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Today on Covert Radio our guest is Iranian Ex Pat and Analyst Banafsheh Zand Bonazzi she shares with us her amazing insight into Iran. In this episode find out about the Gangster nature of the Mullahs, The Ayotollah Khomeni’s beliefs on nuclear weapons, the ongoing plight of the Iranian people, the Apocalyptic worldview of Ahmedinejad and the struggle by one of Iran’s ethnic minorities, who have been persecuted in a brutal fashion- the Baluchis. All of this plus, Ban’s take on President Bush’s speech in Israel and the damage being wrought by Hezbollah in Lebanon.

Washington and Tel Aviv vow to take 'tangible action' to prevent Iran from acquiring 'nuclear weapons', an Israeli spokesman says. Israeli premier Ehud Olmert's spokesman, Mark Regev, said on Friday that the diplomatic efforts to exert pressure on Iran to give up its uranium enrichment have so far been insufficient. "It is clear that additional steps will have to be taken," he continued. "We are on the same page. We both see the threat... And we both understand that tangible action is required to prevent the Iranians from moving forward on a nuclear weapon," said the Israeli spokesman. Regev then...

JERUSALEM (Reuters) - President George W. Bush will tell Israel's parliament on Thursday that letting Iran acquire nuclear weapons would be an "unforgivable betrayal of future generations." "America stands with you in firmly opposing Iran's nuclear weapons ambitions," Bush will tell Israeli legislators on the second day of his visit to the Jewish state, according to an advance copy of a speech he was due to deliver later in the day. Bush was in Israel to celebrate the Jewish state's 60th anniversary and try to shore up the faltering Israeli-Palestinian peace process. In his speech to the Knesset, he planned...

Most of us that were around in 2003 still remember the run up to the invasion of Iraq well. And, it seems the puzzle pieces are falling into place with Iran. First, there was the recent tough talk from Secretary Gates and Admiral Mullen. Last week, there were Admiral Mullen’s comments: Late last week, Admiral Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, pointed to the Qods Force for its “increasingly lethal and malign influence” in Iraq. Adm. Mullen added that evidence would be publicized in the coming days that newly made Iranian armaments are being smuggled into Iraq...

The Offer He Will Refuse May 09, 2008 Asharq Alawsat Amir Taheri Will you take an offer if you knew that by refusing it you would get a better one? The answer from Tehran is an emphatic no, and concerns the latest "generous package" that the five permanent members of the UN Security Council plus Germany put together in London last week. The “package” shaped after days of hard bargaining between the United States and the European Union on one side, and Russia and China on the other, is designed to persuade the Islamic Republic to break the diplomatic logjam...

Here is a partial transcript of the interview Matthew Rothschild conducted with Scott Ritter on April 18 for Progressive Radio. To listen to the entire interview, click here. Q: For several years now, you’ve been warning of the possibility that the Bush Administration will attack Iran. What do you think the likelihood is now in the waning months of the Bush Administration? Scott Ritter: I think we’ve never been at a greater risk of American military action against Iran. Q: Really? Why do you say that? Scott Ritter: Because the Bush Administration has made it clear that they seek to...

Hillary Clinton has pledged to “obliterate” Iran if it strikes Israel with nuclear weapons (it doesn't yet have). Iran has protested the Democratic presidential candidate's fiery rhetoric as a violation of the UN Charter and asked for Security Council action. Sen. Barack Obama has condemned Senator Clinton's statement. All the sturm and drang misses one critical point. Israel does not need the US to counter attack. Israel has the world's sixth largest arsenal of nuclear weapons, behind only the US, Russia, China, the UK and (maybe) France. It can handle ANY Iranian threat on its own, thank you very much....

World powers very soon will present Iran with a revised package of incentives to give up its sensitive nuclear work, U.S. officials said on Monday, but expectations for a positive response are low. "I think this will move very quickly," said a senior U.S. official, when asked when the incentives package agreed on by major powers in London last Friday would be formally offered to the Iranians. Top government officials in China, Russia, the United States, France, Britain -- the permanent members of the U.N. Security Council -- and Germany are now reviewing the decision made in London and an...

