Looking for His glorious appearing! Titus 2:13

U.S. Troops on the Move – Just in Case Nuclear Diplomacy Breaks Down

Daily Newsdebkafile
Categories: Today's Headlines;War

Behind the flurry of upbeat noise about progress in the negotiations over Iran’s nuclear program – mostly from Iranian and European circles – is the rumble of the US army on the move.
Since the end of last week, thousands of US special forces troops at home bases or on leave were warned to stand on the ready for immediate transfer orders to the Middle East. This partial call-up of US reservists, reported exclusively here by DEBKA-Net-Weekly’s military sources, is taking place in tight secrecy.
It is unusual in two ways.
One: The standby orders were marked effective from now until December. The combatants were therefore required to keep their combat gear packed ready at the door for up to eight months – an abnormally long period for holding down thousands of special forces personnel on combat readiness.
Two: The orders named their Middle East destinations if the call-ups were executed – some in Israel, others in Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Yemen and the UAE. In all these places, the US maintains military bases.
Clearly, the Obama administration is a lot less confident than its European allies about the prospect of a breakthrough in the negotiations with Tehran and is preparing for one of three untoward eventualities:

Iranians may fail to deliver on a deal, as their record shows

1. A nuclear accord would be successfully negotiated between the Six Powers and Iran and properly endorsed by the International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna. And then, when the moment came for executing their commitments, the Iranians would go AWOL.
It wouldn’t be the first time. Our intelligence sources say that Washington and Vienna know the score. Iran may accept a deal on Point A or Point B of its nuclear program. A place, date and time would be set for Western and Iranian representatives to meet and start putting the deal into effect. At the appointed time, Western representatives (or IAEA inspectors) are on hand, but the Iranians fail to show up. Attempts to reach them by phone reach disconnected numbers.
This is the sort of thing that happened just four months ago – not once but twice.
On February 3 and 21 one IAEA team of inspectors after another returned to Vienna from Tehran empty-handed after being stood up.
They had been assured by the Iranian government they would be allowed to visit the Parchin military complex to investigate suspicions that nuclear-related explosives tests were taking place there and interview Iranian nuclear scientists.
Both UN teams waited at their hotel in vain. No Iranian officials arrived to escort them to Parchin; neither were they allowed to meet any nuclear scientists. Both times, the IAEA in Vienna was forced to acknowledge that Tehran had toyed with them.

US Special Forces on standby for a midsummer, mid-campaign crisis

The White House is therefore guarding against a similar debacle hitting the administration while Barack Obama is in mid-campaign for reelection - or, even worse, that his Republican rivals make a major issue of Iran’s deceit and show the American public how the US president was made a fool of - both in the formal dialogue he initiated between Iran and the six powers, and in the direct backdoor dialogue in which he held much store.
Before Mitt Romney can go down this road, the White House is making sure American armed forces are in position to hit Iran back for its perfidy.
2. Israel may launch a surprise attack on Iran without warning Washington. Against this eventuality, Washington has found it prudent to keep US forces on high alert so that at 36-hour notice, they can move into any point in the Middle East to deal with the fallout.
3. A Middle East War for the summer of 2012 war is being taken into account - not just to preempt a nuclear Iran but also in consequence of the increasingly bloody Syrian uprising.
In this regard, 17 nations began a special operations forces exercise under US command on May 15 in the Kingdom of Jordan not far from the Syrian border. Tehran took careful note of its codename, “Eager Lion 2012.” Bashar Assad’s surname is the Arabic for “lion.”

Enormous pressure for the White House to move on Syria

The admission to the Washington Post of May 16, by senior Obama administration officials, that the US is involved in coordinating weapons shipments to the Syrian rebels by Persian Gulf suppliers betokens a shift in President Obama’s stance on Syria.
(For three months, debkafile and DEBKA-Net-Weekly’s military sources have run disclosures of Saudi and Qatari intelligence supplies of weapons, explosives and funds to the rebels in Syria. Indeed the last DEBKA-Net-Weekly carried a detailed breakdown of the types of arms Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Turkey were respectively transferring to those rebels.)
There appears to be growing awareness in Washington that the Obama administration cannot afford to sit on the Syrian powder keg without direct action for much longer. The White House is under enormous pressure to shift away from its uncompromising resistance to military ventures in the Middle East until after electioneering is over.
Regarding the form direct action should take, DEBKA-Net-Weekly’s sources in Washington and Riyadh report that when Saudi defense minister Prince Salman bin Abdulaziz visited the White House on April 11, President Obama asked him what he thought ought to be done about Syria to stop President Bashar Assad slaughtering his citizens.

An air strike on the presidential palace should fix it

Prince Salman looked at Obama and said: “First of all, we need to stop talking and shift from words to actions. There is no need for a large Western military intervention like in Libya,” he added. “All that is needed is an air raid and perhaps also an assault by American and Muslim special forces on Kassiun Mountain (in north Damascus) and Kassiun Palace (Bashar Assad’s palace in the Syrian capital) to blow up all their facilities and wipe out all their occupants.”
Bashar Assad maintains all his most confidential government and intelligence facilities on Kassiun Mountain. His entire family resides at Kassiun Palace.
President Obama made no reply to the Saudi defense minister’s suggestion.

