BBC NEWS | Middle East | Iranian drone 'shot down in Iraq' - 0 views
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US forces shot down an Iranian drone 60 miles (100km) north-east of Baghdad last month, the US military says.
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The US accused Iran of deliberately sending the spy drone into Iraqi airspace, but a top Iraqi official suggested it had been a mistake.
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"This was not an accident on the part of the Iranians," said US military spokesman Lt Col Mark Ballesteros, who identified the drone as an Iranian-made Ababil 3.
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Obama takes US closer to total ban on cluster bombs | World news | The Guardian - 0 views
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The United States has stepped closer to a total ban on the use and export of cluster bombs with the signing by Barack Obama of a new permanent law that would make it almost impossible for the US to sell the controversial weapons. The decision was hailed by opponents of the weapons as a "major turnaround in US policy" that overrode Pentagon calls to permit their continued export.
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Under the new rules, the air and artillery-deployed weapons, which scatter hundreds of bomblets, are required to have a self-destruct failure rate of less than 1%, which few of the US cluster bombs meet, before being cleared for sale. Despite a temporary ban having been in place, the Pentagon made it clear last year that it was keen to see the export of the weapons again.
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The new law comes into force amid growing pressure from Congress for a complete ban on their use, even by the US military. International opposition to cluster bombs, which maim and kill civilians long after they have been fired during conflicts, has been hardening rapidly since the Israeli Defence Forces fired more than 1m into southern Lebanon during the 2006 war with Hezbollah. Last year, a treaty limiting their use was signed by 95 countries, including most of America's Nato allies - but not the US.
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The truth about the Mossad | World news | The Guardian - 0 views
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two years ago this week, when a bomb in a Pajero jeep in Damascus decapitated a man named Imad Mughniyeh. Mughniyeh was the military leader of Lebanon's Shia movement Hizbullah, an ally of Iran, and was wanted by the US, France and half a dozen other countries. Israel never went beyond cryptic nodding and winking about that killing in the heart of the Syrian capital, but it is widely believed to have been one of its most daring and sophisticated clandestine operations
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The Mossad's most celebrated exploits included the abduction of the fugitive Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann, who was later tried and hanged in Israel. Others were organising the defection of an Iraqi pilot who flew his MiG-21 to Israel, and support for Iraqi Kurdish rebels against Baghdad. Military secrets acquired by Elie Cohen, the infamous spy who penetrated the Syrian leadership, helped Israel conquer the Golan Heights in the 1967 Middle East war.
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Over the years, the Mossad's image has been badly tarnished at home as well as abroad. It was blamed in part for failing to get wind of Egyptian-Syrian plans for the devastating attack that launched the 1973 Yom Kippur war. Critics wondered whether the spies had got their priorities right by focusing on hunting down Palestinian gunmen in the back alleys of European cities, when they should have been stealing secrets in Cairo and Damascus. The Mossad also played a significant, though still little-known, role in the covert supply of arms to Ayatollah Khomeini's Iran to help fight Saddam Hussein's Iraq, as part of the Iran-Contra scandal during Ronald Reagan's presidency.
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Israel's peace dividend | Seth Freedman | Comment is free | guardian.co.uk - 0 views
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The TA-25 has now more than doubled since November 2008, when the global credit crisis was at its height. While the rebound on the Israeli exchange is in line with a general trend of recovery on bourses around the world, what sets Israel apart from its peers is the minimal effect the credit crunch had on the state's economy.
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The still-booming hi-tech and pharmaceutical sectors also helped the Israeli economy ride out the storm, contributing to the reaching of the latest financial milestone being predicted by economists: a per capita GDP of $30,000, up from $20,000 less than a decade earlier.
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pressure is now mounting on Netanyahu in his current incarnation as prime minister, with calls emanating from a variety of quarters urging him to strike a peace deal with the Palestinians for the sake of Israel's economy as much as Israeli society as a whole.Fischer believes the country could see growth of almost 7% per year if the conflict with the Palestinians was resolved, which – set against current levels of around 3% – provides a massive financial incentive to sign a final-status agreement. But far more pressing are the consequences of not reaching a lasting accord with the Palestinians in terms of the Iranian problem.
