Israel Must Attack Iran, Insists Bolton
If this is your first time visiting Bible Prophecy In The News, I'd like to invite you to subscribe to our RSS feed. Never miss an update.. Thanks for visiting!
Former US Ambassador to the UN John Bolton told The Washington Post on Thursday that the only way left to prevent Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons is to support an Israeli military strike on the Islamic Republic.
Bolton said the soft approach taken by US President Barack Obama had only hastened the Iranian nuclear threat, and that today the only options that remain are to allow Iran to obtain nuclear weapons or intervene militarily.
With Obama almost certain to never order a military strike on Iran, that leaves only Israel.
Bolton urged Israel to decide quickly whether or not it will strike.
“Israel’s decision of whether to use military force against Tehran’s nuclear weapons program is more urgent than ever,” said Bolton, adding that he is confident new Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu fully grasps the gravity of the situation and will respond accordingly.
via Source
North Korea May Fire Missile Toward Hawaii
North Korea may be preparing to launch a long-range ballistic missile, possibly in the direction of Hawaii, a Japanese newspaper said Thursday, citing an analysis by the Japanese Defense Ministry.
South Korean kindergartners play near displays of models of mock North Korea’s Scud-B missile, right, and other South Korean missiles at Korea War Memorial Museum in Seoul, South Korea, Thursday, June 18, 2009. North Korea may fire a long-range ballistic missile toward Hawaii in early July, a Japanese news report said Thursday, as Russia and China urged the regime to return to international disarmament talks on its rogue nuclear program. Collapse
(Ahn Young-joon/AP Photo)
The conclusion was reached after analyzing North Korea’s recent activities and looking at intelligence gathered by U.S reconnaissance satellites, according to the The Yomiuri Shinbun, one of Japan’s major dailies.
Most analysts, however, doubt that a North Korean missile could reach Hawaii, roughly 4,500 miles from the Korean Peninsula and just out of reach of even an upgraded Taepodong-2, which has an estimated range of 4,038 miles, the paper reported.
The paper said the Japanese ministry is now studying the possibility of deploying Aegis-equipped destroyers with surface-to-air missiles, which could intercept a North Korean missile, sources told the paper.
Related
North Korea to Fire Missile That Can Reach US?
N. Korea Touts ‘Military Muscle’
Obama Condemns N. Korea’s Nuclear Test
The Japanese government has already deployed PAC3 anti-missile sy
via Will North Korea Fire a Missile Toward Hawaii? - ABC News.
North Korea Warns of Nuclear War
North Korea’s communist regime has warned of a nuclear war on the Korean peninsula while vowing to step up its atomic bomb-making program in defiance of new U.N. sanctions.
The North’s defiance presents a growing diplomatic headache for President Barack Obama as he prepares for talks Tuesday with his South Korean counterpart on the North’s missile and nuclear programs.
[...]
A commentary Sunday in the North’s main state-run Rodong Sinmun newspaper, carried by the official Korean Central News Agency, claimed the U.S. has 1,000 nuclear weapons in South Korea. Another commentary published Saturday in the state-run Tongil Sinbo weekly claimed the U.S. has been deploying a vast amount of nuclear weapons in South Korea and Japan.
Obama Must Consider Military Option on North Korea
By Kathleen Troia “K.T.” McFarland
National Security Expert/Former Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense
North Korea snatched two American journalists and is holding them hostage under the window dressing of calling them ’spies.’ They’ve detonated two nuclear bombs. They’ve tested medium and long range ballistic missiles and they’re preparing another round of tests. They’re getting so close to joining the ranks of great nuclear nations that they can taste it.
Both Presidents Clinton and Bush tried diplomacy and failed. It’s now up to President Obama to try a different road.
The world is now at a crossroads and must make a decision within weeks – if not days. Will it stand by while North Korea becomes a nuclear weapons state? If so, others will quickly follow –- in northeast Asia, in the Middle East, perhaps even in South America. Think of it as a giant nuclear domino game — where one country going nuclear leads inevitably to its neighbor doing the same. Here’s how this would break down:
In Northeast Asia: In response to North Korea, Japan, and possibly South Korea, will believe they have no option but to become nuclear states themselves, which both could do in short order by converting their nuclear power programs into nuclear weapons programs.
