The war zone

نه ناو جنگی وارد خلیج فارس شدند

2007-05-23T05:28:00.000-07:00

صبح امروز (2 خرداد ) 9 ناو جنگی آمریکا با گذشتن از تنگه هرمز وارد خلیج فارس شدند.

به گزارش خبرگزاری مهر به نقل از رویترز، صبح امروز 9 فروند ناو جنگی آمریکا با گذشتن از تنگه هرمز وارد آبهای ایران شدند.
فارس نیوز

Dissent Magazine

2007-02-06T02:15:00.000-08:00

توضيح : اين وبلاگ براي اين راه انداخته ام كه مطالب مربوط به جنگ را جمع آوري كنم، تا آرشيو شود
براي همين خودم را به زحمت نياندخته ام راجع به نوشته ها توضيح بدهم، اينجا چند نفري خواننده پيدا كرده، شايد لازم باشد كه بدانيد؛ مي خواهم از تمام لايه ها و چرخ دنده هاي پرشماري كه يك جنگ را شكل مي دهد، آن مقداري كه به چشمم مي آيد و گزيده و شسته رفته است، در اينجا ثبت كنم.

به نقل از و بلاگ اينجا و اكنون، كه علي معظمي مينويسد:

نشريه ديسنت در آخرين شماره خود اقتراحي [ كنكاش ] را درباره ايران پيش كشيده است. در يادداشت سردبيري‌اي كه در اين مورد نوشته شده ابتدا چيزهايي گفته‌اند كه نظر خودشان را درباره جمهوري اسلامي مي‌رساند و طبيعتاً از منظرهاي مختلف قابل مناقشه است و در آخر هم چند پرسش مطرح كرده‌اند؛
اين آدم‌ها در اقتراح ديسنت شركت كرده‌اند: شلومو آوينري؛ اسحاق نقاش؛ مايكل دويل؛ سوزان نوسل؛ آن‌ماري اسلوتر. از اين آدم‌ها فقط دوتاي اول را كمي مي‌شناسم. آوينري در نظريه سياسي و فلسفه سياسي آدم شناخته شده‌اي است و اگر سر وكارتان با تفسيرهاي نظريه سياسي هگل افتاده باشد قاعدتاً اسم او را هم شنيده‌ايد....
حاصل اين همه روده‌درازي اينكه از كليت نوشته‌هاي اين شماره بوي خوشي به مشام نمي‌رسد؛ صدايي كه در مقابل جنگ عراق مخالف جنگ بود اما در صف سرسخت‌ترين مخالفان نبود، الان حتي قابل انعطاف‌تر به نظر مي‌رسد. و اين در وضعيتي است كه مصيبت‌هاي جنگ عراق ديگر بر هيچ كسي پوشيده نيست و جهنمي كه با حمله آمريكا در آن‌جا به‌پا شده با كمتر مصيبتي در نوع خودش قابل ‌مقايسه است. اما چرا؟ توجيهش اين است كه دارد اجماعي به‌وجود مي‌آيد بر سر اينكه ايران يك "تهديد" هسته‌اي است. زماني كه چنين تصوري از حد تبليغات حكومت بوش فراتر رود و به يك باور فراگير تبديل شود، جنگ‌طلبان عملاً زحمت زيادي نخواهند داشت و مي‌توانند به شيوه‌هاي مختلف تهديد عليه ايران را افزايش بدهند

Francis Fukuyama: neoconservative line of argument on Iran

2007-02-03T05:56:00.000-08:00

If you Don't know Francis Fukuyama, first read his biography:
This from Guardian:

The neocons have learned nothing from five years of catastrophe

Francis Fukuyama
Wednesday January 31, 2007
The Guardian

The United States today spends approximately as much as the rest of the world combined on its military establishment. So it is worth pondering why it is that, after nearly four years of effort, the loss of thousands of American lives, and an outlay of perhaps half-a-trillion dollars, the US has not succeeded in pacifying a small country of some 24 million people, much less in leading it to anything that looks remotely like a successful democracy.

One answer is that the nature of global politics in the first decade of the 21st century has changed in important ways. Today's world, at least in that band of instability that runs from north Africa and through the Middle East, sub-Saharan Africa and central Asia, is characterised by numerous weak and sometimes failed states, and by transnational actors who are able to move fluidly across international borders, abetted by the same technological capabilities that produced globalisation. States such as Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, Lebanon, Somalia, Palestine and a host of others are not able to exercise sovereign control over their territory, ceding power and influence to terrorist groups such as al-Qaida, political parties-cum-militias such as Hizbullah in Lebanon, or various ethnic and sectarian factions elsewhere.

