Iran’s war games could force U.S. into aggression, oil price

[styky]

Formerly Secret Telexes Offer Window into Iran’s Nuclear Deceit
http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/nat ... tid=pm_pop

[Ogopogo]

http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2012/02/iran-icbm/

Calm Down. Iran’s Missiles Can’t (and Won’t) Hit the East Coast.


* By Spencer Ackerman
* Email Author
* February 24, 2012 |

Israel is claiming that Iran is thisclose to developing a missile that can hit American soil. But missile and intelligence experts say Tehran has a long, technically complex road to travel before it can threaten Manhattan.

From getting all the rocket thrusters to work properly to developing heat shields that can withstand the stresses of rapid atmospheric reentry, Iran is probably many years away from getting an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM). The American spy apparatus, which once hyped the Iranian missile threat, has quietly stopping saying when Iran can hit the east coast. And the irony is that it’s taking Iran so long precisely because its missile efforts really are sophisticated.

“The bottom line,” says Paul Pillar, a veteran CIA Mideast analyst, “is that the intelligence community does not believe [the Iranians] are anywhere close to having an ICBM.”

That, however, isn’t the message out of Jerusalem. Israeli Finance Minister Yuval Steinitz told CNBC on Wednesday Iran was “two to three years” away from slamming a missile into New York, Boston or Washington. Its strategic-affairs minister, Moshe “Bogie” Yaalon, issued that same warning earlier this month, but declined to say when Iran’s mega-missile would be ready.

Chances are, the Israelis are hyping the Iranian missile threat so their American friends will consider the Iranian threat more acute. They’re not happy with Gen. Martin Dempsey, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, for saying on Sunday that an Israeli attack on Iran was “not prudent.” But few missile or intelligence experts believe the new claim of an imminent Iranian ICBM is going to change Dempsey’s mind, or anyone else’s, because it’s far-fetched.

It’s true that Tehran has a robust missile program. Its stockpiles of Shahab-3 ballistic missiles, which top out at 800 miles, strike fear into the hearts of Arab Gulf states. Israel has real reason to fear the development of its Sejjil medium-range ballistic missile, a more sophisticated weapon, that could maybe reach Israel in a few years. And unlike rogue-state missile flameouts like North Korea, Iran is able to launch satellites into space, which is a key ICBM step (since any intercontinental missile is going to have to fly through space in order to attack a foe so far away).

But none of that adds up to Iran getting a missile that can travel the 6,000 miles necessary for striking America any time soon.

For one thing, Iran needs to master what’s called “clustering” of the engines needed to power its missile. Picture a box with an engine — probably from a North Korean Nodong-2, the paterfamilias of Iran’s missiles — on each corner. Iran in fact unveiled precisely such a design in 2010.

There’s a long way between design and a working set of thrusters, however. Basically, in order to keep the missile on track as it streaks through the heavens, each engine has to provide precisely the same amount of thrust. If not, the pulses of acoustic energy from one engine might destroy another. “That’s not an easy thing, to make sure they fire simultaneously and don’t shake themselves to death in process,” says Greg Thielmann, a former missile analyst at the State Department’s intelligence wing.

Then there are additional technical obstacles Iran isn’t believed to have overcome. Guidance systems need to be able to withstand the pressures of atmospheric reentry to keep the missile on course. “Then the warhead itself has to function at such extreme physical conditions,” says Hans Kristensen, director of the nuclear studies program at the Federation of American Scientists. “There are several really complicated steps they have to go through to do this.”

As well as mundane ones. Iran will have to balance durability and weight, most likely leading it to want aluminum alloys for any early long-range missile rather than heavy steel, says David Wright of the Union of Concerned Scientists, and Tehran may not have the aluminum stocks for it. It may not even have the machine tools necessary for boring out an ICBM’s diameter. And ICBMs are big, meaning if they stay in one place for too long, they’ll be vulnerable to detection — and an Israeli or American bombing campaign. That’s why Wright thinks they’ll have to be rugged enough to survive being moved along the roads, which can also create convoys ripe for the schwacking.

Even Iran’s seriousness about its missiles is a potential time-suck. Unlike North Korea, which rushes to claim military glory even when its missile tests fail, Iran tends to test its missile stockpile thoroughly. Long-range missiles tests will likely mean Iranian ships heading out into the Indian Ocean to collect data and telemetry. Which are also vulnerable to detection, giving the U.S. and Israel some early warning.

“You’re gonna know whether this happens. You’re gonna see at least one flight test of this bigger stage,” Wright says. “We haven’t seen them develop reentry vehicles on something this long-range.”

Bottom line? Iran is probably “five to ten years away” from an ICBM, Wright thinks. That seems plausible to other experts interviewed for this story, though most demurred from making an actual prediction.

That’s similar to what U.S. spy agencies used to estimate. Emphasis on the used to.

In 1993, the CIA told Congress Iran was “10 to 15 years” away from an ICBM. An assessment of the missile threat in 1995 drawn from across the 16 intelligence agencies, called a National Intelligence Estimate, pegged the date for doomsday at 2010.