In the Middle East: Iran will interpret the world’s inability to halt North Korea’s program as a green light for its own efforts. They will buy more missiles and nuclear technology from North Korea — reports are they already have people standing by in Pyongyang. A nuclear Iran will set off an arms race in the the most dangerous part of the world, as the Sunni states of Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Syria and perhaps even Turkey feel the need to offset Shiite Iran.
Is there anything we can do to stop the world from slowly slipping toward nuclear Armageddeon? Actually there is. It’s time to draw a line in the sand on nuclear proliferation and the place to start – immediately – is with North Korea. There can be NO NoKo Nukes. But the U.S. can’t do it alone.
NK Detonates Underground Nuclear Bomb
North Korea’s state media has confirmed the communist state has conducted a nuclear weapons test.
It is believed the blast was much stronger than Pyongyang’s first test in 2006.
South Korea says weather agency officials detected what they called an artificial earthquake in the communist North this morning.
The government in Seoul immediately accused North Korea of conducting a nuclear weapons test.
It has called an emergency security meeting of its cabinet in response to the announcement.
Two hours later the secretive communist regime confirmed via its state media that it had detonated a nuclear device, saying the underground test was successful and was part of the country’s nuclear deterrent policy.
In response, South Korean President Lee Myung-Bak called an emergency national security council meeting, while Japan’s government said it had set up a crisis task force.
Russia to Test Fire at Least 5 New Ballistic Missiles
Russia will conduct at least five test launches of a new-generation intercontinental ballistic missile this year, the deputy defense minister was quoted as saying Tuesday.
Col. Gen. Vladimir Popovkin said the Bulava missile needs thorough testing because “the reliability of all aspects of the rocket needs to be achieved” in comments carried by state news agency RIA Novosti.
The submarine-launched Bulava missile has a reported maximum range of about 6,200 miles and capacity for up to six individually targeted nuclear warheads. It has been hailed as a key future component of Russia’s nuclear forces, although mixed results in testing have tempered enthusiasm.
Popovkin, speaking in Istanbul, said if the test launches were successful another five would be scheduled, the agency said.
The Bulava is to be test-fired from the Dmitry Donskoi nuclear submarine this year, Navy Admiral Oleg Burtsev told RIA Novosti separately.
The Taliban’s Nuclear Threat To Pakistan And the World
As insurgents close in on Islamabad, The Daily Beast’s Gerald Posner reports that Taliban forces are on the verge of seizing Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal—which has the capability to hit India, Saudi Arabia, and Iraq.
This morning, Taliban units took control of the Buner region of Pakistan, bringing their burgeoning insurgency within 60 miles of the capital city of Islamabad. The government called the advance a breach of a recently signed peace agreement. But what did they expect? Any store owner who has faced ever-increasing protection payments to local gangsters could have told the Pakistanis that their recent string of capitulations to the Taliban—striking peace deals and ceding territory—was doomed to failure.
You think the stock market looks bad over the last two years? Let a Taliban spokesman announce that Mullah Omar has his finger on the Islamic Bomb.
The Taliban advance should be causing high Richter-scale reactions inside the Obama White House. Counterterrorism officials have long warned that al Qaeda is desperate to obtain weapons of mass destruction. Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal is in play if the Taliban insurgency should unseat the government of Asif Ali Zadari.
Israel Stands Ready To Strike Iran’s Nuclear Sites
The Israeli military is preparing itself to launch a massive aerial assault on Iran’s nuclear facilities within days of being given the go-ahead by its new government.
Among the steps taken to ready Israeli forces for what would be a risky raid requiring pinpoint aerial strikes are the acquisition of three Airborne Warning and Control (AWAC) aircraft and regional missions to simulate the attack.
Two nationwide civil defence drills will help to prepare the public for the retaliation that Israel could face.