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Middle East Peace: Obama's Mission Impossible - SPIEGEL ONLINE - News - International - 0 views
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Unwilling and unable to make a constructive contribution towards a solution and at the same time frustrated that the Americans have taken the initiative, Europeans do what they do best: warn and complain, like the viewers of a soccer game, who -- from the stands -- know they would convert every strike into a goal.
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After over 40 years' occupation, there can be no return to a status quo ante, because the status quo ante itself is a subject of dispute. For most Israelis, it is Israel within its 1967 borders, while for Hamas, Hezbollah and Iran, it's Palestine prior to the founding of Israel. When they talk about the end of the occupation, they don't mean Hebron, Ramallah, Bethlehem and Nablus, they mean Haifa, Beersheba, Jaffa and Tiberias.
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One side insists on the expansion of settlements, the other demands their right of return -- like travellers who've taken the wrong train and getting ever farther away from their destination, but not wanting to get off because they've been travelling so long. So the Israelis play victors in a dead end and the Palestinians, heroes without any prospect of success.
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Millionaire Mullahs - Forbes.com - 0 views
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As minister of the Revolutionary Guards in the 1980s, Rafiqdoost played a key role in sponsoring Hezbollah in Lebanon--which kidnapped foreigners, hijacked airplanes, set off car bombs, trafficked in heroin and pioneered the use of suicide bombers. According to Gregory Sullivan, spokesman for the Near Eastern Affairs Bureau at the U.S. State Department, the foundations are the perfect vehicles to carry out Iran's shadow foreign policy. (One of them offered the $2.8 million bounty to anyone who carried out Ayatollah Khomeini's fatwa to kill British author Salman Rushdie.)
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The largest "charity" (at least in terms of real estate holdings) is the centuries-old Razavi Foundation, charged with caring for Iran's most revered shrine--the tomb of Reza, the Eighth Shiite Imam, in the northern city of Mashhad. It is run by one of Iran's leading hard-line mullahs, Ayatollah Vaez-Tabasi, who prefers to stay out of the public eye but emerges occasionally to urge death to apostates and other opponents of the clerical regime.
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The Razavi Foundation owns vast tracts of urban real estate all across Iran, as well as hotels, factories, farms and quarries. Its assets are impossible to value with any precision, since the foundation has never released an inventory of its holdings, but Iranian economists speak of a net asset value of $15 billion or more. The foundation also receives generous contributions from the millions of pilgrims who visit the Mashhad shrine each year.
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Millionaire Mullahs - Forbes.com - 0 views
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The other side of Iran's economy belongs to the Islamic foundations, which account for 10% to 20% of the nation's GDP--$115 billion last year. Known as bonyads, the best-known of these outfits were established from seized property and enterprises by order of Ayatollah Khomeini in the first weeks of his regime. Their mission was to redistribute to the impoverished masses the "illegitimate" wealth accumulated before the revolution by "apostates" and "blood-sucking capitalists." And, for a decade or so, the foundations shelled out money to build low-income housing and health clinics. But since Khomeini's death in 1989 they have increasingly forsaken their social welfare functions for straightforward commercial activities.
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Until recently they were exempt from taxes, import duties and most government regulation. They had access to subsidized foreign currency and low-interest loans from state-owned banks. And they were not accountable to the Central Bank, the Ministry of Finance or any other government institution. Formally, they are under the jurisdiction of the Supreme Leader; effectively, they operate without any oversight at all, answerable only to Allah.
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According to Shiite Muslim tradition, devout businessmen are expected to donate 20% of profits to their local mosques, which use the money to help the poor. By contrast, many bonyads seem like straightforward rackets, extorting money from entrepreneurs. Besides the biggest national outfits, almost every Iranian town has its own bonyad, affiliated with local mullahs. "Many small businessmen complain that as soon as you start to make some money, the leading mullah will come to you and ask for a contribution to his local charity," says an opposition economist, who declines to give his name. "If you refuse, you will be accused of not being a good Muslim. Some witnesses will turn up to testify that they heard you insult the Prophet Mohammad, and you will be thrown in jail." The Cosa Nostra meets fundamentalism.
