Showing posts with label Iran. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Iran. Show all posts

Monday, March 11, 2013

IRAN NUKE-SITE BLASTS CONFIRMED, SABOTAGE SUSPECTED





http://www.wnd.com/2013/03/iran-nuke-site-blasts-confirmed-sabotage-suspected/

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The European intelligence community and the U.S. government have received corroboration that explosions rocked Iran’s nuclear facility at Fordow, but are unclear if they were due to mechanical failure or sabotage, WND has learned.
The Jan. 21 explosions killed at least 76 people and injured scores more, said one source, who later told WND that many rescue and security personnel were sickened by radiation poisoning in the aftermath of the disaster.
Certain European countries in the 5-plus-1 talks with Iran over its illicit nuclear program had demanded inspection of Fordow before any agreement might arise from the negotiations held last month in Kazakhstan, a source within the European intelligence community said. The 5-plus-1 countries are the five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council plus Germany.
As part of those talks, Iran was offered the chance to “halt activity” out of Fordow and take steps to ensure that any restart of activity would take time, allowing for the eventual easing of sanctions as a face-saving exit for Iran, the source said. President Obama at a recent White House meeting with Jewish American leaders quoted a Chinese proverb in his dealings with Iran about building a “golden bridge” for the opponent to retreat.
The European countries in the 5-plus-1 were more aggressive in the talks than their American counterpart, the source said. Knowing that Fordow had taken a hit, they told the Iranian delegation that just agreeing to halt activities at Fordow wasn’t good enough, he said. The Europeans demanded an inspection of the site before finalizing any agreement that would ease some sanctions. The Iranians, for their part, used the gambit that Fordow was still operable to get a better response from the West, but they have yet to allow any inspection after the incident.
WND reported exclusively on Jan. 24 that explosions rocked Iran’s nuclear facility at Fordow on Jan. 21, with updates on Jan. 27293031, and Feb. 361323 and 24. The blasts at first trapped 219 workers, including 16 North Koreans. One of the fatalities was a North Korean.
Iran denied the incident and within days the White House said it had no corroborating information and did not find the WND report credible. The International Atomic Energy Agency backed Iran’s denial based on what it called its “observation,” although after the release of its Feb. 21 report, it was clear its inspectors had not been at the site since December. WND’s source said that the IAEA had requested to see the site but was turned down by Iran. Then it asked for a written response but none was given, so it relied on Iran’s verbal response that no incident had taken place.
Fordow fuel enrichment plant - DigitalGlobe image on day of reported explosion, Jan. 21, 2013
A source with long-standing national security ties reported back to WND after attending a recent social event in the U.S. with people who are informed on international security matters. He claimed one of the attendees said reports from associates in Iran confirm something extraordinary happened at Fordow.
The source further said the denial of a Fordow catastrophe by authorities here and abroad focuses on saying there was no “explosion,” while not ruling out an industrial breakdown triggered by a Stuxnet-like cyberattack. The North Korean contingent in Iran may have delivered the trigger in software/hardware newly linked to Fordow’s closed system.
WND reported on Jan. 29 that 36 North Korean technicians and military officers arrived in Tehran Jan. 15 and 17, and 16 of them carried new equipment to Fordow to start an operation on cascades.
The source for that report, a high-ranking member of the security forces at Fordow who originally reported the explosions, told WND that many Iranian scientists working for the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran know of the incident but do not dare talk. He said some of the scientists have privately speculated the new equipment delivered to Fordow was bugged and disrupted the operation of the centrifuges, ultimately creating an explosive chain reaction.
Gen. Morteza Ghorbani
The Islamic regime believes it was sabotage and many Iranians have been arrested, the source said, adding there has been minimal activity at the site since late February after the initial rescue mission.
The Ministry of Defense, which oversees Iran’s nuclear program, has assigned two top commanders, Gen. Morteza Ghorbani and Gen. Ahmad Vahid Dastjerdi, to oversee all security for the country’s nuclear program. Both are major figures within the regime on intelligence and counterintelligence.
Iran has yet to refute the Feb. 24 WND story that released some of the names of the dead in the explosion, and its media is in a total news blackout about any activity at Fordow. The next 5-plus-1 talks will be held on the expert level in Turkey on March 17-18 before both sides reconvene in Kazakhstan on April 5-6.
Gen. Ahmad Vahid Dastjerdi
Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, last week criticized the West for not offering enough concessions in recent talks. This is while, the source said, the regime is trying to complete its nuclear bomb program at several secret sites.

