Bilderberg stooge ( and constitutionally ineligible to boot ) Rubio turns into a war hawk against Iran and Syria. Contrast the cries for an attack on Iran by Prime Minister Netanyahu and Defense Minister Barak versus the more sober and balanced opinons of Israeli military and intelligence leaders such as Meridor and Gantz ! Also note the positions of Meridor and Gantz are similar to the positions of Dempsey and Panetta !

http://www.aljazeera.com/news/middleeast/2012/04/20124251384543509.html

Israel general says Iran atomic bomb unlikely

Military chief calls Tehran's leaders "very rational", and experts say Iran may drop nuclear programme to ease sanctions. Last Modified: 26 Apr 2012 08:07 inShare11 Email Print Share Feedback

Israel's military chief has signalled a softening of his country's line on Iran, saying that he does not believe Iran will decide to produce an atomic bomb and describing its leadership as "very rational". In the interview published on Wednesday in the Haaretz newspaper, Lieutenant-General Benny Gantz's characterisation of Iran's rulers appeared to be at odds with warnings from Binyamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, that Tehran's leaders might use nuclear weapons even at the risk of devastating retaliation. "Iran is moving step-by-step towards a point where it will be able to decide if it wants to make a nuclear bomb. It has not decided yet whether to go the extra mile," said Gantz. "In my opinion, [Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei] will be making a huge mistake if he does that and I don't think he will want to go the extra mile." Israel, believed to have the Middle East's only nuclear arsenal, has long seen a nuclear Iran as an existential threat. Tehran denies seeking the bomb and says it is enriching uranium for peaceful purposes. In-depth coverage of a growing regional debate  Both Israel and the US have declined to rule out military action against Iran should economic sanctions fail to curb its nuclear programme, saying all options were on the table. Speaking to Al Jazeera from Washington DC, Thomas Pickering, a former US ambassador to Israel, said: "President Obama, has said that while all options are on the table, he's been very careful to say, that it would be only in the case when it's very clear that Iran is going for a nuclear weapon ... that the US will be prepared to consider all those options, whatever that might mean." But Seyed Mahmoud-Reza Sajjadi, Iran's ambassador to Russia, told the Bloomberg news agency on Wednesday that Tehran was considering a Russian proposal to halt the expansion of its nuclear programme in order to avert new sanctions. This is a softening of the Iranian line, which held that the country, as a sovereign nation, has a right to a civilian nuclear programme. It is also an about-face for Sajjadi who in February warned that Iran would "deliver retaliatory strikes on the United States anywhere in the world". The Russian proposal asks that as a start, Iran freeze the number of centrifuges for uranium enrichment at current levels and place other restrictions on its centrifuge use. In return, global powers would refrain from imposing new sanctions on Tehran. Reza Marashi, research director of the National Iranian American Council, told Al Jazeera that he "wouldn't be surprised" if Iran were willing to consider and negotiate the proposal. "This tracks closely with many of the feelers that the Iranian government has been putting out over the past few weeks," said Marashi, who describes the Iranian statement as "willingness to negotiate limitations". Sanctions bite Sajjadi's statement to Bloomberg, which was followed by a brief dip in crude oil futures, showed the fragile state of the global oil market and Iran's significant role in it. "I don’t think that Iran has any interest in seeing [oil] prices fall since they are already struggling to sell their barrels. The latest Platts data shows they may be storing some 22 million barrels offshore that they cannot sell, mainly crude oil and the odd condensate cargo," Kate Dourian, Middle East editor at Platts, a firm that provides benchmark price assessments of energy markets, told Al Jazeera. She said that the longer the sanctions continue, the longer it will take for Iran to restore its market share, something it is losing to rapidly to Iraq, where oil production and imports are on the rise. "Iran cannot afford to lose customers unless they can figure out a way to bypass sanctions. But, even then, they will not be able to place all the barrels they would otherwise have sold into Europe once the EU sanctions are in effect since a lot of refiners are shying away from doing business with Iran," said Dourian. She added that Iran is facing difficulty in receiving payment for its oil due to banking sanctions. Torbjorn Tornqvist, chief executive of oil trader Gunvor, said in an interview on Tuesday that Iran is experiencing "huge problems" exporting oil, but there is unlikely to be a sharp drop in volumes once the European Union oil embargo comes into effect on July 1. He added that Iran will be the single most important factor determining oil prices in 2012. Iran this month began negotiations over its nuclear programme with six world powers for the first time in more than a year, and has been hit with round after round of sanctions by the US, the EU and the UN, causing its currency tonose-dive against the US dollar and hiking inflation rates. Western diplomats greeted Iran's first meeting with the United States, Russia, China, Germany, France and Britain with cautious optimism, and the two sides agreed to meet again in Baghdad on May 23. Ehud Barak, the Israeli defence minister, last week voiced scepticism that negotiations will curb Teheran's nuclear ambitions. and...