Saudi King Abdullah is Rebuffed By Oman and Qatar Rulers

Daily Newsdebkafile
Categories: Commentary;Contemporary Issues

Once again, the Saudi royal family was forced to shelve its long dream of a unified Arabian Gulf.
For 31 years, Saudi monarchs have been trying to persuade the Gulf emirs, sultans and kings of the world’s biggest oil producers, that it was to the benefit of each and everyone’s security to join forces under a single federal government. They first tried during the long and bloody war between revolutionary Iran and Iraq in the 1980s, and again in the years of the first and second Gulf Wars of 1991 and 2003.
This time, Saudi rulers had found powerful levers in the galloping nuclear and diplomatic perils posed by Iran and the grinding down of Sunni strength by the Shiites and allied Alawites led by Syria’s Bashar Assad.
Saudi King Abdullah was certain that, this time, the Sunni rulers of the Gulf meeting at a summit in Riyadh Monday, May, 14, would agree to pool their military and economic resources to create a powerful world bloc and welcome a federal umbrella spread over them all against the Islamic Republic glowering across the water. So sure was he of good results, that Riyadh leaked reports ahead of the summit that federal steps were already afoot between Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and a third unnamed emirate
DEBKA-Net-Weekly's Gulf sources disclose the unnamed party as the United Arab Emirates-UAE.
President Barack Obama showed his support for the Saudi initiative by three steps:

US arms sales to Bahrain are on again

1. The resumption of arms sales to the Bahrain was decided in Washington Sunday, March 13. Because the US implicitly dropped reform as its pre-condition, this act was a major setback for Bahrain's Shiite-dominated opposition.
Washington suspended the $53 million transaction for the sale of military equipment to the tiny Sunni kingdom last September after its security forces violently suppressed protests and killed more than 50 people.
The Obama administration, while disapproving of Saudi military intervention to save the Bahraini throne from the uprising which flared in February 2011, revived the arms transaction as an important concession to Saudi King Abdullah. More than 1,500 Gulf emirate troops, most Saudi, were deployed in Bahrain at a time when Washington was committed to supporting popular revolts against autocratic Arab rulers.
The US is now supporting the very Gulf emirs who suppressed popular dissent, for the sake of enhancing its strategic ties with Saudi Arabia against the Iranian peril.
2. For the first time since US forces massed in Saudi Arabia for war after Saddam Hussein grabbed Kuwait, substantial American navy and marine forces have landed in the oil kingdom: Monday, May 14, the 24^th MEU Amphibious Ready disembarked from the Wasp-class amphibious assault ship USS Iwo Jima at Jeddah port, the Red Sea headquarters of the Saudi Navy. The US troops coming ashore were welcomed by local military chiefs with an invitation to visit an impromptu weapons exhibition.

America secures Saudi Arabia’s back door

The Obama administration therefore not only removed the strings from its arms sales to Bahrain – even though Saudi troops are still here - but also committed the United States to defending Saudi Arabia’s back door, in consideration of heightened Iranian naval activity in the Red Sea and its military and covert intervention in the Yemen conflict on the oil kingdom’s southern border.
3. On Wednesday, two days after the Riyadh summit, Chief of US Naval Operations Adm. Jon Greenert and US Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Norton Schwartz appeared together at the Brookings Institution in Washington to present a new American battle doctrine called the Air-Sea Battle (ASB), which was designed to counter Iran’s avowed strategy of blocking the Strait of Hormuz to world oil traffic in time of war.
They dubbed the Iranian concept A2AD: Anti-Access/Area Denial.
ASB relies on tightly coordinated operations that cross operating "domains" – air, land, sea, undersea, space and cyberspace - Adm. Greenert explained. It brings into play submarines for hitting air defenses with cruise missiles in support of Air Force bombers; F-22 Air Force stealth fighters taking out enemy cruise missile threats to Navy ships, and a Navy technician confusing an opponent's radar system so that an Air Force UAV can attack an enemy command center.
The message conveyed to Gulf rulers reluctant to join a Gulf federation against Iran was that the Obama administration has thrown American military might behind a united Gulf bloc - and will continue to do so.

Abdullah: Choose between the NATO and the EU models

Notwithstanding these US and Saudi inducements, DEBKA-Net-Weekly’s military and intelligence sources report that most of the Gulf rulers were lukewarm at best to the federation plan and dispersed without reaching any final decisions.
The summit’s official communiqué said that the Gulf Council of Cooperation’s foreign ministers would inspect a report drawn up by an ad-hoc committee of eighteen - three from each of the six member-states - and submit recommendations to an extraordinary summit in Riyadh. No date was mentioned. Saudi foreign minister Saud Al Faisal told reporters after the summit “the idea of establishing a Gulf federation is a bust.”
But the Saudi king was not about to give up.
An hour after the summit got down to discussion, DEBKA-Net-Weekly’s Gulf sources disclose a file was distributed to the participants containing in detail two alternative federal plans drawn up by the Saudi king: One proposed expanding the Gulf Council of Cooperation into a NATO-type defense pact with the authority to sign defense treaties with the North Atlantic Alliance Organization.
Those treaties would tie the US, NATO and the GCC into a continuous defense entity.
The second plan proposed restructuring the GCC on the lines of the European Union. It is a little-known fact that the EU is not just a political and economic federation but also boasts a military arm with commitments.
Under the Saudi plan, the expanded GCC would eventually establish a common legislature, introduce a common currency and passports. Above all, its members would be bound together by a mutual defense pact.