R

Sunday, February 24, 2013

We Need A Tough Guy … Soon or Do you think moose cakes' ''hubby'' is a pussy?



http://clashdaily.com/2013/02/we-need-a-tough-guy-soon/



We Need A Tough Guy … Soon

   
539px-Vladimir_Putin_12021Turn on the television or the computer lately and it’s hard to have hope. Everywhere we turn to get our news anymore it’s all the same, bad and getting worse. So much for Mr. Obama’s lofty rhetoric. Apparently, it was just slogans and bumper stickers like we all guessed. Well it would have been nice to have been wrong. My wife and I vacillate between enjoying denial and sheer terror that we aren’t prepared at all for the havoc to come. I mean we are fairly well armed, we have some extra food, etc … but we are talking the apocalypse right?
I love to dismiss it as crazy. People of every generation have thought it was the beginning of the end times. I scoff it off, and then it happens again. I turn on the tube and find out the Ruskies were flying long range fighters around Guam during the exact time that our man-boy president lectured us, I mean gave the State of the Union address. Just in case you don’t know, Guam is ours. It’s an American territory. The Russian fighters are capable of carrying 200 kiloton nuclear bombs with a range of 1800 miles.
Why would they do that during Big O’s speech? Didn’t Vlad get the transmission we are buds? Maybe they want to be our friends as long as they get to be the boss? Ever had a friend like that? It’s not fun after awhile. I seriously think the Russians are bullies and they aren’t intimidated by our Commander in Chief. Any kid on the playground knows this is human nature. All the girls and sensitive men in the world can disapprove all day long but it won’t change this fact. At some point every man and every nation better puff up his chest a bit if he wants the other boys to stop messing with him.
We are seriously being messed with by the Russians. Vladmir Putin recently signed an agreement with Iran, which our media barely noted. Russia knows we have big problems coming with Iran, so why would they do this? Simple, it’s like picking teammates at recess. Russia takes Iran and we’ll take Israel. I’m not sure Obama knows about playground rituals. He seems uninterested.
I don’t mean to say Obama is a weakling. It could be just me, but Obama reminds me of the movie Braveheart. Sadly, the character he reminds me of isn’t William Wallace; it’s the King of England’s gentle son. I mean flying some drones around and killing a few people doesn’t make you a war hawk. It’s kind of like being a kid with a video game. I mean Obama has that swagger walk thing he does. I guess he has that, but strutting isn’t enough. He needs a propagandist image consultant or something. His pictures of biking with a helmet in mom pants, photo shopped skeet shooting, and too many golf course shots to count don’t instill an image of machismo.
I understand, it is hard to outshine a larger than life persona like Putin. One minute he releases a picture of himself on top of a huge pile of Russian gold, the next one he is wrestling a bear, then he’s horseback riding shirtless, only to be followed up by a shot of Vlad in a tux with a twenty year old hottie on his arm! You would think he’s some kind of James Bond character.
So put all that chest pumping aside. Vlad keeps taking it to the next level. Instead of talking tough this time he actually scrambled fighter jets to war game us. This is where my wife and I go prepper. Our guy doesn’t get it! What would happen if four 200 Kiloton nuclear warheads hit America? Good bye to several million people instantly and slowly many more later. Good bye power grid, good bye to everything we know right now, at least for awhile. Should I be comforted because O is on the job? He handled a really bad storm named Sandy smashingly!
I vote for some saber rattling and chest pumping. We need O to find whatever tough guy he can and let it out. C’mon, put an eye patch on Samuel L. Jackson and send him to Moscow to lay down the law. He’s an actor — he could pull it off. If we don’t act like we got a pair pretty soon, we are going to take a hit right to the chops. It’s never good to take the first shot right to the chin. You might not get back up.
I implore our President; skip the ten day golf vacation with Tiger. Bring in some liberal Hollywood actors to at least teach him how to act tough. That’s all we need. Just act tough. Our military men have the cajones to actually be tough. They can take it and dish it out, but we need our President to buck it up a notch. Otherwise, we should all be prepping.
Image: Portrait of Vladimir Putin; source: kremlin.ru; author: Russian Presidential Press and Information Office; Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported license