http://www.juancole.com/2012/04/rubio-calls-for-war-on-iran-syria-as-israeli-army-rejects-it.html

Rubio Calls for War on Iran, Syria– as Israeli Army Rejects Strike

Posted on 04/26/2012 by Juan

GOP Vice-Presidential hopeful Marco Rubio on Wednesday called for unilateral US military action against Syria and Iran and blamed President Barack Obama for declining to send troops to Syria in the absence of a UN Security Council resolution authorizing the use of force. He also said that in addition to sanctioning Iran, “We should also be preparing our allies, and the world, for the reality that unfortunately, if all else fails, preventing a nuclear Iran may, tragically, require a military solution.”

So Rubio is campaigning for the vice president slot in the Republican Party by promising to embroil our country in two major Middle East wars, and moreover to do so without the backing of international law. But this step is precisely the mistake George W. Bush made in Iraq, and it meant that the US was mostly on its own in fighting, dying and paying for that war. Syria is 2/3s the size of Iraq, and Iran is 3 times more populous, so Rubio is committing us not only to bear more thousands of war dead and badly wounded but also to spend trillions in distant Middle Eastern deserts.

The US now has a two-party system in which one party is systematically pledged to make the US an international outlaw, with all the immense costs that entails.

Meanwhile, the chief instigator of war with Iran, Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, has clearly lost the fight inside the Israeli security establishment and even among his own colleagues.

First, Israeli deputy premier and minister of intelligence and atomic energy Dan Meridor gave an interview with Aljazeera English in which he admitted that Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad never called for Israel to be ‘wiped off the face of the map.’

I made the same point in 2005 and was raked over the coals by the late Christopher Hitchens and his Neoconservative friends, and by Likudniks (Meridor is a member of the Likud Party!). My dispute with Hitchens was instanced as a reason I shouldn’t be allowed to teach in the History Department at Yale University, and Likud apparatchik-posing-as-historian Michael Oren also attacked me at that time (he was a visitor at Yale and is now Israeli ambassador to Washington). Ethan Bronner at the New York Times did a hatchet piece on my stance, concluding with no evidence that Ahmadinejad had said the words, and he even implied that I don’t know the difference between a transitive and intransitive verb in Persian. I have been grossly insulted many times in the press and cyberspace, but I mind that one most of all. And the Likudniks complained that I was on Aljazeera or cited it.

So now the deputy premier of Israel, 7 years later, admits publicly that I was right all along, on Aljazeera.

Worse for Netanyahu and Rubio, Israel’s military chief of staff, Gen. Benny Gantz, came out and said that Iranian leaders are rational actors and that they have no current nuclear weapons program, not having decided to go for warheads.

And, of course, I’ve been saying these things for years and vilified for it, but this is the Israeli Army chief of staff speaking now.

It seems obvious to me that Meridor and Gantz are attempting to box in PM Netanyahu and his defense minister, Ehud Barak, whom the Israeli officers and intelligence chiefs consider insane or at least ‘absolutely stupid’ on the Iran issue. Meridor completely pulled the rug out from under Netanyahu, who has quoted ‘wipe off the face of the map’ till he was blue in the face.

What Gantz said echoes the position of US Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta and of US Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Martin Dempsey. Netanyahu leaked vicious attacks on Dempsey, a shameful act for a supposed ally. Gantz inevitably depends heavily on the US Pentagon, and appears to have thrown in with Panetta and Dempsey against Netanyahu, both because the Obama administration wants him to, and because Israeli military and intelligence leaders are aware that a strike on Iran would potentially unleash a maelstrom in the Middle East with which Israel may not be well-equipped to deal in the absence of US backing (and Obama has made it clear there won’t be US backing). In part, Gantz’s statement, which undercut Netanyahu, may have been Dempsey’s revenge.

I should underline that I think Iran is often a bad actor in the Middle East, and agree its nuclear enrichment program should be watched like a hawk. I like Israel and Israelis and think they’d be much better off if they’d give the Palestinians the Gaza Strip and the West Bank and stop rampaging around stealing territory and launching fruitless wars. I don’t mind having been slammed for my stances; at least I won’t go to my grave with no one having noticed I was here. But I do mind that my prediction was correct, that unindicted felon and traitor Richard Bruce Cheney (much more guilty than Bradley Manning) has managed to clone himself in the next generation, and that if the Republicans capture the White House we could be back to unilateral wars in the Middle East. Our country is now stuck in a game of Russian roulette, and people like Rubio are the bullet in the chamber.