Omani and Qatari emirs dead set against unification

At the end of the day, most of the Gulf rulers agreed to reserve final judgment until they had studied the two plans at home in detail.
DEBKA-Net-Weekly's sources disclose that the most outspoken opponents of federation were Sultan Qaboos bin Said Al Said of Oman and Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani of Qatar.
Kuwait ruler Emir Sheikh Sabah Al Ahmad Al Sabah was less unequivocal but withheld endorsement.
The only ruler ready to consider the plan seriously was United Arab Emirates leader, Sheikh Khalifa bin Zayed Al Nahyan of Abu Dhabi, but he too wanted time for a careful perusal of the Saudi blueprints.
Our sources report that Abdullah will not let matters stand there. He has enlisted an army of emissaries and lobbyists to travel round the capitals of the reluctant rulers and keep on nagging them into assenting.
He can’t afford to let it go because the wholesale Arab Gulf rejection of union must impinge vitally on American, Saudi and Iranian interests in the region:
- The Saudi royal family suffered a serious blow to its prestige at home, among its neighbors and in the Arab world at large, one which has slowed down further progress in developing strategic ties between the Saudi royal house and Bahrain’s ruling Al Khalifas.
Our Gulf sources report that, no sooner were the emirs gone from Riyadh, than top Saudi princes were at each other’s throats, each blaming the others for the fiasco ending the most important diplomatic initiative the Saudi government had undertaken in the eighteen months since the outbreak of the Arab Revolt.
They were all forced to admit that the Riyadh summit should have been better prepared.

Setback for Saudis, triumph for Iran

- King Abdullah was deeply offended by Sultan Qaboos’s attitude. He went to a great deal of trouble including personal phone calls to persuade the Omani ruler to attend the summit and congratulated himself on his success. However, Saudi officials forget to check where the Qaboos stood on Gulf federation although it was the main item on the agenda. They were therefore taken aback when he opted out.
The Saudis also accuse the Qatari ruler Al Thani of stabbing them in the back. This accusation is not uncommon, but it occurred at a particularly sensitive moment when Saudi and Qatari intelligence services were cooperating closely to arm and aid the Syrian rebels fighting the Assad regime. Their falling-out is bound to affect this collaboration.
- It was certainly a triumph for Iran against Saudi Arabia. Tehran is expected to rejoice loudly over Riyadh’s loss of footing in the race for regional pre-eminence. A Saudi-dominated Gulf federation would have given the oil kingdom wings for flying to the finishing line.
- The broad Gulf rejection of union was also a blow to the Obama administration’s credibility. Although Washington has invested substantial diplomatic and military effort into winning the region over to acceptance of the US as a dependable champion of the Gulf oil states against Iran, their rulers remain unimpressed, even as the US shows willingness to exercise its military might against the Islamic Republic and its nuclear program.

Let the Headlines Speak

Daily NewsFrom the Internet
Categories: Today's Headlines;Contemporary Issues

U.S. Congress expected to vote on legislation authorizing war with Iran
This week, Congress is considering two pieces of legislation relating to Iran. The first undermines a diplomatic solution with Iran and lowers the bar for war. The second authorizes a war of choice against Iran and begins military preparations for it. H.Res.568: Eliminating the Most Viable Alternative to War – The House is expected to vote on H.Res. 568. Read the resolution. Section (6) rejects any United States policy that would rely on efforts to contain a nuclear weapons-capable Iran. Section (7) urges the President to reaffirm the unacceptability of an Iran with nuclear-weapons capability and opposition to any policy that would rely on containment as an option in response to Iranian enrichment.

Monster Sunspot's Solar Flare Strong Enough to Confuse Satellites
An enormous sunspot unleashed a powerful solar flare late Wednesday (May 16), triggering a radiation storm intense enough to interfere with some satellites orbiting Earth, space weather experts said. The flare erupted from monster sunspot complex AR 1476, which stretches about 60,000 miles (100,000 kilometers) from end to end, at 9:47 p.m. EDT Wednesday (0147 GMT Thursday). The flare spawned a class S2 solar radiation storm around our planet, according to the Space Weather Prediction Center (SWPC), a branch of the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Adminstration.

6.2-magnitude quake strikes far off Chile's coast
The U.S. Geological Survey says the quake's epicenter was 336 miles (542 kilometers) west-southwest of Castro, Los Lagos. It struck Thursday evening local time off the coast of the Aysen region and at depth of 6.2 miles (10 kilometers).

TIME crowns Netanyahu as the 'king of Israel'
In the article, Managing Editor Rick Stengel outlines Netanyahu's recent achievements and explains why he is worthy of the title of 'King of Israel.' "Netanyahu is poised to become the longest-serving Israeli Prime Minister since David Ben-Gurion, the founding father of Israel. He has no national rival," Stengel writes. "His approval rating, roughly 50%, is at an all-time high.

'Ring of Fire' eclipse visible from China to Texas
Sunrises and sunsets often dazzle, but they'll have a special ring to them in a few days for people in the western United States and eastern Asia: The moon will slide across the sun, blocking everything but a blazing halo of light. It's been almost two decades since a "ring of fire" eclipse was visible in the continental United States. To celebrate the end of that drought, nearly three dozen national parks in the path of the eclipse will host viewing parties.

US Envoy to Israel: US Ready to Strike Iran
The U.S. has plans in place to attack Iran if necessary to prevent it from developing nuclear weapons, Washington's envoy to Israel said, days ahead of a crucial round of nuclear talks with Tehran.

Israel becomes a target in Egypt's presidential vote
Israel has become a punchbag for politicians vying for votes in Egypt's presidential race, playing on popular antipathy in Egypt towards its neighbor, but the realities of office are likely to ensure a 33-year-old peace treaty is not jeopardized. An ex-air force commander in the race boasts of bringing down Israeli aircraft in 1973, the last of Egypt's four wars with Israel.