'THIS IS A MATCH MADE IN HELL'




http://www.wnd.com/2013/02/this-is-a-match-made-in-hell/


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Earlier this month, North Korea conducted what appears to be its largest and most sophisticated nuclear test to date, but what may also be emerging from the story is the extent that Iran and North Korea are colluding in their efforts to grow their nuclear programs.
One of the most telling indicators of this collaboration may be the reported presence of Mohsen Fakhrizadeh Mahabadi at the North Korean test. Mahabadi is the chief Iranian nuclear scientist and rarely travels outside of Iran.
That prospect is very troubling to foreign-policy expert and accomplished fiction and nonfiction author Joel C. Rosenberg. He is the author of “The Twelfth Imam” trilogy. The final installment of the trilogy, “Damascus Countdown,” debuts March 5.
“That is further, I would say confirmation, but certainly raises further concern that North Korea is actually doing the testing for Iran. In other words, Iran would essentially be paying for North Korea to be its research and development system, both for ballistic missiles but also for warheads,” Rosenberg told WND. “So Iran might be assembling a bomb right now. We don’t know that for sure. North Korea might be providing the data for how to test it and make sure that it works. This convergence, this collaboration, between Iran and North Korea is exceedingly dangerous for the United States but also clearly for Israel and for the rest of the Middle East.”
Rosenberg said his analysis is far from speculation, and the cozy nuclear relationship between Iran and North Korea is well documented.
“North Korea and Iran are working very, very closely. They have been for years. In fact, they even signed an agreement, a treaty back in 2011 to work on nuclear issues between North Korea and Iran,” Rosenberg said.
Outside of their shared desire to acquire nuclear weapons and a mutual loathing of the United States, there wouldn’t seem to be much in common between an atheistic communist state and the theocratic Muslim regime in Iran. Rosenberg said their alliance helps both sides address glaring problems.
“It seems odd but here’s the bottom line. Like anything in Washington, follow the money,” Rosenberg said.
“North Korea is starving for cash, but it has nuclear technology and has already tested nuclear weapons several times,” he said. “Iran has plenty of cash, not the people but the government. It’s starving for hard data of what a nuclear test looks like without inviting an American or Israeli airstrike before Iran can get its weapons built and ready to launch. This is a match made in hell.”
The U.S. and other nations have attempted to convince and entice North Korea to abandon its nuclear program over the past two decades with little success to show for it. Rosenberg said efforts to talk Iran out of developing its nukes is an even more fruitless endeavor.
“These aren’t just radical Shia Muslims. They have an eschatology, an end times theology they’ve spoken openly about that the end of the world is almost here. The so-called Islamic messiah, known as the twelfth imam, is going to come and reveal himself on earth at any moment,” Rosenberg said. “The way to hasten or accelerate this appearance of this twelfth imam is to annihilate two countries – Israel, which they call the Little Satan, and the United States, which they call the Great Satan.
“From the perspective of the leaders in Tehran, they believe they are being driven by an end-times theology, and there’s no way that they’re going to back off  from that. They want to bring about their so-called messiah and a global Islamic kingdom or caliphate that they’ve been talking about for centuries,” Rosenberg said.
He said this mindset is not shared by most of the people in Iran or even most of the people in government. As a result, he said a few options exist to diminish the Iranian nuclear threat since sanctions seem to give the Iranians even more resolve.
“The only way to dissuade them is to eliminate those leaders with a revolution or an assassination or a series of them or neutralize the Iranian program,” said Rosenberg, who believes Obama’s upcoming trip to Israel and other nations in the region is specifically designed to find a strategy to neutralize the Iranian threat.

