Iran Readies for War, Raises Security Level - By Dalit Halevi - http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/194274#.VTUnLpuBF9C
As Iranian gears up for a possible showdown with Saudi Arabia over Yemen, Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei dismissed what "American threats."
As Iranian ships steam towards Yemen for a possible showdown with Saudi Arabia, the country's Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei dismissed what he termed "American threats" as "stupid lies." In a speech to Iranian forces, Khamenei pointed to comments by U.S. security officials this week, to the effect that "America is leaving all its options on the table, and on the other hand they say they want us to stop defending ourselves. This is a stupid comment."
"The Iranian nation has proven that it always defends and protects itself with all its might when it is under attack," said Khamenei. "It stands against all illogical invaders, and united it is like an iron fist." On Sunday, Khamenei raised the security level in Iran, calling up and deploying reserves throughout the country, in the event the country is attacked, he was quoted as saying.
Khamenei was apparently responding to comments by Defense Secretary Ashton Carter last week. "We're assisting the Saudis to protect their own territory and to conduct operations that are designed to lead ultimately to a political settlement to Yemen," said Carter.
The U.S. has imposed an arms embargo on the Yemeni Houthi rebels, who have taken over most of the country, replacing Yemen's legitimate government. Iran has vowed to assist the rebels, but has not been caught smuggling weapons into Yemen yet. U.S. forces have boarded several of the Iranian ships off Yemen's coast - consensually, the Navy said - looking for weapons, but have not found. "We will continue to vigilantly defend freedom of navigation and to conduct consensual searches in an effort to ensure that drugs, human trafficking, weapons trafficking and other contraband are limited," a U.S. Navy official was quoted in The Hill as saying.
Meanwhile, seven to nine Iranian frigates are reportedly making their way to the Yemen coast, and there are concerns that they will try to defy the naval blockade Saudi Arabia, along with Egypt, has imposed on Yemen. U.S. officials said that they were not planning to get involved, but in the event that a battle breaks out, the U.S. will "examine the situation carefully," officials were quoted as saying.
Speaking Sunday, Khamenei said that the United States and "the Zionist entity" were "the greatest threats to the world and the region." Turning his attention to the framework on nuclear work drawn up in Lausanne several weeks ago, Khamenei said that Iran would "never" allow international inspectors into its military installations, for fear that "spies" will "steal Iran's secrets and compromise our security."
Declassified: Iran 'At Most' 2-3 Months from Bomb - By Caitlin Burke - http://www.cbn.com/cbnnews/world/2015/April/Obama-Iran-2-3-Months-Away-from-Bomb/
The Obama administration says Iran is "at most" two to three months away from enriching enough nuclear fuel for an atomic bomb, an estimate that's been known for years but kept classified until now.
Iran is also reportedly rekindling its relationship with Hamas, an offshoot of Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood and the Palestinian faction ruling the Gaza Strip.
The new information is surfacing just as U.S.-led negotiations with Iran are approaching a final deal.
While it's not new to the Obama administration, the declassified estimate on Iran's nuclear breakout time comes as a surprise -- and a well-timed one, just in time to make the case for its Iran deal to Congress and to the public, BloombergView reported.
When asked how long the administration held the estimate, Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz responded, "quite some time."
At the beginning of Obama's second term, he made a point to tell the American people Iran was more than a year away from producing a nuclear bomb. He never mentioned that his intelligence community believed Iran's breakout time for a nuclear weapon was much less or that he was still pushing for diplomacy with Iran, rather than the tough new sanctions proposed by Congress.
Critics of the administration's original estimate say they were snubbed by the Obama administration.
"They have made it very hard for those of us saying, 'Let's just focus on weapons-grade uranium.' There is this shorter period of time and not a year. If you just want a nuclear test device to blow up underground, I don't think you need a year," Bloomberg News quoted David Albright, a former weapons inspector.
Meanwhile, according to the Wall Street Journal, Iran and Hamas are back on friendly terms.
Some believe Iran's elite Revolutionary Guards transferred tens of millions of dollars over the past few months to Hamas, the Palestinian faction that controls Gaza.
This creates a major threat to Israel.
According to intelligence reports, those funds are being used primarily to help Hamas rebuild the terror tunnels.
Israel destroyed many of those tunnels in response to Hamas rocket barrages on Israeli cities and towns last summer.
Egypt, under the leadership of President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, has also destroyed dozens of tunnels that allowed Hamas and other terror groups relatively easy access to the Sinai Peninsula.