1991 Obama was stamped 'Born in Kenya'
A literary agent’s promotional brochure from two decades ago declares Barack Obama was “born in Kenya and raised in Indonesia and Hawaii,” according to Breitbart News. The brochure was created by Acton & Dystel, which was promoting Obama as the author of the never-produced “Journeys in Black and White.” The report says the biography was dispatched to “business colleagues” in the publishing industry.

U.S. Approves $70 Million in Iron Dome Aid
The United States will immediately give Israel $70 million for additional Iron Dome batteries, U.S. Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta told Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak in a meeting between the two Thursday. Washington has already given Israel $205 million for the Iron Dome systems. Panetta said: "Our goal is to ensure that Israel has the necessary financing every year in order to produce these batteries that protect its citizens."

Spain hit by downgrades amid Greek contagion fears
Spain's economic woes deepened on Thursday (17 May) as 16 of its banks and four regions were downgraded by Moody's ratings agency, while statistics confirmed the country is still in recession. ...The European Commission warned last week that the high debts of the 17 regions, which account for about half of overall public spending, would prevent Spain meeting its goal of cutting the budget deficit to 5.3 percent of gross domestic product this year.

Iran Attack Decision Nears, Israeli Elite Locks Down

Daily NewsReuters - Michael Stott
Categories: Warning;The Nation Of Israel

A private door opens from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's office in central Jerusalem directly into a long, modestly furnished, half-paneled room decorated with modern paintings by Israeli artists and a copy of Israel's 1948 declaration of independence. It contains little more than a long wooden table, brown leather chairs and a single old-fashioned white projector screen.

This inner sanctum at the end of a corridor between Netanyahu's private room and the office of his top military adviser, is where one of the decade's most momentous military decisions could soon be taken: to launch an Israeli attack on Iran's nuclear program.

Time for that decision is fast running out and the mood in Jerusalem is hardening.

Iran continues to enrich uranium in defiance of international pressure, saying it needs the fuel for its civilian nuclear program. The West is convinced that Tehran's real objective is to build an atomic bomb - something which the Jewish state will never accept because its leaders consider a nuclear armed-Iran a threat to its very existence.

Adding to the international pressure, U.S. ambassador to Israel Daniel Shapiro said this week American military plans to strike Iran were "ready" and the option was "fully available".

The central role Iran plays in Netanyahu's deliberations is reflected in the huge map of the Middle East hanging by the door of his office. Israel lies on one edge, with Iran taking pride of place in the centre.

Experts say that within a few months, much of Iran's nuclear program will have been moved deep underground beneath the Fordow mountain, making a successful military strike much more difficult.

LOCKDOWN

As the deadline for a decision draws nearer, the public pronouncements of Israel's top officials and military have changed. After hawkish warnings about a possible strike earlier this year, their language of late has been more guarded and clues to their intentions more difficult to discern.

"The top of the government has gone into lockdown," one official said. "Nobody is saying anything publicly. That in itself tells you a lot about where things stand."

Last week Netanyahu pulled off a spectacular political surprise, creating a coalition of national unity and delaying elections which everyone believed were inevitable. The maneuver also led to speculation that the Israeli leader wanted a broad, strong government to lead a military campaign.

The inclusion of the Iranian-born former Israeli chief of staff and veteran soldier, Gen. Shaul Mofaz, in the coalition, fuelled that speculation - even though both Mofaz and Netanyahu deny that Iran was mentioned in the coalition negotiations.

"I think they have made a decision to attack," said one senior Israeli figure with close ties to the leadership. "It is going to happen. The window of opportunity is before the U.S. presidential election in November. This way they will bounce the Americans into supporting them."

Those close to Netanyahu are more cautious, saying no assumptions should be made about an attack on Iran - an attack with such potentially devastating consequences across the volatile Middle East that Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas even went so far as to predict in an interview with Reuters last week that it would be "the end of the world".

Israelis particularly fear retaliation from Iran's proxy militias - the Hezbollah guerrillas in southern Lebanon and the Hamas fighters in the Gaza Strip. Both are believed to possess large arsenals of rockets which could hit major Israeli towns and cities.

Hezbollah's deputy leader Sheikh Naim Qassem told Reuters in February that an Israeli attack on Iran would set the whole Middle East ablaze "with no limit to the fires". "Gone are the days when Israel decides to strike, and the people are silent," he said.

The Israeli Prime Minister and his key allies repeat for public consumption the mantra that economic sanctions against Iran must be given time to work and that now is not the time to speak about military options.

Top officials explain the new coalition on purely domestic grounds, saying it was needed to tackle the thorny and divisive issue of pressing Orthodox Jews into military service - in other words, that its formation has much more to do with the agenda inside Israel than abroad.

BURIED NUCLEAR STATES

Diplomats are divided. "I think the Iran thing is a red herring," said one senior Western envoy. "This is 98 percent about domestic politics". Others are less convinced.

Mofaz himself refuses to speak about military action against Iran, even in the theoretical.

A military veteran with almost 40 years' operational experience, whose office in the Israeli parliament displays a poster of Israeli warplanes flying low over the Auschwitz concentration camp, he scoffs at the idea that his Iranian descent gives him special influence on an Iran attack decision. He derides the idea any serious official in the know would talk to visiting journalists about such a sensitive military subject.

But behind the carefully evasive language of top officials, basic facts are clear. Time is running out. Iran's nuclear program - regarded by Netanyahu as an existential threat to the state of Israel - will soon be buried deep enough underground to render an Israeli attack impossible. The Jewish state's options are narrowing.