“Israel wants to know that if its forces were given the green light they could strike at Iran in a matter of days, even hours. They are making preparations on every level for this eventuality. The message to Iran is that the threat is not just words,” one senior defence official told The Times.
Gates Cautions Israeli Against Strike On Iran
Amid increasing suggestions that Israel might attack Iran’s nuclear facilities, Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates warned this week that such a strike would have dangerous consequences, and asserted that Tehran’s acquisition of a bomb can be prevented only if “Iranians themselves decide it’s too costly.”
Using his strongest language on the subject to date, Gates told a group of Marine Corps students that a strike would probably delay Tehran’s nuclear program from one to three years. A strike, however, would unify Iran, “cement their determination to have a nuclear program, and also build into the whole country an undying hatred of whoever hits them,” he said.
Israeli officials fear that the Islamic Republic may gain the know-how to build a bomb as early as this year. Several of them have warned that Israel could strike first to eliminate what it considers an existential threat.
Iran responded this week to the Israeli declarations, asking the United Nations to intervene to stop the threats.
Mohammad Khazaee, Iran’s ambassador to the United Nations, sent a letter Tuesday to the president of the U.N. Security Council denouncing “unlawful and insolent” threats of an attack. He said the threats violated international law and the U.N. Charter, and urged the organization to respond.
Biden Warns Israel Off Any Attack On Iran
Vice President Joe Biden issued a high-level admonishment to Israel’s new government Tuesday that it would be “ill advised” to launch a military strike against Iran.
Biden said in a CNN interview that he does not believe newly installed Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu would take such a step. Even so, his comment underscored a gap between the conservative new Israeli government and the Obama White House on a series of questions, including the Israeli-Palestinian peace process and Iran.
While the Obama administration has made a series of recent overtures to Tehran, the Israelis have grown more confrontational out of concern that the Islamic Republic’s increasing nuclear know-how could one day become an existential threat.
Netanyahu signaled several times during his election campaign that he would not tolerate a nuclear-armed Iran. “I promise that if I am elected, Iran will not acquire nuclear arms,” he said in one appearance, “and this implies everything necessary to carry this out.”
With his brief comment Tuesday, Biden became the highest-ranking administration official to caution the Jewish state against a military strike. In the interview, Biden was asked whether he was concerned that Netanyahu might strike Iranian nuclear facilities.
“I don’t believe Prime Minister Netanyahu would do that. I think he would be ill advised to do that,” Biden said.
Israel Ready to Strike Iran
Informed sources in Washington tell Newsmax that Israel indeed will launch a strike against Iran’s nuclear facilities soon – possibly in just days as President George W. Bush prepares to leave office.
The reason: The time clock has begun to run out. Iran is close to acquiring a nuclear device under the control of its radical president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
International Atomic Energy Agency Director General Mohamed ElBaradei said in June that Iran would have a nuclear weapon in as little as six months.
That six-month period has passed.
Reports of Israel’s decision to imminently launch strikes, although unconfirmed, would seem to contradict the Bush stance outlined in a front-page New York Times story last week, which asserted that Bush rejected a plea from Israel last year to help it raid Iran’s main nuclear complex.
The Times said Israel was rebuffed after it requested from the U.S. specialized bunker-busting bombs that it needs to attack Iran’s nuclear complex at Natanz. The U.S. also reportedly nixed permission to the Israeli warplanes to fly over Iraqi territory to reach Iran.
Israel’s requests to the U.S. for military assistance came as the Jewish state was reportedly angry over a U.S. intelligence assessment in late 2007 that concluded Iran had effectively suspended its development of nuclear weapons.
But an investigative report circulated by IAEA chief ElBaradei late last year disclosed that Iran was continuing to carry out uranium enrichment and had already established 6,000 centrifuges for enriching uranium, of which 3,800 were then in operation.
American intelligence officials now estimate that the figure is 4,000 to 5,000 centrifuges, enough to produce about one weapon’s worth of uranium every eight months or so, according to the Times.