Iran's Nuclear Intentions Are Clear - Todd Strandberg - http://www.raptureready.com/rap16.html
One of history's most profound moments of naiveté and folly occurred in 1938, when British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain returned home from the Munich Conference. At the London Airport, Chamberlain proudly held up a piece of paper containing Adolf Hitler's signature.
On it was a deal that allowed Hitler to take over part of Czechoslovakia if he promised not to seize any more land. Chamberlain had hoped the agreement would become what he declared as "Peace in our time," but what actually resulted was the most costly war in human history.
The deal over Iran's nuclear program makes me wonder if it will soon be time to say to Neville Chamberlain, "All is forgiven." Despite the terms "deal" and "historic understanding" being used, it is unclear that any agreement exists other than in the minds of the negotiators. The only thing achieved by the talks has been a general framework between Iran and six world powers. The final agreement will be worked out by a June 30 deadline.
The timeline of nuclear diplomacy over Iran's nuclear program is now in its 13th year. In 2002, an Iranian opposition group exposed two nuclear facilities in the cities of Natanz and Arak. While various nuclear non-proliferation bodies talk, Iran keeps expanding its atomic infrastructure. A huge problem is that they don't have any set time limits with Iran. In just the past couple years, five major deadlines have come and gone.
Iranian leaders are already trying to unravel this pre-agreement deal. As soon Iran's Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif arrived home, he started babbling about terms that were completely opposite to what he had just agreed to in Switzerland. A week later, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said a deal would require an immediate end to sanctions and there would be no inspections.
There is an old saying that goes: "Never argue with idiots because they will drag you down to their level and then beat you with experience." I think we allowed ourselves to become entangled in idiocy when we accepted the argument that Iran has a legitimate need for nuclear power. There is no practical economic reason for Iran to want nuclear reactors. Because it has a 100-year supply of cheap oil, it is ridiculous for Tehran to claim it needs nuclear power to generate electricity.
Iran's willingness to endure years of painful sanctions over its nuclear program should also be taken into consideration. After going this far, the Mad Mullahs of Iran are not going to allow their prize to be taken from them.
Another important problem with the talks is that the use of diplomacy with an aggressor never works. Unless there is the backing of military force, negotiations have always failed to prevent warfare. President Obama has already made the process toothless by excluding the option of military action.
Obama has repeatedly said that said Iran should never be allowed to have access to nuclear weapons. Here are three quotes from the man himself:
"Iran's development of a nuclear weapon, I believe, is unacceptable. And we have to mount an international effort to prevent that from happening." - November 7, 2008.
"There should be no doubt - the United States and the international community are determined to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons." - July 1, 2010.
"Let there be no doubt: America is determined to prevent Iran from getting a nuclear weapon, and I will take no options off the table to achieve that goal." - January 24, 2012.
I don't know what is going on in Obama's head, but it is becoming increasingly clear that he lacks the willpower to stop Iran from building an atomic bomb. The problem could be egotism, narcissism or a secret hatred of Israel.
Obama refuses to force Iran to recognize Israel's right to exist as any part of the deal. His delusional nature reminds me of the Germanwings co-pilot who flew that jet into the French Alps. In our case, the situation is reversed. We have plenty of time to remove Obama from the controls, but we don't have a consensus to act.
At some point, Israel will be forced to take action. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu knows a nuclear Iran would mean Israel's doom. The Jewish State has already acted to end the nuclear ambitions of Iraq in 1981 and of Syria in 2007. A strike against Iran would just be one on a grander scale.
An Israeli strike would instantly cause things to go from bad to worse. The act of Israeli jets bombing Iranian nuclear facilities may result in American fighters being ordered by the White House to intercede on the side of Iran. Of course, Obama would blow a head gasket-blaming Israel for sabotaging his peace plan.
I'm normally not one to speculate on what God has planned for the near future. The way events have unfolded in such rapid pace, it seems that the Lord is setting things up for a major disaster to occur on Obama's watch. With a little over a year and a half before Obama leaves office, we'll soon find out.
"And, behold, I come quickly; and My reward is with Me, to give every man according as his work shall be" (Revelation 22:12).