American military doctrine has emphasised the use of overwhelming force, applied suddenly and decisively, to defeat the enemy. But in a world where insurgents and militias deploy invisibly among civilian populations, overwhelming force is almost always counterproductive: it alienates precisely those people who have to make a break with the hardcore fighters and deny them the ability to operate freely. The kind of counterinsurgency campaign needed to defeat transnational militias and terrorists puts political goals ahead of military ones, and emphasises hearts and minds over shock and awe.

A second lesson that should have been drawn from the past five years is that preventive war cannot be the basis of a long-term US nonproliferation strategy. The Bush doctrine sought to use preventive war against Iraq as a means of raising the perceived cost to would-be proliferators of approaching the nuclear threshold. Unfortunately, the cost to the US itself was so high that it taught exactly the opposite lesson: the deterrent effect of American conventional power is low, and the likelihood of preventive war actually decreases if a country manages to cross that threshold.

A final lesson that should have been drawn from the Iraq war is that the current US government has demonstrated great incompetence in its day-to-day management of policy. One of the striking things about the performance of the Bush administration is how poorly it has followed through in accomplishing the ambitious objectives it set for itself. In Iraq, the administration has acted like a patient with attention-deficit disorder. The US succeeded in organising efficiently for key events such as the handover of sovereignty on June 30 2004, or the elections of January 30 2005. But it failed to train Iraqi forces, failed to appoint ambassadors, failed to perform due diligence on contractors and, above all, failed to hold accountable those officials most responsible for these and other multiple failures.

This lack of operational competence could in theory be fixed over time, but it has important short-term consequences for American grand strategy. Neoconservative theorists saw America exercising a benevolent hegemony over the world, using its enormous power wisely and decisively to fix problems such as terrorism, proliferation, rogue states, and human-rights abuses. But even if friends and allies were inclined to trust America's good intentions, it would be hard for them not to be dismayed at the actual execution of policy and the amount of broken china this particular bull left behind.

The failure to absorb Iraq's lessons has been evident in the neoconservative discussion of how to deal with Iran's growing regional power, and its nuclear programme. Iran today constitutes a huge challenge for the US, as well as for America's friends in the Middle East. Unlike al-Qaida, Iran is a state, deeply rooted historically (unlike Iraq) and flush with resources as a result of energy price rises. It is ruled by a radical Islamist regime that - particularly since Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's election in June 2005 - has turned in a disturbingly intolerant and aggressive direction.

The US unintentionally abetted Iran's regional rise by invading Iraq, eliminating the Ba'athist regime as a counterweight, and empowering Shia parties close to Tehran. It seems reasonably clear that Iran wants nuclear weapons, despite protestations that its nuclear programme is only for civilian purposes; nuclear energy makes little sense for a country sitting on some of the world's largest oil reserves, but it makes sense as the basis for a weapons programme. It is completely rational for the Iranians to conclude that they will be safer with a bomb than without one.

It is easy to outline the obstacles to a negotiated end to the Iranian programme, but much harder to come up with an alternative strategy. Use of force looks very unappealing. The US is hardly in a position to invade and occupy yet another country, especially one three times larger than Iraq. An attack would have to be conducted from the air, and it would not result in regime change, which is the only long-term means of stopping the WMD programme. It is hard to have much confidence that US intelligence on Iranian facilities is any better than it was in the case of Iraq. An air campaign is much more likely to build support for the regime than to topple it, and will stimulate terrorism and attacks on American facilities and friends around the globe. The US would be even more isolated in such a war than during the Iraqi campaign, with only Israel as a certain ally.

None of these considerations, nor the debacle in Iraq, has prevented certain neoconservatives from advocating military action against Iran. Some insist that Iran poses an even greater threat than Iraq, avoiding the fact that their zealous advocacy of the Iraq invasion is what has destroyed America's credibility and undercut its ability to take strong measures against Iran.

All of this could well be correct. Ahmadinejad may be the new Hitler; the current negotiations could be our Munich accords; Iran could be in the grip of undeterrable religious fanatics; and the west might be facing a "civilisational" danger. I believe that there are reasons for being less alarmist. Iran is, after all, a state, with equities to defend - it should be deterrable by other states possessing nuclear weapons; it is a regional and not a global power; it has in the past announced extreme ideological goals but has seldom acted on them when important national interests were at stake; and its decision-making process appears neither unified nor under the control of the most radical forces.

What I find remarkable about the neoconservative line of argument on Iran, however, is how little changed it is in its basic assumptions and tonalities from that taken on Iraq in 2002, despite the momentous events of the past five years and the manifest failure of policies that neoconservatives themselves advocated. What may change is the American public's willingness to listen to them.