May 4, 2008 By Liz Sidoti - INDIANAPOLIS (AP) — Sen. Barack Obama scolded Democratic rival Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton today for saying that the United States would "totally obliterate" Iran if it attacks Israel, and likened her to President Bush. Clinton stood by her comment. The foreign policy dustup came as the two candidates appeared separately on dueling news shows and as the drawn-out fight for the Democratic nomination grew ever more fierce ahead of the next pivotal pair of primaries, in Indiana and North Carolina on Tuesday. Seeking the advantage, Obama seized on Clinton's recent answer when asked...

THE US military is drawing up plans for a "surgical strike" against an insurgent training camp inside Iran if Republican Guards continue with attempts to destabilise Iraq, Western intelligence sources said last week. One source said the Americans were growing increasingly angry at the involvement of the guards special operations Quds force inside Iraq, training Shia militias and smuggling weapons into the country. Despite a belligerent stance by US Vice-President Dick Cheney, the administration has put plans for an attack on Iran's nuclear facilities on the backburner since Robert Gates replaced Donald Rumsfeld as Defence Secretary in 2006, the sources...

Located in the Iranian desert, the Natanz uranium-enrichment facility has been shrouded in secrecy. Many of the buildings there, visible in the aerial image from September 2002 on the far left, are now out of sight, buried underground, near left. The site is also protected by anti-aircraft guns and barbed wire. ...

Iran told Britain not to cross any "red lines" when preparing incentives for the Islamic Republic aimed at ending a row with the West over Tehran's nuclear program, the Iranian foreign minister said on Saturday. World powers met in London on Friday and said they would offer new incentives to encourage Iran to halt nuclear work which the West fears is aimed at building atomic bombs. Iran refused the last such offer made in 2006 and officials have in the past described a demand that Iran suspend its uranium enrichment program as a "red line". They say it is Iran's...

Mossad chief Meir Dagan is expected to brief MI6 head Sir John Scarlett, who is slated to visit Israel later this month, on an intelligence gathering breakthrough regarding the Iranian nuclear program, The Sunday Times reported. There is mounting concern in Israel that Iran's nuclear capability may be far more advanced than was recognised in a declassified assessment by the US National Intelligence Estimate last December, which concluded that Iran had halted its nuclear weapons development program in 2003 in response to international pressure. A source quoted by the paper claimed that the new information was on par with intelligence...

A top cleric on Friday vowed that Iran would deal a knock-out blow to what he called maniacs in the United States and Israel if they ever attacked the Islamic republic. "If maniacs in Washington or Tel Aviv seek to take action, the Iranian nation will slap them so hard they will not get off the floor," hardline cleric Ahmad Khatami said in a Friday prayer sermon carried live on state radio. The Pentagon on Wednesday denied reports of new plans for military options against Iran, which is accused by the United States of seeking nuclear weapons, sponsoring terrorism and...

TEHRAN (AFP) - Supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei on Wednesday declared Iran was "not afraid" of sanctions over its contested nuclear programme and would further step up its progress. ADVERTISEMENT "We are not afraid of Western sanctions," he told thousands of people in a speech in the southern city of Shiraz broadcast by state television. "The Iranian people, thanks to God, will resist in the face of sanctions and economic blockades and will further intensify their progress." Iran has been hit by three sets of UN Security Council sanctions over its nuclear programme, mainly targeting its ballistic missile and atomic...

When Yasser Arafat first addressed the U.N. General Assembly in November 1974, he told the world body he came bearing an olive branch and a freedom fighter's gun. "Do not let the olive branch fall from my hand," stated the leader of the Palestine Liberation Organization, at that time still considered a terrorist organization by the United States and Israel. Today, the odds have increased. The gun has been replaced by nuclear warheads. Despite a mysterious air raid by the Israeli air force last Sept. 6 on what it said was a nuclear processing facility in the Syrian desert, Damascus...

Barbed wire and antiaircraft guns ring a maze of buildings in the Iranian desert that lie at the heart of the West’s five-year standoff with Tehran over its program to enrich uranium. It is a place of secrets that Iran loves to boast about, clouding the effort’s real status and making Western analysts all the more eager for solid details and clues. Tehran insists that its plans are peaceful. But Washington and its allies see a looming threat. The sprawling site, known as Natanz, made headlines recently because Iran is testing a new generation of centrifuges there that spin faster...

