice president of counterterrorism for Stratfor, a security consulting and forecasting firm. "It would be a more fevered pitch on the Iranian side because they have fewer options."

The office of the director of national intelligence, which recently began to manage the U.S. intelligence agencies, declined to allow its analysts to discuss their assessment of Iran's intelligence services and Hezbollah and their capabilities to retaliate against U.S. interests.

"We are unable to address your questions in an unclassified manner," a spokesman for the office, Carl Kropf, wrote in response to a Washington Post query.

The current state of Iran's intelligence apparatus is the subject of debate among experts. Some experts who spent their careers tracking the intelligence ministry's operatives describe them as deployed worldwide and easier to monitor than Hezbollah cells because they operate out of embassies and behave more like a traditional spy service such as the Soviet KGB.

Other experts believe the Iranian service has become bogged down in intense, regional concerns: attacks on Shiites in Pakistan, the Iraq war and efforts to combat drug trafficking in Iran.

As a result, said Bahman Baktiari, an Iran expert at the University of Maine, the intelligence service has downsized its operations in Europe and the United States. But, said Baktiari, "I think the U.S. government doesn't have a handle on this."

Because Iran's nuclear facilities are scattered around the country, some military specialists doubt a strike could effectively end the program and would require hundreds of strikes beforehand to disable Iran's vast air defenses. They say airstrikes would most likely inflame the Muslim world, alienate reformers within Iran and could serve to unite Hezbollah and al-Qaeda, which have only limited contact currently.

A report by the independent commission investigating the Sept. 11 attacks cited al-Qaeda's long-standing cooperation with the Iranian-back Hezbollah on certain operations and said Osama bin Laden may have had a previously undisclosed role in the Khobar attack. Several al-Qaeda figures are reportedly under house arrest in Iran.

Others in the law enforcement and intelligence circles have been more dubious about cooperation between al-Qaeda and Hezbollah, largely because of the rivalries between Shiite and Sunni Muslims. Al-Qaeda adherents are Sunni Muslims; Hezbollah's are Shiites.

Iran "certainly wants to remind governments that they can create a lot of difficulty if strikes were to occur," said a senior European counterterrorism official interviewed recently. "That they might react with all means, Hezbollah inside Lebanon and outside Lebanon, this is certain. Al-Qaeda could become a tactical alliance."

[gg666]

I believe that these issues are all about imposing economic sanction on iran, as iran has started to trade its oil in euro currency, hence it leads the US government to a bad economic depresion. this the economic point of view regarding this story

[ramin2999]

I believe that these issues are all about imposing economic sanction on iran, as iran has started to trade its oil in euro currency, hence it leads the US government to a bad economic depresion. this the economic point of view regarding this story

i highly dout what ever currency iran trades oild makes much diffrence on us.
it is al about supply even thogh most of uses oild comes from venezuela and southern countries

[ramin2999]

but not being racist i thoght it is only the arabs who could be terroist. You guys think the same insurgency can happen in Iran.

[gg666]

well US doesn't trade with iran at all...i know that...but as iran starts to trade in euro, european countries shift to this market...on the other hand Us has printed a HUGE amount of money which is ready for trade(manly in oil market) and it will be useless as other nations will move to this new market..why???euro makes more profit for them and US makes a huge loss at this point. so by imposing sanction on iran, US can ban this new oil market...if u need more info let me know and i'll post them...

i highly dout what ever currency iran trades oild makes much diffrence on us.
it is al about supply even thogh most of uses oild comes from venezuela and southern countries

[gg666]

I dont like arab people personally, but why are u associating them with terrorism??? im living in UAE and they have nothing to do with current political issues...rather they are more into economic expansion

but not being racist i thoght it is only the arabs who could be terroist. You guys think the same insurgency can happen in Iran.

[ramin2999]

I dont like arab people personally, but why are u associating them with terrorism??? im living in UAE and they have nothing to do with current political issues...rather they are more into economic expansion

Also remember UAEA is wealthy country that has a small pop compared to the rest. This also points out that all this stuff comes from hard times in a country.
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no no dont get me wrong
I am talking about the mentality, like i really do think that if Iraninas given the chance of a democrocy will take it and on the other hand over and over again we see the i hate to say it buy arab mentality of outrage and aggretion. What i mean is this even thogh not justifying there action but you kinda can see why they would be pissed they hale allways been ripped of and screwed i mean at least Iran under mossadeg and shah had some good periods but the arabs i didnt see any.

Whay i was saying is do you think the majority of Iranians in Iran have that same mentality? I mean look at the Iraqisthey are ruining there own country just to see the US suffer. Do you think this kinda of a thing will be true about Iran.

[gg666]

ok..i got ur point now...about the arabs' mentality..ur totally right...but it's not the case for iran...even though iranian government has a wrong mentality, but it's not as tough as arabs'.by the way, iran was pretending to have a good situation while mosadeg was on the stage...but everything was collapsed from the core, and i dont just say staffs..it's all facts ...so i dont want to mix things

[Rasputin]

[Rasputin]

Is the U.S. Mulling Nuclear Strikes on Iran?

The news of a possible U.S. plan to attack Iran frightened many Iranians. Now, Persian Web sites are publishing stories of a plan to attack Iran with nuclear weapons.An Islamic Republic spokesman said he believes these reports are more similar to psychological war tactics than actual preparations to attack on Iran.U.S. President George W. Bush has repeated many times he has no military plans to invade Iran, but Vice President Dick Cheney said the United States would attack Iran if it is necessary.



Many military experts believe this possible attack is not a ground strike to change the regime like the operation in Iraq, but it will be a limited attack by the Air Force or a surgical strike on the nuclear power stations.When Global Research published an article about a possible attack, many people found it to be extreme and unimaginable. At the same time, Tehran's government newspapers reported about a possible U.S. and Israeli attack at the beginning of the Persian New Year which starts at the end of March, according to an Arab news source. Last week, Hosni Mubarak warned Bush to not attack Iran. This news alerted the Tehran government press that there is a possible plan to attack Iran.The general view is that the possible war would not be so close to the Persian New Year like the March 2003 invasion of Iraq. U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice last month asked Congress to fund a $75 million media campaign and support Iran's pro-U.S. groups based in the United States. This is not enough to prepare anything really dangerous against the Islamic regime in Iran, but it sends a clear message to Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.An air force attack by Israel would be more costly now that the Hamas government is allied with Iran.Some weeks ago, Judith Yaphe, a former senior CIA officer and professor at the U.S. Institute for National Strategic Studies, who was interviewed by Dorna Kouzehgar, stressed a war with Iran (PDF) is the most dangerous event that may happen in the region. Tolerating a nuclear-armed Iran is better than another war in Middle East, she said.The shadow of war in Iran is not completely horrible for the regime; they can exploit it by using it as an excuse to execute political prisoners, threaten Web bloggers and journalists, and try to stabilize an official marshal law in Iran.Oxford researcher Paul Rogers mentioned any attack on Iran will spread the war throughout the Persian Gulf and threaten oil transit routes.