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Millionaire Mullahs - Forbes.com - 0 views
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The 1979 revolution transformed the Rafsanjani clan into commercial pashas. One brother headed the country's largest copper mine; another took control of the state-owned TV network; a brother-in-law became governor of Kerman province, while a cousin runs an outfit that dominates Iran's $400 million pistachio export business; a nephew and one of Rafsanjani's sons took key positions in the Ministry of Oil; another son heads the Tehran Metro construction project (an estimated $700 million spent so far). Today, operating through various foundations and front companies, the family is also believed to control one of Iran's biggest oil engineering companies, a plant assembling Daewoo automobiles, and Iran's best private airline (though the Rafsanjanis insist they do not own these assets).
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The gossip on the street, going well beyond the observable facts, has the Rafsanjanis stashing billions of dollars in bank accounts in Switzerland and Luxembourg; controlling huge swaths of waterfront in Iran's free economic zones on the Persian Gulf; and owning whole vacation resorts on the idyllic beaches of Dubai, Goa and Thailand.
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Rafsanjani's youngest son, Yaser, owns a 30-acre horse farm in the super-fashionable Lavasan neighborhood of north Tehran, where land goes for over $4 million an acre. Just where did Yaser get his money? A Belgian-educated businessman, he runs a large export-import firm that includes baby food, bottled water and industrial machinery.
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Addressing Muslims, Obama Pushes Mideast Peace - NYTimes.com - 0 views
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In opening a bold overture to the Islamic world on Thursday, President Obama confronted frictions between Muslims and the West, but he reserved some of his bluntest words for Israel, as he expressed sympathy for the Palestinians and what he called the “daily humiliations, large and small, that come with occupation.”
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While Mr. Obama emphasized that America’s bond with Israel was “unbreakable,” he spoke in equally powerful terms of the Palestinian people, describing their plight as “intolerable” after 60 years of statelessness, and twice referring to “Palestine” in a way that put Palestinians on parallel footing with Israelis.
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Mr. Obama said the bond between the United States and Israel was “based upon cultural and historical ties, and the recognition that the aspiration for a Jewish homeland is rooted in a tragic history that cannot be denied.”“On the other hand,” Mr. Obama added, “it is also undeniable that the Palestinian people — Muslims and Christians — have suffered in pursuit of a homeland. For more than 60 years, they’ve endured the pain of dislocation.” He said Americans “will not turn our backs on the legitimate Palestinian aspiration for dignity, opportunity and a state of their own.”
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Prime Minister's Speech at the Begin-Sadat Center at Bar-Ilan University - 0 views
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The Iranian threat looms large before us, as was further demonstrated yesterday. The greatest danger confronting Israel, the Middle East, the entire world and human race, is the nexus between radical Islam and nuclear weapons.
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I turn to all Arab leaders tonight and I say: “Let us meet. Let us speak of peace and let us make peace. I am ready to meet with you at any time. I am willing to go to Damascus, to Riyadh, to Beirut, to any place- including Jerusalem.I call on the Arab countries to cooperate with the Palestinians and with us to advance an economic peace.
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The economic success of the Gulf States has impressed us all and it has impressed me. I call on the talented entrepreneurs of the Arab world to come and invest here and to assist the Palestinians – and us – in spurring the economy.
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Peres: Syria won't get Golan Heights on a 'silver platter' - Haaretz - Israel News - 0 views
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President Shimon Peres said on Monday that Syrian President Bashar Assad must understand that Israel would not hand over the Golan Heights on a "silver platter" so long as Damascus continued its ties with Iran and Hezbollah. Peres told visiting German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier that a true peace process between the long time enemies would have to take place at the negotiating table, without preconditions or mediation.