· This is an edited extract from After the Neocons by Francis Fukuyama, published in paperback by Profile books at £7.99

Saudi king says

2007-01-27T05:40:00.000-08:00

Read complete Article here

" King Abdullah also said efforts to spread Shi'ism in the Arab world would fail. Leading Sunni clerics have said in recent months that Iran is promoting Shi'ite belief in Arab countries. "

آيا جنگ پيش بيني پذير است؟

2007-01-27T05:38:00.000-08:00

مقاله عطاءالله مهاجراني در روزنانه اعتماد ملي

آيا آمريكا به ايران حمله مي‌كند؟ به اين پرسش چگونه مي‌توان جواب داد؟ آيا پيش‌بيني در جهان سياست امري ممكن است؟ يعني مي‌توان پيش‌بيني نزديك به واقعيت داشت؟ استفات ‌هاوكينگ نابغه فيزيك، مقاله بسيار خواندني دارد با عنوان؛ <آيا خداوند تاس مي‌اندازد؟>! چنانكه اشاره مي‌كند، او اين عبارت را از انيشتين وام گرفته است. انيشتين قائل بود كه خداوند تاس نمي‌اندازد و هستي هردمبيل و بي‌قرار و قاعده نيست. هستي نظام‌مند است و هر چيزي در جاي خويش نيكوست. پرسش‌ هاوكينگ اين است كه در چنين جهاني مي‌توان آينده را پيش‌بيني كرد؟

2007-01-26T02:57:00.000-08:00

ٌٌWashingtone Post reported, I got this form CNN

Bush authorizes targeting Iranians in Iraq

January 26, 2007

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -- President Bush has authorized the U.S. military to kill or capture Iranian agents active inside Iraq, The Washington Post reported on Friday, citing government and counterterrorism officials with direct knowledge of the plan.
The move, approved last fall, is aimed at weakening Iran's influence in the region and forcing Tehran to abandon its nuclear program that the West believes is for nuclear weapons and not energy, the newspaper said, citing the unidentified officials...
The new policy applies to Iranian intelligence operatives and members of Iran's Revolutionary Guard thought to be working with Iraqi militias, but not civilians or diplomats, the newspaper said...
But in response to questions about the "kill or capture" authorization, NSC spokesman Gordon Johndroe told the Post: "The president has made clear for some time that we will take the steps necessary to protect Americans on the ground in Iraq and disrupt activity that could lead to their harm. Our forces have standing authority, consistent with the mandate of the U.N. Security Council."

سخنراني سالانه بوش در كنگره

2007-01-24T02:38:00.000-08:00

در پست قبلي، نويسنده مقاله گفته بود بايد سخنراني سالانه بوش در كنگره را به دقت گوش دهيم و دنبال نكاتي بگرديم كه در مقاله گفته شده بود.

اين وبلاگ قسمت هايي از سخنراني را ترجمه كرده، براي تكميل مطلب قبلي اينجا مي گذارم.

Damn: Propaganda starts

2007-01-23T14:17:00.000-08:00

look this site :

All Americans are encouraged to honk their cars’ horn at the same time for two minutes on March 22 to show opposition to Iran’s nuclear weapons program.

DALLAS, Texas – January 21, 2007 – To show opposition to Iran’s nuclear weapons program, Americans are urged to honk their cars’ horn from 9:00 – 9:02 PM (EST) on March 22, 2007
.....
Chilling Facts about Iran:
Iran is arguably the world’s most dangerous nation and the greatest threat to world peace. Allowing it to acquire nuclear weapons would be a mistake of historic proportions.

2007-01-23T13:59:00.000-08:00

This excellent Article from Daily News Tribune :

Editorial: Look for clues on Iran
Tuesday, January 23, 2007 - Updated: 12:48 AM EST

Years from now, will we refer to these early days of 2007 as "the run-up to the Iran War"? That's what it feels like in Washington as President George W. Bush prepares to deliver his seventh State of the Union address tonight at 9.

"To be quite honest, I'm a little concerned that it's Iraq again," Sen. John D. Rockefeller IV told The New York Times. "This whole concept of moving against Iran is bizarre."

Rockefeller knows more than most. As chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, he had a front-row seat as Bush misled us into Iraq and he has access to the most sensitive intelligence about Iran.

One of the things that characterized the run-up to the current quagmire was the obfuscation and manipulation of intelligence. But there are no signs the Bush Administration knows any more about what's going on inside Iran than they knew about Iraq. There's no reason to believe they have a better plan for what to do with Iran after the fighting starts than they had going into Baghdad.