"I think they've gone into lockdown mode now," the senior Western diplomat said. "Whatever happens next, whatever they decide, we will not find out until it happens."

There are indeed those who see in Israeli posturing over Iran only bluff intended to press world powers into harsher sanctions and avoid war. Some military experts openly doubt how much damage Israel could inflict. The risk of a fiasco is big.

Perhaps the strongest clue as to Israel's real intentions is to be found in Netanyahu's private office, behind his desk. Officials say the Israeli premier was strongly influenced by his father, who died last month at the age of 102.

Benzion Netanyahu was a distinguished scholar of Jewish history and his strong sense of the past lives on in Benjamin, who laments to visitors that "most people's sense of history goes back to breakfast time".

On a shelf behind Netanyahu's desk, along with pictures of his family, is a photograph of Winston Churchill. Netanyahu admires the British wartime premier because he saw the true dangers posed by Nazi Germany to the world at a time when many other politicians argued for appeasing Hitler.

The parallels with modern-day Iran are obvious and Netanyahu is explicit about the dangers he believes are posed by militant Islam: as he puts it, its convulsive power, its cult of death and its ideological zeal.

But Churchill, although eloquent on the dangers posed by the rise of Nazi Germany during the 1930s, ultimately failed to prevent Hitler's ascent to power, the world war he unleashed or the Holocaust in which six million Jews were murdered.

Netanyahu, those who know him say, is determined to avoid going down in history as the man who shirked his opportunity to stop Iran going nuclear.

Hizballah is Now in Line to Attack Israel and so Thwart a Strike on Iran

Commentarydebkafile
Categories: War;The Nation Of Israel

The Iranian media Thursday, May 17 were frantically tossing back and forth a report about a purported phone conversation in which the Iranian Al Qods chief Qassem Soleimani cautioned Hizballah leader Hassan Nasrallah against conducting a preemptive strike against the Zionist regime.
Last week, Nasrallah boasted that HIzballah could hit any building in Tel Aviv and was way ahead of its limited capability in the Second Lebanon War of 2006.
The Iranian Fars news agency which carried the report quoted the Al Qods chief as reprimanding him: “[Your] arms and preparedness to destroy Tel Aviv, and even your capacity to engage in continuous strikes against Eilat in Southern Occupied Palestine, should not make you proud..."
Soleimani warned Nasrallah against "radical" moves, adding that the authority of those who contemplate a surprise attack on the "Zionist regime" should be curbed.
The al Qods chief went on to explain: “Today…the Zionist regime is in total isolation and faces a serious legitimacy crisis. Any attack would depict them as victims and us as unjust aggressors...”
Hours after the story appeared in Fars, the Iranian Revolutionary Guards (IRGC) spokesman was quoted by Java Online as dismissing the account of the conversation as “a big lie published on behalf of the Zionists.”
In another twist, the article refuting the reported conversation was suddenly removed from the Javan website, although two additional news agencies ran a potted version of the refutation.
One of them, Mashregh News, offered proof that the account of the Soleiman-Nasrallah conversation must have been false because “there is no extremism in Hizballah” and only the West and the Zionists use the term “radical” to try and prove it is split between “moderates” and “radicals.”

An influential war camp in Tehran opposes Khamenei

This extraordinary to-ing and fro-ing in Iran’s state-controlled media betray the existence of a bitter internal debate between Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei supported by leaders of the Revolutionary Guards, and a pro-war, ultra-radical faction in the Iranian leadership, which is pushing for full-blown war, starting with Israel.
It also reveals a change of direction in Tehran: The mullahs look as though they are backing away from their preoccupation with an American or Israel strike on their nuclear facilities and seriously examining the option of Hizballah or Syria first staging a surprise attack on Israel.
The IRGC’s haste to brand the Fars revelation “a big lie” is indicative of the panic gripping Iran’s leaders Thursday over the exposure of the preemptive strike option, one of their most closely-held secrets. They fear letting this cat out of the bag may have caused irreversible damage to Khamenei’s credibility and his continuing exchanges with President Barack Obama through their direct, confidential track - a contretemps they expect to play strongly in Israel’s favor.
DEBKA-Net-Weekly’s Iranian and military sources analyze this unusually revealing flurry of published Iranian reports point by point, to determine why it increases the probability of a Middle East war and brings it forward to a closer date:

Hizballah relishes its military edge over the IDF

1. More and more voices have been raised in Tehran, Damascus, Beirut and Gaza in the last fortnight urging Iran and its allies to attack Israel so as to disrupt its military preparations for war on the Islamic Republic. The blow would have to be severe enough to distract Israel from its offensive plans for Tehran and force it to gather in all its resources for self-defense.
Israel’s air force and missiles, for instance, would have to be pressed into service to repel attackers and too busy to attack Iran’s nuclear program.
2. The war advocates maintain Iran need not be directly involved in this war. Hizballah, Syria and the Palestinian Hamas in Gaza could do the fighting.
HIzballah has enough missiles and they are sufficiently accurate to lay any Israeli city to siege, as Nasrallah boasted last week.
Almost unnoticeably, an Israel security official leaked word, less than 48 hours after Nasrallah’s boast, that the construction of the Israeli General Staff’s new underground command center in central Tel Aviv had been abruptly suspended. This was decided in view of the danger that a concerted Hizballah missile attack on the half-finished structure would cause it to cave in.
HIzballah is thus for the first time in years relishing its military edge over the IDF, a situation which the pro-Iran war faction is pressing to exploit before the Israelis catch up with solutions and it is too late.