DURING HIS RECENT TRIP TO Europe, President Bush sent mixed signals about U.S. policy with regard to Iran's development of nuclear weapons. At one point he dismissed the prospect of military action as ridiculous; immediately after, he emphasized all options were on the table; then at another point he suggested there might be "convergence" between U.S. and European views on how to address the problem. If the president seemed to be all over the lot, that may be because the policy choices with respect to Iran are complex, and none is without its drawbacks. Currently we are pursuing a "good...

WASHINGTON, April 29 (AP) - (Kyodo)—(EDS: TO BE LED) President George W. Bush said Tuesday the recent U.S. disclosure of North Korea's alleged transfer of nuclear technology to Syria was intended to sound a tough warning to Iran of its nuclear aspirations. Bush made the remarks at a White House press conference.

Making it crystal clear to Iran, Adm. Michael Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said Friday that the United States is preparing for "potential military courses of action" against it if Tehran does not stop aiding insurgents in Iraq and fails to stop building nuclear weapons. Admitting that a third conflict in the region would be "extremely stressing" for America's military, he warned Iran that it was mistake to suggest the United States did not have the resources to strike Iranian military targets. "I have reserve capability, in particularly our Navy and our Air Force, not just there,...

One of the most terrifying possibilities the world faces is that al-Qa'eda, or some other Islamist group, gets hold of a nuclear bomb. Islamist terrorists are certainly trying to obtain one: Osama bin Laden has issued a document entitled "The Nuclear Bomb of Islam", which insists it is "the duty" of Muslims to acquire a nuclear bomb in order to use "as much force as possible to terrorise the enemies of God". The Foreign Office's senior counter-terrorist official has "no doubt at all" that Islamist terrorists are actively seeking a nuclear device. "There are people" he adds dryly, "for whom...

The United States has the combat power to strike Teheran if needed, Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff warned Friday. He alleged Iran was ratcheting up its support for militias in Iraq by providing them with newly manufactured weapons and bringing them across the border to receive training from members of Teheran's Republican Guard. Mullen said the military is preparing to roll out evidence, including date stamps on newly found weapons caches, to prove that recently made Iranian weapons are flowing into Iraq at a steadily increasing rate. He would not detail the evidence, which...

Assume for a moment: It's January, 2009, and Barack Obama has just been inaugurated as President of the United States. Ahmadi-Nejad explodes his first Bomb; he now has that itchy finger on the button as long as the mullahs stay in power. The Middle East goes wild --- with abject fear among the Saudis, and loud celebrations among terror supporters. The day of revenge against the Jews and the Crusaders has finally arrived. What would President Obama do? He has only two basic options. Option One Stick with his electoral promises, fly to Tehran, and "talk to the mullahs." What...

AEI scholar Michael Rubin's very sober analysis of Iran April 16, 2008 HH: Joined now by Michael Rubin of the American Enterprise Institute, one of the country’s leading authorities on the Islamic Republic of Iran. Michael Rubin, last week, Vice President Cheney was on the program, and I talked to him about 12th Imamism, and about Ahmadinejad. And the left has gone crazy, and they’ve been throwing bricks at him, because he said we should take very seriously what Ahmadinejad says, and we should be concerned about sort of a millennialist outlook. And I’ve been waiting to talk to you...

Source: U.S. Strike on Iran Nearing April 14, 2008 By: Jim Meyers Contrary to some claims that the Bush administration will allow diplomacy to handle Iran’s nuclear weapons program, a leading member of America’s Jewish community tells Newsmax that a military strike is not only on the table – but likely. “Israel is preparing for heavy casualties,” the source said, suggesting that although Israel will not take part in the strike, it is expecting to be the target of Iranian retribution. “Look at Dick Cheney’s recent trip through the Middle East as preparation for the U.S. attack,” the source said....

Iran will never become a nuclear power, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert was quoted on Thursday as saying, as Iran's president was proclaiming his country the "most powerful nation" on earth. "I can say... that, to my knowledge, and on the basis of what I know and read, I believe the efforts of the international community will succeed, and that Iran will not become a nuclear power," he told the Maariv daily. "There is an enormous effort on the part of the international community to prevent Iran from becoming a nuclear country. Israel plays an important part in those efforts,...