Nonetheless, administration officials have ramped up the rhetoric against Iran. Bush rejected the Iraq Study Group's recommendation that he seek Iran's help in stabilizing Iraq. Last week U.S. forces attacked an Iranian consulate in Iraq, and Bush just dispatched a second aircraft carrier to the Persian Gulf.

But even as the Bush Administration demonizes him, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad appears to be losing support at home. His party has lost recent elections and the clerics who hold the real power in Iran are signaling their discontent. Last week, two hardline newspapers, one of them owned by the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, called on Ahmadinejad to back off from confrontation with the West over nuclear development.

If cooler heads are prevailing in Tehran, will they prevail in Washington? Tonight's speech, and the reaction to it, may provide a clue.

Four years ago, George W. Bush used his State of the Union speech to make the case for the invasion of Iraq. He talked about Saddam Hussein's stockpiles of chemical weapons - stockpiles that were never found. He talked about Iraq's attempts to purchase uranium in Africa - a fiction he officially retracted months later.

So listen closely to what Bush says about Iran. If he tries to hang a Saddam Hussein mask on Ahmadinejad; if he warns of the growing threat of Iran's WMD program; if he stresses Iran's connections to terrorists like those responsible for 9/11, we may be watching a frightening sequel to a movie we've already seen.

Watch as well for the reaction, from Congressional Democrats, presidential contenders and media pundits. If George W. Bush appears intent on launching what would be his third war against a Moslem country in six years, who'll stand in hi

Thinking as someone in Middle east

2007-01-21T15:35:00.000-08:00

Is Bush planning war against Iran?

By Patrick Seale, Special to Gulf News (here)

It is now clear that the US President George W. Bush has decided to confront Iran - politically, economically and militarily - rather than engage it in negotiations, as he was advised to do by James Baker and Lee Hamilton in their Iraq Study Group report.

Bush appears to have been influenced by pro-Israeli advisers such as Eliott Abrams, the man in charge of the Middle East at the National Security Council, and by arm-chair strategists at neoconservative think-tanks such as the American Enterprise Institute, who have long clamoured for "regime change" in Tehran....

On a recent visit to the Middle East, the US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice sought to mobilise the six members of the Gulf Cooperation Council, plus Egypt and Jordan, to join the US in confronting Iran.

Leading Arab states, such as Saudi Arabia and Egypt, are, of course, concerned by the rise of Iran and of militant Shiism, but they are even more alarmed at the possibility of a US/Israeli war against Iran, which would inevitably inflict heavy blows on their own societies...

These many moves have aroused fears in European capitals - and in the Arab world -that Bush has embarked on the road to war...

The situation is not unlike that of 2003, when France opposed the invasion of Iraq, triggering a severe diplomatic crisis between Paris and Washington.

Chirac is planning to send a high-level envoy to Tehran to urge the Iranian authorities to rein in Hezbollah, and thereby help defuse the dangerous situation in Lebanon, a country to which the French president is particularly attached...

First: congressional authorization

2007-01-21T15:24:00.000-08:00

Democrats Warn Bush Not to Attack Iran

WASHINGTON, Jan. 19, 2007
By LAURIE KELLMAN Associated Press Writer

(AP) Democratic leaders in Congress lobbed a warning shot Friday at the White House not to launch an attack against Iran without first seeking approval from lawmakers.

"The president does not have the authority to launch military action in Iran without first seeking congressional authorization," Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., told the National Press Club...
Last week, Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Joseph Biden, D-Del., challenged the president's ability to make such a move. In a letter to Bush, Biden asked the president to explain whether the administration believes it could attack Iran or Syria "without the authorization of Congress, which does not now exist."

Meanwhile, Lee Hamilton, the Democratic co-chair of the Iraq Study Group, told the House Foreign Affairs Committee on Friday that the U.S. must try to engage Iran and Syria in a constructive dialogue on Iraq because of the countries' influence in the conflict.

The Bush administration, and several members of Congress, say they oppose talks with Iran and Syria because of their terrorist connections. Bringing the two countries into regional talks aimed at reducing violence in Iraq was one of the study group's recommendations.

cool ponit of American people abuput war on Iran

2007-01-21T13:35:00.000-08:00

Under what circumstances would you support U.S. aggression against Iran?

People from different part inside us Answered

Israel & Syria peace

2007-01-21T01:14:00.000-08:00

Why can't they just make peace?