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Syrian officials last month threatened to take back the Golan Heights by force if a peace agreement involving the return of the strategic plateau is not reached with Israel. Advertisement A group calling itself the Syrian Committee for the Freedom of the Golan said it would take steps to regain control of the territory, adding that Israel has not shown willingness to achieve peace or to return what they called "Syrian land."
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Just prior to that, Assad rejected Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's offer to resume peace talks between the two countries from "point zero." Assad said the negotiations should resume from the point at which they stopped under former Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, when the two sides had planned to formulate mutual commitments that would enable the talks to move to a direct negotiations stage.
Report: Iran offers to arm Lebanese army - Israel News, Ynetnews - 0 views
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Iran has offered to arm the Lebanese Military, Beirut's al-Akhbar newspaper reported Wednesday. In a brief report, the paper said that the Iranian Embassy in Beirut inquired after the Lebanese army's armament requirements. The latter replied in detail, focusing mainly on air force needs.
Israel's FM: Iran is obstacle to Mideast peace - 0 views
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Iran is the main obstacle to peace in the Mideast, Israel's new foreign minister said in an interview published Friday.
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Avigdor Lieberman told The Jerusalem Post that it will be "impossible to resolve any problem in our region" without dealing with Iran's nuclear program and its support for militant groups opposed to Israel, such as Hezbollah and Hamas.
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His comments come as differences have appeared between the hard-line government of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the Obama administration over the peace process. President Barack Obama has said the U.S. seeks a "two-state" solution, with the creation of a Palestinian state next to Israel, while Netanyahu has not publicly embraced the principle. Israelis have also expressed concern over Obama's calls for outreach to Iran, which Israel considers its top nemesis.
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The Waiting Game: How Will Iran Respond to Obama's Overtures? - SPIEGEL ONLINE - News -... - 0 views
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Ahmadinejad's program includes a visit to Isfahan's nuclear facilities on the outskirts of the city, where scientists are working on uranium enrichment. This is one of the mysterious factories the world fears, because it believes that the Iranians are building a nuclear bomb there.
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This is the Iranian theocracy that sends shivers down the world's collective spine. For many, Iran is a nightmarish country, a combination of high-tech weapons and a religious ideology based on 1,400-year-old martyr legends that focuses on suffering. It is an isolated and unpredictable country, a wounded civilization whose leaders are taking their revenge on the West by striving to develop nuclear weapons and financing radical Islamists from Hamas to Hezbollah.
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The Iranian president is currently under more pressure than usual. He is being asked to venture into new territory and respond to America's offer to relax tensions. Obama's predecessor, George W. Bush, threatened Tehran with "regime change" of the sort he announced and implemented in neighboring Iraq. Bush refused to so much as negotiate over the Iranian nuclear program and, with the arrogance of a superpower, helped unify the Iranian public against the "USA, the Great Satan." It was Bush who ensured that the relatively unpopular regime of mullahs, despite its mishandling of the economy, could stabilize itself.
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Foreign Policy: The Axis of Upheaval - 0 views
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Iran, meanwhile, continues to support both Hamas and its Shiite counterpart in Lebanon, Hezbollah, and to pursue an alleged nuclear weapons program that Israelis legitimately see as a threat to their very existence.
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No one can say for sure what will happen next within Tehran’s complex political system, but it is likely that the radical faction around President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad will be strengthened by the Israeli onslaught in Gaza. Economically, however, Iran is in a hole that will only deepen as oil prices fall further. Strategically, the country risks disaster by proceeding with its nuclear program, because even a purely Israeli air offensive would be hugely disruptive. All this risk ought to point in the direction of conciliation, even accommodation, with the United States. But with presidential elections in June, Ahmadinejad has little incentive to be moderate.
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The democratic governments in Kabul and Islamabad are two of the weakest anywhere. Among the biggest risks the world faces this year is that one or both will break down amid escalating violence. Once again, the economic crisis is playing a crucial role. Pakistan’s small but politically powerful middle class has been slammed by the collapse of the country’s stock market. Meanwhile, a rising proportion of the country’s huge population of young men are staring unemployment in the face. It is not a recipe for political stability.
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