The neocons may yet get their war on Iran. Ever since President Nouri al-Maliki ordered the attacks in Basra on the Mahdi Army, Gen. David Petraeus has been laying the predicate for U.S. air strikes on Iran and a wider war in the Middle East. Iran, Petraeus told the Senate Armed Services Committee, has "fueled the recent violence in a particularly damaging way through its lethal support of the special groups." These "special groups" are "funded, trained, armed and directed by Iran's Quds Force with help from Lebanese Hezbollah. It was these groups that launched Iranian rockets and mortar rounds...

WASHINGTON (AFP) - The United States on Monday denied a British press report of back-channel talks between Washington and Iran on Tehran's controversial nuclear program. In London, The Independent newspaper reported Monday that a group of former US diplomats and foreign policy experts had been holding talks for the past five years with Iranian academics and policy advisers, in hopes of reaching a breakthrough on the diplomatic impasse. But a White House official on Monday, speaking anonymously, said "clear channels" exist for communication with Iran, and that the approach described in the Independent article "isn't one of them." The daily...

WASHINGTON, April 14 (UPI) -- The United States and Iran have been conducting behind-the-scenes discussions for five years on Iran's nuclear program, a former U.S. diplomat said. Retired U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Thomas Pickering, one of the participants in the talks, said former U.S. diplomats and experts had met with Iranian academics and policy advisers "in a lot of different places, although not in the U.S. or Iran," The Independent reported Monday.

CRAWFORD, Texas (AFP) - US President George W. Bush said Friday he has no intention of attacking Iran, in an interview in which he also gave some advice to his successor on how to deal with the Islamic Republic. Questioned during an interview with ABC television whether his intention was to not attack Iran, Bush replied: "Exactly" -- although he refused to rule out the use of force altogether. "I have always said all options need to be on the table, but my first effort is to solve this issue diplomatically," he said from his Texas ranch.

The hours of congressional testimony, the speeches and the press conferences this week were all, nominally, about Iraq. But another, equally explosive question - what to do about Iran - loomed over the presentations by Army Gen. David Petraeus, the American military commander in Iraq, over U.S. Ambassador to Iraq Ryan Crocker and over U.S. strategy for the Middle East. Petraeus and Crocker, arguing that there has been progress in stabilizing Iraq since President Bush ordered a troop build-up there last year, fingered Iran's support for Shiite militias in Iraq, which they called "special groups," as the No. 1 threat...

Vice President Cheney went on right-wing talk radio yesterday with a dramatic new argument for preventing Iran from getting nuclear weapons, casting the Iranian leadership as apocalyptic zealots who yearn for a nuclear conflagration. Cheney also notably refused to comment about any recent conversations he may have had with Israeli leaders about the possibility of their bombing Iranian nuclear facilities. Some observers suspect Cheney of encouraging Israel to attack Iran as a proxy. Conventional wisdom in Washington has it that Cheney and other supporters of military action against Iran were sidelined after a National Intelligence Estimate last November reported that...

Iran announced today that it was embarking on a plan to install 6,000 centrifuges to enrich uranium at its main nuclear plant, in defiance of United Nations sanctions. President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad made his announcement at Natanz, in central Iran, as the country marked a "national day of nuclear technology", which falls on the day in April 2006 when uranium was successfully enriched for the first time. According to the latest report by the UN's nuclear watchdog, Iran has already installed around 3,000 centrifuges at an underground enrichment facility in Natanz. Nuclear experts believe between 20,000 and 30,000 centrifuges would be...

(Hasan Sarbakhshian/AP) President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad announced this week that Iran had increased its nuclear refining capacity President Bush warned Iran today that if it did not stop arming and training Shia militia in Iraq then "America will act to protect our interests and our troops". Mr Bush, during a speech in which he ordered an indefinite halt in US troop withdrawals from Iraq this summer, called Iran one of the two "greatest threats to America in this century" - together with al-Qaeda. Mr Bush's warnings came after two days of testimony from General David Petraeus, the US commander in...