That actually caused a freakout from Republicans in Congress, who accused the CIA of understating the urgency of the Iranian missile threat to help the Clinton administration stall on missile defense. They in turn asked Donald Rumsfeld to chair a commission on ballistic missiles. Rumsfeld’s conclusion, in 1998, was that it would take Iran at most five years to build a long-range missile; and he warned the Iranians may have already decided to do so.

All of those estimates were ultimately proven to be unrealistic. The Iranians didn’t have an ICBM in 2003, they didn’t have one in 2010, and they don’t have one now.

Lately, the spy agencies have sung a different tune. When James Clapper, the director of national intelligence, briefed Congress on the Iranian missile threat this month, he notably declined to predict when Iran would get an ICBM. Same with his predecessor, Dennis Blair.

“That’s probably a tacit acknowledgement that they really don’t have much to say,” says Pillar, who was the top Mideast analyst for the entire constellation of intelligence agencies during much of the last decade. “It’s far enough away to say ‘they’re so many years away,’ or you don’t say anything at all.”

Israel has lots of reasonable fears about Iran, a country whose president denies the Holocaust while implying that he’d love a second one, and which appears to be building a nuclear weapon. It doesn’t have to make all kinds of extra concerns up.

Additional research assistance provided by Robert Beckhusen.

[styky]

Iran Threatens to Attack Israel with Missiles and the U.S. with Suicide Bombers, But WH Pressuring Israel to Do Nothing
http://www.bibleprophecyblog.com/2012/0 ... -with.html

[styky]

Excellent mapping pic....

As Pentagon Sends Reinforcements To Straits Of Hormuz, Iraq Redux Looms
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/pentagon- ... edux-looms

[Godwin]

Popular Media Personality: The U.S. Has the Moral Authority to Annihilate Iran Because They’re Evil

http://www.zerohedge.com/contributed/po ... cause-they’re-evil

[Dogpatch]

Think Progress, Media Matters Downplay Iranian Nuke Threat

Part I: Groups Distort Iranian capabilities, intentions

Recent reports by several left-leaning news outlets have downplayed new intelligence indicating Iran’s nuclear program is more dangerous than previously thought, according to nuclear specialists and former government officials.

“For political reasons, those denying Iranian ill-intent are never going to accept evidence that Iran seeks nuclear bomb technology,” said Michael Rubin, a former Pentagon adviser on Iran and Iraq who is now a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank.

“Likewise,” he added, “some people will claim that the moon landing was done in a movie studio, or that 9/11 was an inside job — the only proof that will convince them is a mushroom cloud over Israel.”



The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) disclosed new intelligence in a November report indicating that the Iranian regime continues to clandestinely enrich uranium and that unresolved questions surround its past nuclear weapons work. This, despite recent setbacks – including the assassination of several nuclear scientists and the Stuxnet computer virus, which wreaked havoc on Iran’s nuclear centrifuges – that were thought to have slowed the Iranian pursuit of nuclear weapons.

Despite a mounting body of evidence detailing Iran’s past and current nuclear work, liberal groups such as the Center for American Progress Action Fund’s Think Progress blog and the Huffington Post, among others, have published numerous reports questioning the IAEA’s recent findings on Iran.

The reports state that the IAEA’s evidence is hazy and that there’s no way to prove Iran desires a weapon.

Several nuclear experts and former U.S. government officials described this reporting as fundamentally flawed, however, warning that all credible evidence indicates that Iran is on the cusp of crossing the nuclear threshold.

“They are certainly moving on [the] path” towards weaponization, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper declared at a recent Senate intelligence briefing on Iran.

During the same briefing, Gen. David Petraeus, director of the CIA, referred to the IAEA’s report as “the authoritative document” on Iran’s nuclear program.

That’s why those working to discredit the nuclear watchdog group’s findings “are distorting what the IAEA says,” explained David Albright, a physicist and founder of the non-partisan Institute for Science and International Security.

Albright believes that the goal of these misleading reports is to hamstring the Obama administration and prevent it from taking a more confrontational stance toward the Iranian regime, which has refused to answer IAEA’s questions about its nuclear operation for years.

“People are scared of military strikes and some groups have a vested interest in downplaying anything about the Iranian nuclear program,” Albright said.

Stuxnet, for instance, which was widely reported to have dealt a critical blow to Iran’s uranium enrichment operation, “didn’t actually do that much damage,” said Matthew Kroenig, a nuclear security fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. “The virus didn’t really slow their trajectory at all.”

On this and other fronts, much of the media’s coverage has been “fairly superficial,” Albright added.

The IAEA’s most recent report reveals that Iran has been pursuing nuclear weapons since the mid-1980s with public activities peaking around 2002 before apparently moving underground.

“It shows the length of time that program has existed and how it hasn’t really gone away,” but has instead “become more secretive and covered,” Albright explained.

Think Progress, meanwhile, has worked to undermine the notion that Iran desires a nuclear weapon. For instance, after the release of the November study, the site reported that “the IAEA did not definitively conclude that Iran resumed a nuclear weapons program,” and that “uncertainty remains whether the Iranian regime has made a formal decision to obtain a nuclear weapon.”