Khamenei opposes an attack lest it jeopardizes his secret dialogue with Obama

3. Attacking Israel now, they say, would offer the dual advantage of saving both Iran’s nuclear facilities and Syria’s Assad regime. If Assad were to send his armed forces to join an assault on Israel, the entire Syrian military would stand behind him – which is not the case today – and the uprising against his rule would fizzle out. This remedy would enable the Syrian ruler to dig himself out of a mortal crisis.
4. Ali Khamenei is so far standing firmly against the war camp, maintaining that progress in his nuclear dialogue with Barack Obama would cause Israel irreparable strategic damage and deepen the animosity between the Obama administration and the Netanyahu government. US-Israel friendship would go into deep decline.
The Supreme Leader and his following are convinced that this decline would serve Iran’s strategic interests no less than preventing an Israeli strike on its nuclear facilities. The damage caused by a strike can be repaired, and the nuclear program would be back on track within a short time, both Iranians and Americans seem to believe, whereas a deep rift between Washington and Jerusalem would be inestimably harmful to the Zionist state and much harder to undo.
5. If Israel were attacked, the Khameini school of thought goes on to argue, Israel would pose as the victim and make up for its loss of international sympathy.

Have the Iranian war advocates given Hizballah dirty bombs?

This argument was prominent in the al Qods general’s directives to the Hizballah leader.
6. Qassem Soleimani advice to “curb” those who consider launching a surprise attack on “the Zionist regime” was a veiled warning to the pro-war faction in Tehran which has grown strong enough to consider executing an attack without the prior approval of the Supreme leader and confronting him with a fait accompli.
That faction is gaining powerful adherents. They number several Revolutionary Guard leaders, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, senior nuclear negotiator Saad Jalili, Tehran Mayor Mohammad Baqer Qalibat (whom Khamenei is eying as next president after Ahmadinejad) and the influential ayatollahs Mesbah Yazdi and Mohsen Gharavian.
DEBKA-Net-Weekly’s Iranian sources say that if Jalili and Qalibat have jumped aboard the camp urging war on Israel, the odds of it erupting have mounted exponentially whereas Khamenei’s personal and political standing is proportionately waning.
7. There is growing concern among the supreme leader’s following that the more impatient members of the war camp may have taken it upon themselves to hand dirty bombs to Hizballah for kicking off its attack on Israel’s main cities.
Possession of this weapon would inevitably bolster Hassan Nasrallah’s self-assurance and impel him and his likeminded followers to shed all restraints against an attack on Israel.
The purpose of the exercise carried out last week on the Mediterranean by Israel’s Navy, Air Force and special operations units was to test ways and means of keeping at bay vessels potentially heading for the Israeli coast armed with radioactive bombs.

Ex - ECB Head Unveils Bold Plan to Save the Euro

Daily NewsReuters
Categories: Today's Headlines;Revived Roman Empire

Europe could strengthen its monetary union by giving European politicians the power to declare a sovereign state bankrupt and take over its fiscal policy, the former head of the European Central Bank said on Thursday in unveiling a bold proposal to salvage the euro.

The plan offered by Jean-Claude Trichet, who stepped down last November as ECB president, would address a fundamental weakness of the 13-year-old single currency, the survival of which is threatened by the Greek crisis.

The monetary union has always defied economic principles, because the euro was launched ahead of European fiscal or political union. This has caused strains for countries running huge budget deficits - namely Greece, Portugal, Ireland, Spain and Italy - that have led to financing difficulties and over-stretched banking systems.

For the European Union, a fully fledged United States of Europe where nation states cede a large chunk of fiscal authority to the federal government appears politically unpalatable, Trichet said.

An alternative is to activate the EU federal powers only in exceptional circumstances when a country's budgetary policies threaten the broader monetary union, he said.

"Federation by exception seems to me not only necessary to make sure we have a solid Economic and Monetary Union, but it might also fit with the very nature of Europe in the long run. I don't think we will have a big (centralized) EU budget," Trichet said in a speech before the Peterson Institute of International Economics here.

"It is a quantum leap of governance, which I trust is necessary for the next step of European integration," he said.

His proposal was presented in Washington on the eve of the G8 meeting of the world's major economies, hosted by U.S. President Barack Obama who will press Europe to intensify its efforts to resolve the sovereign debt crisis, which threatens a fragile global recovery.

It also comes ahead of a critical meeting of EU leaders on May 23 to discuss ways to support growth. Its strict budgetary policies to date have led to recessions in many countries, political unrest and in Greece a political stalemate after recent elections.

Trichet said the building blocks already are in place for moving ahead with his fiscal plan.

Countries have agreed to surveillance of each other's budgets and they have agreed to levy fines on countries that run excessive budget deficits, giving them fiscal oversight authority.

The next step would be to take a country into receivership when its political leaders or its parliament cannot implement sound budgetary policies approved by the EU. The action would have democratic accountability if it were approved by the European Council of EU heads of states and the elected European Parliament, he said.

The idea earned a warm reception from leading economists and prominent Europeans attending the session.

"It is a very radical proposal, couched as a modest step," said Richard Cooper, international economist at Harvard.

Caio Koch Weser, former German economics minister, said he found it "very attractive" because it addresses the problem of a strong European Central Bank, a weak European Commission which acts as the EU's executive branch, and a confused European Council, which provides political leadership.

Every One That is Perfect Shall be As His Master - Luke 6:40

Morning MeditationF. B. Meyer
Categories: Commentary;Inspirational;Book Study

We are not perfected yet. - There is a great chasm between our highest and our Master's lowest; between where we stop and He begins: between our light, which is twilight at best, and His meridian glory. When we compare ourselves with ourselves, or with our neighbors, our standard is altogether too low; we should compare ourselves with Him, the beloved Master. Job, who was reputed perfect, abhorred himself, and repented in dust and ashes when he had seen God, of whom he had formerly only heard.