"Iran will be the first nuclear state in history against which deterrence won't work, even if the deterrent is nuclear," Likud chairman Binyamin Netanyahu said Wednesday at an international conference titled "Russia, the Middle East and the Challenge of Radical Islam." The conference was held at the Shalem Center in Jerusalem under the auspices of the center's Adelson Institute for Strategic Studies and the Eurasian Institute of the Inter-Disciplinary Center, Herzliya. "Nothing will stop the Iranians - not the use of force and not a fear of being hit in retaliation," he said, adding that "every Israeli withdrawal from territories...

WESTPORT, Conn. (AP) - Republican Sen. John McCain refused Wednesday to rule out a pre-emptive war against another country, although he said one would be very unlikely. The likely Republican presidential nominee was asked Wednesday at a town-hall style meeting if he would reject "the Bush doctrine of pre-emptive war," a reference to Bush's decision to invade Iraq without it having attacked the United States. "I don't think you could make a blanket statement about pre-emptive war, because obviously, it depends on the threat that the United States of America faces," McCain told his audience at Bridgewater Associates Inc., a...

VIENNA, Austria - Iran has assembled hundreds of advanced machines reflecting a possible intention to speed up uranium enrichment, diplomats have told The Associated Press. ADVERTISEMENT One diplomat said more than 300 of the centrifuges have been linked up in two separate units in Iran's underground enrichment plant and a third was being assembled. He said the machines apparently are more advanced than the thousands already running underground, suggesting they could be the sophisticated IR-2 centrifuge that Tehran recently acknowledged testing. But a senior diplomat said that while the new work appeared to include advanced centrifuges, they were not IR-2s....

U.S. ready to strike Iran in early April - intelligence source -1 18:02 | 30/ 03/ 2007 MOSCOW, March 30 (RIA Novosti) - Russian intelligence has information that the U.S. Armed Forces have nearly completed preparations for a possible military operation against Iran, and will be ready to strike in early April, a security official said. The source said the U.S. had already compiled a list of possible targets on Iranian territory and practiced the operation during recent exercises in the Persian Gulf. "Russian intelligence has information that the U.S. Armed Forces stationed in the Persian Gulf have nearly completed...

Treasury Warns Of Deception By Iran Treasury Warns Banks That Iran Is Engaging In Deceptive Practices To Skirt Sanctions WASHINGTON, Mar. 27, 2008 (AP) The Bush administration issued a fresh warning Thursday to U.S. banks that Iran is using "an array of deceptive practices" to hide its alleged involvement in nuclear proliferation and terrorist activities. The Treasury Department's Financial Crimes Enforcement Network alleged that Iran is resorting to such alleged practices to evade detection and skirt financial sanctions. "The government of Iran disguises its involvement in proliferation and terrorism activities through an array of deceptive practices specifically designed to evade...

The threat posed by Iran to Coalition troops in the region is considerable. Iran has for a number of years run a systematic campaign of targeting all Coalition troops based in Iraq, Afghanistan and the wider region. However, this campaign may well be considerably more deadly if the Iranian regime were to acquire a nuclear weapon, a scenario which is now becoming an ever growing prospect. Recent revelations by the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI) indicate that contrary to the findings of the National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) Iran continues to have a nuclear weapons program which is in...

CHERBOURG, France (AFP) - President Nicolas Sarkozy vowed Friday to reduce France's nuclear arsenal but said nuclear deterrence remained a "life-insurance" in the face of new threats from states like Iran. "Countries in Asia and the Middle East are rapidly developing ballistic capacities," he said in a defence policy speech to mark the inauguration of a new-generation nuclear submarine named The Terrible. "I am thinking in particular of Iran," which is "increasing the range of its missiles while serious suspicions weigh on its nuclear programme," said Sarkozy. It is "of course the security of Europe that is at stake," he...

Cheney with US troops at Balad air base, Iraq “Iran has got to be very high on that list,” said a senior aide ahead of the talks US Vice President Dick Cheney will hold during his 10-day tour of the Middle East and Turkey, which began Monday, March 17 in Iraq. Singling out Oman, the aide noted that the US and Oman are co-guardians of the strategic Strait of Hormuz. “The Omanis, like a lot of other people,” he said “are concerned by the escalating tensions between the rest of the world community and Iran and by some of...