The IAEA report estimated that Iran has obtained two tons of enriched uranium since its enrichment program was restarted at Natanz two years ago.
Last year 100 Israeli jets took part in an exercise over the eastern Mediterranean that was interpreted as a dress rehearsal for a possible attack on Iran.
And on Sept. 6 Israel launched an air attack against a site in Syria believed to be a nuclear-related facility containing material delivered by North Korea.
Former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations John Bolton predicted that Israel would stage a raid against Iran’s nuclear facilities if Barack Obama won the presidential election.
via Source - Newsmax.com
Read more
Israels Worst Fears
U.S. ambassador says the big threat is that Iran has almost enough fuel for its first nuclear weapon.
Sallai Meridor has been Israel’s ambassador to the United States since 2006. During that time, his government’s main strategic worry has been Iran, and that remains so today despite the fighting in Gaza. Israel warns that Iran is making rapid progress toward a nuclear bomb—Meridor calculates that Tehran should have enough fuel for its first bomb sometime in 2009—and that Israel will take military action unless the United States and other allies step in. A former intelligence officer, Meridor recently met with NEWSWEEK editors in New York to discuss Iran and how best to deal with it. Excerpts:
via Source
Gaza Rockets Put Israel’s Dimona Nuclear Plant In Battle Zone
There were growing fears in Israel last night that Hamas missiles could threaten its top-secret nuclear facility at Dimona.
Rocket attacks from Gaza have forced Israelis to flee in ever greater numbers and military chiefs have been shaken by the size and sophistication of the militant group’s arsenal.
In Beersheba, until a few days ago a sleepy desert town in southern Israel, there is little sign of the 186,000 inhabitants. Schools are closed and the streets of shuttered shops echo with the howl of sirens warning of incoming rockets.
Israeli planes, meanwhile, began a new stage yesterday in their offensive on Gaza, killing Nizar Rayyan, a senior Hamas official. The one-tonne bomb in Jabaliya is also understood to have killed two of his four wives and four of his twelve children. More than 400 Palestinians have been killed in the six days of Israeli attacks.
Despite a diplomatic mission by Tzipi Livni, the Israeli Foreign Minister, to Paris, the Israeli army continued to muster thousands of troops and scores of tanks along Gaza’s border for a possible ground offensive. Israel’s airstrikes are designed to blunt Hamas’s capacity to fire its new Grad missiles deep into its territory. The weapons are smuggled in through tunnels and by sea, replacing homemade Qassam rockets.
Israeli officials say that Hamas has also acquired dozens of Iranian-made Fajr-3 missiles with an even longer range. Many fear that as the group acquires ever more sophisticated weaponry it is only a matter of time before the nuclear installation at Dimona, 20 miles east of Beersheba, falls within its sights. Dimona houses Israel’s only nuclear reactor and is believed to be where nuclear warheads are stored.
via - Times Online.
Related articles by Zemanta
![Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](http://img.zemanta.com/reblog_e.png?x-id=e87e0926-7de4-4eaa-8eea-3b50df661586)
Bush: America Will Not Allow Iran To Develop Nuclear Weapon
U.S. President George W. Bush reiterated his pledge that the United States will not allow Iran to develop nuclear weapons in a wide-ranging speech on the Middle East Friday.
“For the safety of our people and the peace of the world, America will not allow Iran to develop a nuclear weapon,” Bush said at the Saban Center for Middle East Policy at the Brookings Institution.
Bush called the Israeli-Palestinian conflict the most vexing problem in the region, but offered a hopeful tone, saying “on the most vexing problem in the region - the Israeli- Palestinian conflict - there is now greater international consensus than at any point in recent memory.”
He noted that he was the first U.S. president to call for a Palestinian state and said he sees progress toward reaching a two-state solution.
The Israelis and Palestinians agreed last November at a meeting in Annapolis, Maryland, to reach some agreement by the end of the year. But after months of publicly insisting that an agreement could still be forged, the Bush administration has conceded that it will hand the fragile, unfinished U.S.-backed peace effort to Obama.