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Monday, February 18, 2013

Why, I thought al-qaida was dead per moose cake's '"husband"





http://www.wnd.com/2013/02/al-qaida-alive-and-well-ready-to-attack-west/

Ed Note: And anyway, is al-qaida related to algore?  Just as I thought.

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In an agreement between al-Qaida and the Islamic regime, three camps have been set up within Iran to train terrorists, WND has learned.
Al-Qaida members are trained to attack NATO forces in Afghanistan and collaborate with the Islamic regime on terrorist activities against Israel, the United States and some European countries, according to a source within the Revolutionary Guards intelligence division.
The camps are in the Sistan and Baluchestan provinces of Iran bordering Pakistan, where the al-Qaida members are trained in terrorism and guerrilla-warfare tactics.
The al-Qaida members, under the pretext of conducting commerce, enter Iran through local bazaars along the Pakistani-Iranian border, the source said. After completing the course, each al-Qaida member is paid the equivalent of $12,000 in appreciation of their participation and further collaboration with the regime’s Quds Forces.
Three training bases have been set up:
  • The Revolutionary Guards base of the 763rd Infantry Division, close to the airport and near Azadi Square in the city of Zahedan. It is equipped with a unit for bomb-making and explosives.
  • Zaboli, a camp built in the desert adjacent to the city of Zabol. It has a harsh 45-day training program.
  • The third site is south in the city of Nikshahr, though recently it was transformed into a type of hospital. It’s not clear what kind of activity occurred there.
Pakistan has collaborated with Iran for well over a decade on the terrorism training, according to the source. He said officials from the Pakistani Consulate across from the 763rd Infantry Division base routinely watch the training.
Google Earth 2012 image: The Revolutionary Guards base of the 763rd Infantry Division
As reported exclusively by WND Dec. 18, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s supreme leader, took on a greater role in the terrorist movement after the death of Osama bin Laden. He has held meetings with al-Qaida commanders, including bin Laden’s successor, Ayman al-Zawahiri, and Adam Yahiye Gadahn, the American who makes videos for al-Qaida, to coordinate terror attacks in France and Germany. After the Tehran meetings in December, members of the regime’s Quds Forces met with al-Qaida operatives in Pakistan to finalize the terrorist plots.
Two Quds Forces commanders, Col. Hamidreza Monfared and Col. Ebrahim Tanabandeh, oversee the training, the source said. Before being transferred to the training sites, they served in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia and were involved in plans to blow up the bridge linking Bahrain to Saudi Arabia. The plot was foiled when a terrorist cell was exposed in late 2011.
According to the source, Monfared disclosed in a private meeting with other high-ranking officers that the leader of the 1996 bombing of the Khobar Towers in Saudi Arabia was Guard commander Jafar Sefri, who once served as the liaison between the Revolutionary Guards and the Sadr forces in Iraq. In the Khobar bombing, Sefri used al-Qaida operatives.
The June 25, 1996, truck bomb killed 19 U.S. servicemen and injured nearly 500 others of many nationalities. After a lengthy investigation, the FBI concluded Iran was involved in the attack.
The source said another Guard commander, Abass Agha Zamani, was instrumental in the Khobar bombing by arranging the transfer of funds and explosives for the mission.
Google Earth 2012 image - The Revolutionary Guards base of the 763rd Infantry Division - Bomb making facility
Nicknamed Abu Sharif, Zamani was a key figure early on after the Islamic Revolution in the formation of the Revolutionary Guards. At one time he served as Iran’s ambassador to Pakistan.
Another figure, Mohammad Faghir Gomshadzehi, is active in transferring explosives into Pakistan from border villages. But the source believes the activity is outside the Pakistan-Iran agreement and is being done without the knowledge of the Pakistanis.
The source named five other Guard commanders involved in the training of al-Qaida members: Capt. Hassan Tanabandeh, Lt. Ejdar Hashemi, Lt. Mohammad Hassan Nik Pey, Lt. Rasool Assadollahi and Lt. Kamal Ahmadi.
Khamenei has repeatedly warned America that should war break out, not only will Iran destroy Israel but it also will attack the U.S. homeland. The source said the regime, through its terrorist proxies such as Hezbollah and al-Qaida, is preparing terror attacks to destabilize the West if sanctions become unbearable for the regime or if a military confrontation takes place over its illicit nuclear program.