Jerusalem - US Republican presidential hopeful John McCain Tuesday expressed concern about Iran's possible nuclear armament during his two-day visit to Israel. McCain told Israeli President Shimon Peres that his concern had grown during his current week-long trip through the Middle East which has taken him to Iraq and Jordan, according to the Israeli newspaper Haaretz online. "Iran is funding, training, and aiding extremist groups," McCain was quoted as saying. McCain, who is travelling with fellow Senators Joseph Liberman and Lindsay Graham, said his trip was a fact-finding mission, not a campaign trip. Peres noted that Iran was a threat...

Is the United States moving toward military action with Iran? The resignation of the top U.S. military commander for the Middle East is setting off alarms that the Bush administration is intent on using military force to stop Iran's moves toward gaining nuclear weapons. In announcing his sudden resignation today following a report on his views in Esquire, Adm. William Fallon didn't directly deny that he differs with President Bush over at least some aspects of the president's policy on Iran. For his part, Defense Secretary Robert Gates said it is "ridiculous" to think that the departure of Fallon --...

Normally this would be a sweet peg for a Mark Steyn “America Alone” allusion, but scroll down to pages 6-7 of the PDF and eyeball the graph and you’ll quickly see why that would be inapt. Of 21 countries surveyed, only four have actually gotten tougher on Iran over the last year as its “cheat and retreat” dithering has wore on: Israel, Turkey, South Korea, and … China. Any theories on that last one? Israel is self-explanatory, Turkey may fear Iranian encroachment on Iraq, South Korea may be spooked by the specter of Kim, but what’s to explain the change...

Iran ready to talk nuclear with Europe By NASSER KARIMI, Associated Press Writer TEHRAN, Iran - Iran is ready to negotiate with Europe over the Islamic republic's nuclear program if there were would be "meaningful and effective" results, Iran's foreign minister said Sunday. Manouchehr Mottaki's comments came just days after President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad appeared to rule out any nuclear negotiations with Europe, saying the issue would only be discussed with the U.N. atomic watchdog agency. "We have always supported negotiations that are purposeful, meaningful and effective," Mottaki said when he was asked if Iran was ready to negotiate Javier Solana,...

I've long been a proponent of military intervention against Iran, though not a ground forces invasion. As evidence builds that Iran is interfering in Iraq and is a major player behind terrorist groups like Hezbollah, we need to consider action. The newest development is that Iran isn't only behind Hezbollah, but they're training fighters for the terrorist group Hamas: The Hamas commander, however, confirmed for the first time that the Iranian Revolutionary Guard has been training its men in Tehran for more than two years and is currently honing the skills of 150 fighters.The details he gave suggested that, if...

UNITED NATIONS (AP) - The U.N. Security Council is certain to approve a third round of sanctions against Iran on Monday for refusing to suspend uranium enrichment, but it's doubtful the new measures will receive the unanimous support that the first two sanctions resolutions did. The five permanent council members with veto power - the U.S., Russia, China, Britain and France - are all backing the new resolution, and they have more than the nine yes votes needed for approval in the 15-member council. But four non-permanent council members have raised a variety of concerns - Libya, Indonesia, South Africa...

LONDON (AFP) - A military strike against Iran would be unlikely to succeed and would only inflame tensions in the Middle East, an influential group of British MPs warned on Sunday. The House of Commons Foreign Affairs Select Committee also recommended that British ministers urge their American counterparts to begin direct negotiations with Iran and consider offering it a security guarantee if it provides "credible and verifiable" assurances it will not manufacture nuclear weapons. "A military strike would be unlikely to succeed and could provoke an extremely violent backlash across the region," the committee said in its "Global Security: Iran"...

With Iranian leaders bombastically stating once again during February that Israel will soon be destroyed, Israel's top military leader warned mid-month that a decisive armed conflict could break out in the troubled region at any time. He added that it would be a major test over the resolve and preparedness of the country's regular and reserve armed forces. This came soon after the army, air force and navy were placed on heightened alert after the Lebanese Hizbullah militia vowed to avenge the assassination of its top military commander, which it blamed on Israel. Tensions escalated even further after the group's...