Posted on 01/31/2010 11:11:32 PM PST by Ernest_at_the_Beach
Tension between the US and Iran heightened dramatically today with the disclosure that Barack Obama is deploying a missile shield to protect American allies in the Gulf from attack by Tehran.
The US is dispatching Patriot defensive missiles to four countries – Qatar, United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Kuwait – and keeping two ships in the Gulf capable of shooting down Iranian missiles. Washington is also helping Saudi Arabia develop a force to protect its oil installations.
American officials said the move is aimed at deterring an attack by Iran and reassuring Gulf states fearful that Tehran might react to sanctions by striking at US allies in the region. Washington is also seeking to discourage Israel from a strike against Iran by demonstrating that the US is prepared to contain any threat.
The deployment comes after Obama's attempts to emphasise diplomacy over confrontation in dealing with Iran – a contrast to the Bush administration's approach – have failed to persuade Tehran to open its nuclear installations to international controls. The White House is now trying to engineer agreement for sanctions focused on Iran's Revolutionary Guard, believed to be in charge of the atomic programme.
Washington has not formally announced the deployment of the Patriots and other anti-missile systems, but by leaking it to American newspapers the administration is evidently seeking to alert Tehran to a hardening of its position.
The administration is deploying two Patriot batteries, capable of shooting down incoming missiles, in each of the four Gulf countries.
(Excerpt) Read more at guardian.co.uk ...
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Editorial
Monday 1 February 2010
In one of the clearest statements of US intentions towards Iran, the defence secretary, Robert Gates, talked on a visit to Iraq in December about the inherent unpredictability of war. If they had learned anything from the past six years in Iraq, he said, it was that. Mr Gates said that military strikes would only delay Iran's nuclear programme by about "two or three years" and that significant additional sanctions were the best of a series of bad options. If Mr Gates' view still holds, yesterday's reports that the US administration was fast-forwarding deployment of anti-missile defences in at least four Arab countries, and placing ships off the Iranian coast, should be seen as a preparation not for war, but for more sanctions. Unfortunately, any US military buildup in the Persian Gulf is inherently unpredictable.
Seen from inside Iran, the threatened deployment of anti-missile defences can only be bad news. The two defeated candidates, Mir Hossein Mousavi and Mehdi Karroubi, called on Saturday for a mass protest on 11 February, the anniversary of the Islamic revolution, despite the hanging of two dissidents last week and warnings from the Revolutionary Guard that the protest would be crushed. We don't know how deep the crack is inside the Iranian regime, but with every mass demonstration and subsequent act of state repression it widens slightly.
The Iranian regime explains the increasing domestic foment to itself, and the nation at large, as the work of foreign powers. It has recently turned on German diplomats, but India has been accused of meddling in Baluchistan; Britain and the US are for ever in the frame, and there is now a list of 60 "subversive" international organisations, among them the BBC, accused of conspiring against the state. What deterrence do Patriot missiles or Aegis cruisers provide for a regime yearning for an opportunity to put a definitive end to months of political unrest? It provides them with every incentive to brand legitimate political opponents as the enemy within.
Mr Obama is signalling that he is about to withdraw the hand he extended, after the offer to enrich uranium outside Iran's borders was rejected.
fyi
Why is it that tensions are only “dramatically heightened” when the U.S. does something? Surely the Iranians did something to provoke us to cause us to do this. Why didn’t that “heighten” tensions? Why does the media always say that the U.S. moves cause these kinds of things?
They’re as petulant as the Rooskies.
Obama's hi-tech weapons plan for Gulf sees US reverting to type
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Sunday 31 January 2010 18.53 GMT
Pouring billions of dollars' worth of the latest hi-tech military hardware into the volatile heart of the Middle East looks at first glance like an act of extreme recklessness. Like George Bush before him, Barack Obama is stoking an unpredictable conventional arms race in a region that is already primed to explode.
But if Obama, the self-styled champion of change, is extending and escalating the weapons buildup begun by his bellicose predecessor, it's because he has an ever more persuasive reason to do so. That reason is Iran or, more specifically, the increasingly threatening regime headed by Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and his pugnacious sidekick, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad (right).
The general principle underpinning the US and Arab missile deployments in the Middle East, detailed in reports from Washington today, is as old as warfare itself. The maxim, Si vis pacem, para bellum, meaning "If you wish for peace, prepare for war," is usually attributed to the Roman writer Publius Flavius Vegetius Renatus. Now the 21st-century people's tribune currently occupying the Oval office has adopted it as his own.
The immediate cause for alarm, meanwhile, as seen from Washington, London and the Arab Gulf, is Iran's refusal to freeze its suspect nuclear programme, as demanded by several UN security council resolutions. An informal 31 December deadline set by Obama and the Israeli prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, for substantive progress passed without a serious response from Tehran.
The recent uncovering of a secret nuclear plant buried in the hills near the holy city of Qom, suspicions about the existence of other clandestine facilities, and new evidence of Iranian attempts to design an atomic warhead that could be loaded on a long-range missile have combined to persuade western countries that much tougher sanctions must be imposed on Tehran.
But the problem is far bigger than that. Iran's spurning of Obama's unclenched fist, the regime's apparent disinterest in a broader re-engagement after a 30-year estrangement is feeding a belief in western capitals that new sanctions, even if agreed (and China as usual is dragging its feet), will not be enough.
Iran's execution last week of two pro-democracy activists, and its new accusations against German diplomats who it accuses of fomenting political unrest, are but the latest manifestations of a mood of aggressive defiance of international opinion that has taken hold in Tehran since last June's bitterly disputed elections. Hence the perceived need in Washington for a more forward-leaning defensive military posture as well as an intensified diplomatic, political and economic blitzkrieg.
possible Iranian involvement in Yemen in a proxy war with arch-rival Saudi Arabia has opened another potential front in the standoff with Tehran.
ping
U.S. Missile Defenses in Gulf Ups Ante With Iran
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Updated February 01, 2010
Tensions between the U.S. and Iran rose Monday after the Obama Administration quietly increased the capability of land and sea-based missile defenses in several Gulf nations to protect American allies.
Blair warns that world faces decision to halt Iran’s nuclear programme
Blair warns that world faces decision to halt Iran’s nuclear programme
I'm thinking about joining the local Orange County Mosque to understand Mohammed's teachings. Judeism and Christianity have become detrimental to our way of life. We live by American Idol and other immoral beliefs that are killing our society.
The Koran and the Hadiths have many righteous things to say about God/Allah. If the local Mosque allows me to listen...I will. I'm getting tired of this whole capitalistic/material way of life. Sorry, but I need a new direction in my life.
At least remember that God so loved you that He sent His only begotten Son who freely gave His life for you.
The Muslim concept of heaven is a whorehouse with 72 female virgins and 28 little boy ‘servants’.
But Western civilization is corrupt and immoral. Got it.
So glad we are spending so much time money and effort helping protect our good allies the f-ing Saudis.
Lets see.... beheading the infedels, check / raping women, men, boys, girls, check / living like 7 century knuckle draggers, check..... good luck with that...
yeah right. Where is the sarcasm tag?
Why would you join murderers of women and rapers of children and think THAT isn’t immoral and corrupt?
lol.
sw
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