The Huffington Post has also gone out of its way to chastise those who believe Iran ultimately desires the bomb.

This does not track with IAEA findings, however. As the IAEA’s director general, Yukiya Amano, recently put it,” what we know suggests the development of nuclear weapons.”

Even Democrats with knowledge of the situation dismiss CAP’s reports as unreliable and say that liberal outlets are undermining the public debate about the Iranian threat.

“It’s just so hard to take them seriously,” said a senior Democratic Capitol Hill aide who works on issues pertaining to Iran. “These guys write on their blogs and have their magazine pieces, but it just doesn’t matter – and it certainly does not matter on the Hill. I just don’t think CAP’s Middle East policy is taken seriously.”

The Democrat added that “people on the left shouldn’t be in the business of minimizing the threat of deranged anti-Semitic dictators like [Iranian] President Ahmadinejad.”

Another key IAEA finding is that Iran continues to produce large amounts of uranium enriched to nearly 20 percent. This brings the Iranian regime much closer to possessing weapons-grade material and far exceeds the levels required by their current civilian nuclear program.

“Once they’re siting on a stockpile of 20 percent [enriched uranium], they’re extremely close to the ability to quickly enrich that to weapons grade,” said Stephen Rademaker, a former assistant secretary of state for international security and nonproliferation.

“By the end of this year, they are going to have about 250 kilos of this 20 percent enriched uranium, which is a matter of concern for the international community,” noted Olli Heinonen, a former IAEA deputy director general who has inspected Iran’s centrifuges on the organization’s behalf. “Once you have 25 kilos of this [bomb grade] material, in one month’s time you can produce enough uranium for a nuclear bomb.”

Further enrichment “would be very significant and a tell tale indicator” that Iran has made the decision to pursue nuclear weapons, Petraeus recently noted. “There is no commercial use for that.”

“Factually,” Petraeus added, “the amount of 20 percent enriched uranium that they have exceeds any requirement, for example, for the Tehran research reactor for the foreseeable future, so there are already concerns about that.”

But, despite these revelations, “there is a narrative out there that a lot of people want to tell about how the Iranians are having a lot of problems, how sanctions are biting them and how Stuxnet set them back,” Rademaker said. “Even with all those things, the program has hardly been crippled. To the contrary, it’s doing quite well.

Part II on Think Progress, Media Matters and the Iranian nuclear program due Wednesday.
The Washington Free beacon

[styky]

Israel Won’t Warn U.S. Before Strike On Iran
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/02/2 ... d=webmail2

Russia Upgrades Syria-Based Electronic Station To Warn Iran Of US/Israeli Attack
http://www.debka.com/article/21774/

[styky]

John Bolton responds to Obama news conference today and called it a 'conscious falsehood.'

http://www.mrctv.org/videos/john-bolton ... -falsehood

[styky]

Pentagon Already Planning for Strikes Against Iran and Syria According to Senior Officials
http://theintelhub.com/2012/03/10/penta ... officials/

Iran Rattles Sabers: ’11,000 Missiles Ready To Launch’ At Israel, US Targets
http://dailycaller.com/2012/03/11/iran- ... and-israel

[styky]

US Warns Iran: Accede or be Attacked
http://www.jpost.com/LandedPages/PrintA ... ?id=261804

Americans Will Back U.S. Military Action If Iran Seeks Nuclear Arms, Poll Shows
http://www.haaretz.com/news/middle-east ... s-1.418324

Government Issues Travel Advisory to Turkey; Iran Seeking Out Israelis
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340 ... 51,00.html

Azerbaijan Reportedly Arrests 22 Suspected of Plotting Attacks on US, Israeli Embassies
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2012/03 ... nterviews/

[styky]

US 'tells Russia to warn Iran of last chance'
US-led military strikes against Iran are inevitable this year if Tehran does not give ground at multilateral talks next month over its nuclear programme, according to diplomatic sources in Moscow.

Hillary Clinton, the US Secretary of State, has asked Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov to warn Iran the negotiations represent a “last chance” to avoid military action, the Kommersant newspaper reported.

“Hillary Clinton asked her Russian colleague to pass that thought on to the Iranian authorities, with whom Washington does not maintain its own relations,” a high-ranking foreign ministry source told the paper.

The source said there was a high likelihood of an attack "before the end of the year", adding: "The Israelis are, in essence, blackmailing [US president Barack] Obama. They are putting him in a difficult position: either he supports war or he himself will lose support.”

There was no immediate response to the report from the US State Department. .......................http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldne ... hance.html

[styky]

What's at Stake with Iranian Sanctions?
http://oilprice.com/Energy/Energy-Gener ... tions.html

[styky]

USS Enterprise Prepares to Cross Suez Canal, Days Away from Anchor in Arabian Sea
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/uss-enter ... abian-ssea

Kuala Lumpur Seizes Suitcases of Counterfeit US Dollars Traced to Iran
http://www.debka.com/article/21868

[styky]

Iran says could hit U.S. if it came under attack - paper

http://uk.reuters.com/article/2012/04/0 ... NU20120403

[styky]

Iran will retaliate if attacked, but how?

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/201 ... d-but-how/