But we shall be perfected one day. - That when has a hopeful ring. But to what period does the Master point? Not till sorrow, sanctified by God's grace, has done its work; not till the snow and frost, the light shower and the bitter wind, the earth and sun, have contributed their shares to the desired quota. Not till the perfect image of Jesus has emerged from the sculptured stone; not till the molten metal reflects each lineament of the glorified Lord.

When we are perfected we shall be as our Master. - "We shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is." It seems altogether too much to expect! To think that we shall be changed into His image; that we shall bear His impress; that we shall be as like Him as Gideon's brethren to Gideon, of whom the princes of Midian testified that they were like the children of a king. Yet it shall be so. The Lord Jesus became like unto us in our low estate, that we should become like Him in His glory. There must ever be the limitation of the creature as compared with Him by whom all things were made. But in our measure there shall be the same perfect beauty - His beauty upon us - for a mountain lake may as perfectly reflect the wide blue heaven as an ocean.

Clashing UAE, Israeli and Iranian Military Maneuvers

Daily Newsdebkafile
Categories: Today's Headlines;War

A senior Iranian commander sternly admonished an Omani general in Tehran Tuesday, May 15, the day Saudi Arabia failed to persuade top Gulf rulers meeting in Riyadh to go for federation as a bulwark against the common Iranian menace. (See the separate item in this issue.)
In an exceptionally harsh warning, Rear Adm. Ali Fadavi, commander of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) Navy, confronted Brig. Gen. Rashid bin Saif al-Shidi, Oman’s Assistant Chief of Staff, with a warning: “The Islamic Republic of Iran carefully and completely scrutinizes the actions of countries lining up with US objectives in the [Persian Gulf and Strait of Hormuz] region.”
Countries in the region, said the Iranian admiral, “should not prepare the ground for the US to carry out evil acts.” Regional interaction, he said, was the only proper course in this regard.
That ominous tone jarred badly with the upbeat outlook of progress in the nuclear talks six world powers are holding with Iran and, more particularly, with the satisfied comments of Ali Ashgar Soltanieh Iran’s ambassador at the International Atomic Energy Agency, on the IAEA meeting he had just attended in Vienna.
He said that Iran continues to insist on a comprehensive plan on what (nuclear sites) may be visited and when. However, he informed reporters of “progress… regarding the preparation of modalities of a framework for resolving our outstanding issues.”
Why did the Iranian diplomat in Vienna speak of a “fruitful discussion in a very conducive environment,” on the same day as the Iranian admiral in Tehran beat the war drums?

Tehran rattled by UAE Air Force exercise

One important cause of the dissonance is that this week Iran had one eye on the chances of “fruitful diplomacy” and the other on two separate major military and naval exercises conducted secretly by the United Arab Emirates and Israel.
The UAE has the biggest and most powerful air force in the Persian Gulf, topping even Saudi air might. Iran doesn’t even run close.
The UAEAF fleet of 500 fighter-bombers includes the most advanced warplanes of any world power: F-16s and Mirage 2000-9s, attack and freight helicopters, refueling aircraft and sophisticated spy planes. The force is served by nearly 6,000 personnel.
Alarm bells began jangling in Tehran when the entire UAE air force, in conjunction with the US F-22 stealth planes just landed at the emirate’s Al Dhafra Air Base and French stealth Rafale Cs, launched a secret exercise on the same eventful May 15. The Iranians were seriously rattled when those powerful air formations practiced offensive sorties over, no less, the Strait of Hormuz and the three islands controlling access to this narrow channel – Abu Musa, Greater Tanb and Lesser Tanb.
Tehran is still fighting back the UAE’s recent clamor to restore to its sovereignty the three islands, which it claims Iran has illegally occupied.
The view of the Persian Gulf from Tehran was therefore extremely unsettling.

Israel’s air-navy drill aimed at precluding a dirty bomb attack by sea

The UAEAF is obviously a smarter tactical candidate for an air strike against Iran than the Saudi Air Force, in view of the advanced capabilities of its F-16s and Mirage 2000-9s compared to the Saudi F-15s.
If Washington and Paris really were training UAE pilots for joint operations with the most accomplished US air crews and advanced warplanes, then Iranian strategists were forced to deduce that the Obama administration was getting set and preparing the Gulf emirates for going to war with Iran in the very short term.
Tehran was no less concerned by Israel’s big Air Force-Navy exercise on the Mediterranean which wound up two days earlier on Sunday, May 13. The Navy also deployed its elite Shayetet 13, 916 Detachment and the Snapir unit for the drill and the Air Force, its Shaldag unit.
Those forces practiced the interception and seizure of a flotilla of enemy vessels bent on invading Israel’s territorial waters and making for the Israeli coastal cities, which are inhabited by about 60 percent of the country’s population.
The country was largely unaware of this exercise which based itself on the working hypothesis held by Israeli intelligence and military strategists that, without waiting to perfect a nuclear warhead, Iran may try and attack Israel with dirty bombs dropped from civilian vessels approaching Israel’s shores and crewed by Iranian, Syrian or Hizballah combatants. (See the first article opening this issue.)
The Israeli exercise ended with the deployment of warships in a defensive line the length of its Mediterranean coast, sending a message to Tehran that its seaborne dirty bomb strike option has been precluded.