How does sanctions-ridden Iran find a multibillion war chest to fund 6 armies fighting in 4 Mid East wars? - http://www.debka.com/article/24556/How-does-sanctions-ridden-Iran-find-a-multibillion-war-chest-to-fund-6-armies-fighting-in-4-Mid-East-wars-
According to figures reaching debkafile in March, Iran is spending a vast fortune - up to an estimated $6-8 billion per year - to keep six armed forces fighting in four Middle East war campaigns for expanding its sphere of influence. Month after month, Tehran forks out close to half a billion dollars - and sometimes more - to keep those conflicts on the boil. How Iran manages to keep this war chest flowing so abundantly from an economy crippled by international sanctions has never been explained.
Syria
As the Syrian war enters its fifth year, Iranian Revolutionary Guards are found to be running it from four command and control centers, our military and intelligence sources report:
1. In Damascus, the IRGC operates as a part of the Syrian General Staff, with two imported pro-Iranian militias at its independent disposal. This command center has three tasks: To oversee the Syrian general staff and monitor its operational planning; to guard President Bashar Assad's regime and his family; defend key locations such as the military airport and Shiite shrines, and keep the highways to Lebanon open.
2. In the Aleppo region of the north, IRGC officers were engaged in drawing up plans for a general offensive to rout rebel forces from positions they have captured in the city. Tehran attaches prime importance to a peak effort for the recapture of Aleppo, Syria's largest city. The IRGC command has transferred large-scale Hizballah forces from Lebanon to this arena, along with Afghan and Pakistani Shiite militias. Thousands of these combatants underwent training at specialist IRGC bases. Our military sources disclose that those militias recently took so many casualties that Iranian officers decided to hold off the Aleppo offensive.
3. In the Qalamoun Mts., which are situated athwart the Syrian-Lebanese frontier, Tehran has given high priority to flushing rebel forces, including the Nusra Front and the Islamic State, out of the pockets they have seized on the mountain slopes, so as to clear the mountain roads for the passage of Hezbollah units. This offensive has also been delayed.
4. In South Syria, Iranian officers led a large-scale month-long drive to drive rebel forces out of the area they hold between Deraa and Damascus, in order to position Iranian-led Hezbollah and pro-Iranian militia forces face to face with the Israeli army on the Golan. This drive has so far been stalled.
Tehran establishes - and pays for - new Syrian army
Iranian officers have established, trained and equipped a new 70,000-strong fighting force called the Syrian National Defense Force. Its operations, including the soldiers' wages, are financed from Tehran's pocket.
Iran runs airlifts day by day to re-supply the Syrian army with weapons systems and ammunition, and the Syrian Air Force with bombs and ordnance for attacks against rebel forces - of late, mostly barrel bombs. Intelligence sources estimate that Iran's expenditure in the Syrian conflict now hits $200 million per month - around $2.5 billion a year.
Iran bankrolls Hezbollah from top to bottom
The 25,000-strong Lebanese Shiite Hezbollah operates under the direct command of IRGC officers. All its military equipment comes from Tehran, which also draws up its annual budget. Each month, Iran transfers to Beirut $150-200 million, as well as paying for all the Lebanese militias' expenses for maintaining an expeditionary force in Syria. Hezbollah costs Tehran an approximate $2 billion per annul.
An all-Shiite "people's national army" for Iraq, re-supplies for Yemen
Iran's deep military intervention in Iraq includes the creation of an all-Shiite "people's national army." It follows the same template as the Syrian National Defense Force and consists of the same number of fighters - 70,000 troops.
Tehran has also invested in barricades to fortify Baghdad against invasion from the north and the west.
The offensive to retake the Sunni town of Tikrit from the Islamic State was led by Iranian officers, and fed constantly with high-quality weapons systems, including missiles and tanks.
All the war materiel required by the Iraqi army and Shiite militias fighting the Islamic State is airlifted to Baghdad, some directly from Iran.
There is no reliable estimate of the Islamic Republic's current contribution to Iraq's war budget (estimated at a quarter of a billion dollars per month) because part of the cost is carried by the Iraqi government from oil revenues.
In Yemen, until Saudi Arabia and Egypt imposed an air and sea blockade a month ago, Iran ran supplies by air and sea to the Shiite Zaydi Houthis and their Yemeni army allies whom Tehran championed, sponsored and funded directly. The deployment of US warships in the Gulf of Aden this week put a stop to this traffic. But by then, Iran had sunk an estimated half a billion dollars in a Houthi victory.
Sanctions are no bar to Iran's ambitions
This arithmetic is testimony to Iran's mysteriously deep pockets. The sanctions the US, Europe and the United Nations clamped down on Tehran clearly had no effect on its willingness and ability to lay out fabulous sums to promote its ambitions as Middle East top dog.
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