Saturday, September 22, 2012

Iranian Christian pastor Nadarkhani writes letter of thanks after release from prison



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    Pastor Youcef Nadarkhani and his family.
Christian pastor Youcef Nadarkhani has spoken out in a letter of thanks to his supporters around the world after his release from the Iranian prison where he was held for three years for refusing to renounce his faith.
The carefully worded, approximately 600-word letter does not express any bitterness toward the regime that kept him in prison on charges that were not always clear. Nadarkhani, a married father, was freed one month shy of three years and cannot leave the country for at least another month under the terms of his release. The letter cites the groundswell of support from around the world, including diplomatic efforts by several countries and a Twitter campaign that involved more than a million people.
"I want to express my gratitude to all of those who have supported me, openly or in complete secrecy."
- Pastor Youcef Nadarkhani
“I also want to express my gratitude towards those who, all around the world, have worked for my cause, or should I say the cause that I defend. I want to express my gratitude to all of those who have supported me, openly or in complete secrecy. You are all very dear to my heart,” Nadarkhani said in the letter dated Sept. 8, the day he was released. It was written in his native Farsi and translated by Present Truth Ministries.
“Despite the fact that I have been found guilty of apostasy according to a certain reading of the Shariah, I am grateful that (God) gave the leaders of the country the wisdom to break that judgment taking into account other facts of that same Shariah,” he also wrote.



Pastor Youcef Nadarkhani's letter of thanks

Below is the translated letter for Pastor Youcef Nadarkhani, in which he thanks those who supported his release.


Nadarkhani's plight began when he went to his sons' school to complain that educators were forcing lessons from the Koran on the boys, now 7 and 9. That led to his arrest for allegedly using his home as a place of worship and attempting to convert Muslims and ultimately his conviction by the Iranian Supreme Court. His release came when the court downgraded his crime to "evangelizing to Muslims" and let him out with what amounted to time served.
The campaign to win Nadarkhani's freedom was largely spearheaded by the American Center for Law and Justice, which tracked his court appearances throughout his incarceration.
"Pastor Youcef’s courage and faith is awe inspiring.  It is clear that regardless of whether Pastor Youcef ever received one letter of support of the thousands sent or heard one news report on the international outcry for his freedom while in prison, he felt the prayers and support of the entire international community," Tiffany Barrans, the center's international legal director, told FoxNews.com.
The organization also has spotlighted several other Christians who remain imprisoned in Iran for their faith
"We must continue to uplift and support those who remain imprisoned or persecuted for their faith," Barrans said. "Let us continue to cry out that Iran, and other violators of these human rights, uphold their international obligation to protect the innocent and honor freedom of religion."

http://www.foxnews.com/world/2012/09/21/pastor-youcef-nadarkhani-writes-letter-thanks-to-supporters/