Iran’s drills switch to offensive mode with first paratroop drops

The exercise also had an intelligence facet.
Middle East war games have evolved into a language of communication among enemies and a form of upmanship - each party sending out signals meant to be picked up by its foes, either as a warning or to prove it had gained the upper hand. So was Israel’s Mediterranean exercise also informing Iran that its plans to launch an attack by sea had been discovered by Israeli undercover agencies?
Tehran’s rejoinder to US, Gulf and Israeli military movements was not long in coming.
Monday, May 14, Iran’s special forces and Revolutionary Guards units broke new ground with a two-day offensive war game in which, for the first time, they practiced parachuting substantial strength from the air deep inside enemy territory remote from its shores.
The maneuver took place in Khorasan province near the Afghan border. It carried a single strong message: Iran was no longer keeping to the defensive mode; henceforth, the Islamic Republic will be acting on the offensive.
Just as the Americans, Arabs and Israelis were expanding their military options against Iran, Tehran had accordingly gone back to considering a possible pre-emptive strike against its enemies on their soil.
The Iranian exercise made this plain by sending air force cargo planes across long distances from one part of Iran to another, carrying large numbers of paratroopers and special forces units, while fighter-bombers practiced blanket raids on small target areas and assault helicopters showed their paces in the rapid transfer of troops from one point to another, landing them at speed under air cover.

A Global Religion – is God in Graffiti?

CommentaryRay Yungen
Categories: Contemporary Issues

What is happening to mainstream Christianity is the same thing that is happening to business, health, education, counseling, and other areas of society. Christendom is being cultivated for a role in the New Age. The [demonic] entity, Raphael, explains this very clearly in the Starseed Transmissions:

We work with all who are vibrationally sympathetic; simple and sincere people who feel our spirit moving, but for the most part, only within the context of their current belief system.

He is saying that they “work,” or interact, with people who open their minds to them in a way that fits in with the person’s current beliefs. In the context of Christianity this means that those meditating will think that they have contacted God, when in reality they have connected up with Raphael’s kind (who are more than willing to impersonate whomever the person wishes to reach so long as they can link with them).

This ultimately points to a global religion based on meditation and mystical experience. New Age writer David Spangler explains it the following way:

There will be several religious and spiritual disciplines as there are today, each serving different sensibilities and affinities, each enriched by and enriching the particular cultural soil in which it is rooted. However, there will also be a planetary spirituality that will celebrate the sacredness of the whole humanity in appropriate festivals, rituals, and sacraments. There will be a more widespread understanding and experience of the holistic nature of reality, resulting in a shared outlook that today would be called mystical. Mysticism has always overflowed the bounds of particular religious traditions, and in the new world this would be even more true.

The rise of centering prayer is causing many churches to become agents of transformation. Those who practice it tend to embrace this one-world-religion idea. One of the main proponents of centering prayer had this revelation:

It is my sense, from having meditated with persons from many different traditions, that in the silence we experience a deep unity. When we go beyond the portals of the rational mind into the experience, there is only one God to be experienced…. I think it has been the common experience of all persons of good will that when we sit together Centering we experience a solidarity that seems to cut through all our philosophical and theological differences.

In this context, we may compare all the world’s religions to a dairy herd. Each cow may look different on the outside, but the milk would all be the same. The different religious groups would maintain their own separate identities, but a universal spiritual practice would bind them together-not so much a one-world church as a one-world spirituality.

Episcopal priest and New Age leader Matthew Fox explains what he calls “deep ecumenism”:

Without mysticism there will be no “deep ecumenism,” no unleashing of the power of wisdom from all the world’s religious traditions. Without this I am convinced there will never be global peace or justice since the human race needs spiritual depths and disciplines, celebrations and rituals, to awaken its better selves. The promise of ecumenism, the coming together of religions, has been thwarted because world religions have not been relating at the level of mysticism.

Fox believes that all world religions will eventually be bound together by the “Cosmic Christ” principle, which is another term for the higher self.

As incredible as this may sound, it appears to be happening now. The New Age is embedded in American religious culture far deeper and broader than many people imagine. If your concept of the New Age is simply astrology, tarot cards, or reincarnation, then you could easily miss the real New Age as it pulses through the religious current. If mystical prayer continues its advance, then we could one day see, perhaps sooner than we expect, many Christian churches becoming conduits of New Age thought to their membership.

Sue Monk Kidd is a best selling novel writer. Her book, The Secret Life of Bees has sold over four million copies, mainly to women. At one time a Southern Baptist Sunday school teacher, she became attracted to centering prayer as a way to know God more deeply. Today, she is the Writer in Residence of the Sophia Institute, which is devoted to “foster[ing] the emergence of the sacred feminine” (i.e., the Divine feminine).5

Monk Kidd now adheres to what New Agers teach, that this mystical force (called God or Divinity) is in all things, nothing excluded:

Deity means that divinity will no longer be only heavenly … It will also be right here, right now, in me, in the earth, in this river, in excrement and roses alike.

She reiterates this in her 2006 book, First Light, in which she writes:

If I am intent on centering my life in the presence of God, then I must understand what I believe about where this presence can be found … God became the steam of my soup, the uprooted tree, the graffiti on the building, the rust on the fence.

But what if the graffiti is gang graffiti about killing members of a rival gang or even worse, what if the graffiti is cursing God with vile language?

Well, Monk Kidd would still say that the graffiti is God.

Why?

It is because New Agers believe God is not a being but Being itself. In other words, there is nothing that is not God. This is the decision that the world is now facing–is God a personal being or is God the Universe and all that it entails?