Bush: America Will Not Allow Iran To Develop Nuclear Weapon
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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.
Report: Iranian Officials Recommend Preemptive Strike Against Israel
Top officials in Iran are proposing a preemptive strike against Israel to avoid an assault on its nuclear reactors, Israel’s Haaretz newspaper reported Wednesday.
Senior Tehran official Dr. Seyed G. Safavi said at a recent briefing in London that the proposal followed threats by Israeli authorities, but a possible preemptive strike against Israel has not yet been incorporated into Iranian policy.
Israeli Transportation Minister Shaul Mofaz said in June that Israel would be forced to strike Iran’s nuclear reactor if Tehran continues to pursue its controversial uranium enrichment program, Haaretz reported.
Safavi told the paper that Tehran recently drafted a new policy for responding to an Israeli or American attack on its nuke facilities. While the country previously called for attacks against Israel and American interests in the Middle East and beyond, the new policy is to target Israel alone.
In addition, Safavi said that Iran’s elite Revolutionary Guards would respond to a U.S. attack on Iranian soil by attacking Israel, which they believe would be a part of any American military action.
Large-scale Iranian Air Force Exercise Simulates Attack On Israel
DEBKAfile’s military sources report that the drill beginning Thursday, Oct. 16 in northern Iran, is Tehran’s rejoinder to Israel’s big aerial maneuver last June.
Then, more than 100 Israeli fighter-bombers went through their paces over the Mediterranean and Aegean Seas, roughly the same distance from Israel as Iran.
Tehran’s media claim the exercise will test its air force’s ability to fly to Israel and back without refueling.
The exercise will also test the US-made FBX-T band anti-missile radar system delivered in September and installed at the IAF Nevatim air base in the Negev. The Iranians say they will be practicing their “state-of-the-art military equipment and flight tactics,” meaning an attempt to jam US and Israeli electronics and radar.
According to Iranian media, the entire range of Iran’s fighter fleet will take part, including US-made F-4, F-5, F-7 and F-14 fighters and domestic Saegheh fighters. Mid-air refueling will be provided by Boeing 707 aerial tankers.
In mid-August, Iran’s Air Force chief, Brigadier General Ahmad Miqani, maintained that its antiquated fighter jet fleet had been overhauled and upgraded to fly distances of 3,000 kilometers without refueling. That would be more than double the distance between Iran and Israel.
That is why Tabriz, in Azerbaijan, at the northwestern corner of Iran, was picked as the starting point of the exercise. The official communiqué said the planes would be flying from air fields in Tehran, Isfahan, Tabriz and Hamadan and Dezful.
Our military sources say that this means that the entire maneuver will take place over Iran and not venture out its air space. The planes will have to fly to Tabriz from bases in the south near the Pakistan border in order to replicate the more than 1,200 km distance between Iran and Israel.
The Iranian Air force also aims at deploying more than 100 warplanes for the exercise, matching the number Israel used in its maneuver four months ago.
Tehran has timed this large-scale drill for just three weeks before the US presidential election on Nov. 4, in response to speculation rife in the West that Israel may use the window between the US election and the swearing-in of the new president in January for an attack on Iran’s nuclear installations.
The Iranians aim to show they have a first and second strike capability - not just with ballistic missiles but also by aerial attack.
French Foreign Minister Says Israel Expected To Bomb Iran
The French foreign minister Bernard Kouchner has said Israel is expected to launch a military strike on Iran before it acquires a nuclear bomb, and urged the Jewish state to hold back in favour of sanctions.
“I know that some people in Israel and in the army are preparing a military solution or not a solution but a military attack. I don’t know. This is not according to my opinion the solution,” Mr Kouchner told the Israeli daily Ha’aretz in an interview published Sunday, adding that he did not believe Iran acquiring a nuclear weapon would give it any “immunity” from attack.
“First, because you will eat them before. And this is the danger. Because Israel has always said that it will not wait for the bomb to be ready. I think that they [the Iranians] know. Everybody knows,” he said.
The newspaper’s print edition quoted Kouchner as saying that Israel would “eat” Iran, but in a written statement the foreign minister said he had used the word “hit,” and that he regretted any “phonetic confusion”.
Mr Kouchner said French officials believe Iran would be able to produce one bomb within two to four years, though Israeli estimates have suggested the programme is more advanced, and said further talks and sanctions were still the preferred option.
“Iran with an atomic bomb is unacceptable at all,” Mr Kouchner said. “Is the alternative to bomb first? I think not.”
Mr Kouchner’s statement follows last week’s UN Security Council’s resolution demanding an end to Tehran’s efforts at uranium enrichment, suspected to be a clandestine weapons programme though Iran maintains it is to create fuel for peaceful purposes.
The head of the UN nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency, also acknowledged last week that in six years of investigations in Iran his agency has never been able to rule out such a programme.
Dutch Paper: U.S. Will Attack Iran in Weeks
In light of recent prophetic events around the world, the threat of a war involving Israel, the US and Iran may be a real possibility… If true, we may be closer to this than most believe.
The largest newspaper in the Netherlands, De Telegraaf, reported this past weekend that its nation’s intelligence agency has been working closely with the CIA to help prepare the U.S. in a planned air attack on Iran.
The front-page story in De Telegraaf, published Friday and headlined “Attack on Iran Imminent,” claimed that U.S. military strikes on Iran’s nuclear and weapons facilities would happen in weeks.
The paper indicated Holland’s military intelligence service (Algemene Inlichtingen-en Veiligheidsdienst, or AIVD), has pulled back from its operations inside Iran helping the U.S. to identify targets.
De Telegraaf reports that the decision has already been made by the U.S. to attack Iran using unmanned aircraft, hence the Netherlands’ decision to remove its agents.
Excerpts from De Telegraaf follow:
“Good sources have declared to the Telegraaf that the AIVD Algemene Inlichtingen- en Veiligheidsdienst has been operating in Iran for the last few years with the purpose of the infiltration and sabotage of the weapons industry of the Iranian republic.
“The operations are said to have been ‘very successful’ but have recently been put to a halt because of American plans for an air attack. Information regarding the AIVD operation has been shared with the CIA in recent years, according to the sources.