Jan 18th 2007 | JERUSALEM
From The Economist print edition

F ONLY Israel could make peace with Syria, the optimists muse: it could be the key to peace in the whole Middle East. No longer sensing enemies on every side, Syria could relax, stop backing insurgents and radicals in Lebanon, Palestine and Iraq, and join the West in isolating Iran. So the news that broke this week in an Israeli newspaper, Haaretz, of a secret back channel that ran for two years and even produced an outline of a possible peace deal, caused quite a stir. Could peace talks still be round the corner?
...
Who gave a nod?

One question is: did the talks have quiet official approval? The Israeli and—despite reports that senior Syrian officials were indirectly involved—the Syrian leaderships have issued strong denials. Mr Liel has stressed that he was not representing the Israeli government, but says he kept it constantly informed, though it is unclear precisely who was in the know. Mr Olmert, who has firmly ruled out peace talks on the ground that America is against them, may have a more immediate reason for denying knowledge of the talks: he would risk being eaten alive by hardliners in his increasingly fragile coalition if he were seen to entertain the idea.

However, neither Mr Liel nor Mr Suleiman is known as a heavyweight in the back-channel world. Another question is why the story was leaked now. Mr Liel says he thinks it time to “pressure” the Israeli government into considering talks with Syria. The only result so far has been to show, more clearly than ever, that while the general shape of a peace deal is quite easy to draw, the hard part is the political will to try it out.

یک دیدگاه

2007-01-20T05:35:00.000-08:00

نوشته علیرضا حیدری که نظز متفاوتی راجع به سخنرانی بوش و چگونگی جنگ دارد؛

برعکس، من گمان میکنم نقشه امریکا برای ایران به هیچ عنوان ساقط کردن رژیم ایران نیست. مشکل اصلی ساقط کردن حکومت نیست، مشکل اصلی خلا قدرت بعد از سقوط است. چیزی که در عراق هم فاجعه آفرید و در ایران شدیدتر خواهد بود. حفظ همین رژیم برای ثبات منطقه مهمتر از ساقط کردن آن است. تنها کاری که باید کرد مهار اقدامات و تاثیرات ایران است.

اینبار به نظرم گروهی کاملا هوشمند و واقع گرا در سیاست خارجه امریکا تصمیم میگیرند. حذف کامل تفکر نئومحافظه کاری در سیاست خارجه امریکا، ورود مشاور جدید امنیت ملی (و مشاوران) و وزیر دفاع و تحول وزارت خارجه، تغییر نماینده در سازمان ملل، تغییر کادر سیاسی امریکا در منطقه و ... چرخشی به این سرعت و با این شدت کمتر اتفاق می افتد. سیاست فعلی امریکا نه تنها بهتر از سال گذشته است بلکه بهتر از تحریمها و مهار ناموفق زمان کلینتون است.

another voice from U.S

2007-01-20T05:29:00.000-08:00

This from Reuters:

"U.S. contingency planning for military action against Iran's nuclear program goes beyond limited strikes and would effectively unleash a war against the country, a former U.S. intelligence analyst said on Friday.

"I've seen some of the planning ... You're not talking about a surgical strike," said Wayne White, who was a top Middle East analyst for the State Department's bureau of intelligence and research until March 2005.

"You're talking about a war against Iran" that likely would destabilize the Middle East for years, White told the Middle East Policy Council, a Washington think tank.

"We're not talking about just surgical strikes against an array of targets inside Iran. We're talking about clearing a path to the targets" by taking out much of the Iranian Air Force, Kilo submarines, anti-ship missiles that could target commerce or U.S. warships in the Gulf, and maybe even Iran's ballistic missile capability, White said."

Doomsday Clock set forward by two minutes

2007-01-17T09:13:00.000-08:00

CTV.ca News Staff

The minute hand of the Doomsday Clock has been moved closer to the fatal midnight hour to reflect the growing concerns of global terrorism, the unchecked nuclear ambitions of Iran and North Korea and -- in a first -- the threat of climate change.

The clock was first set 60 years ago by an elite group of nuclear scientists at the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, shortly after the United States dropped its atomic bombs on Japan. It was meant to symbolize the perils facing humanity from nuclear weapons...

"North Korea's recent test of a nuclear weapon, Iran's nuclear ambitions, a renewed emphasis on the military utility of nuclear weapons, the failure to adequately secure nuclear materials, and the continued presence of some 26,000 nuclear weapons in the United States and Russia are symptomatic of a failure to solve the problems posed by the most destructive technology on Earth."

"The dangers posed by climate change are nearly as dire as those posed by nuclear weapons," the statement continued.

"The effects may be less dramatic in the short term than the destruction that could be wrought by nuclear explosions, but over the next three to four decades climate change could cause irremediable harm to the habitats upon which human societies depend for survival."....