http://www.haaretz.com/news/diplomacy-defense/former-iran-negotiator-islamic-republic-unlikely-to-accept-west-s-offer-in-upcoming-round-of-nuclear-talks-1.436703
http://www.infowars.com/syrian-rebels-coordinate-libya-lite-with-obamas-nsc/
Members of the Free Syrian Army.
http://www.debka.com/article/22088/US-military-intervention-in-Syria-%E2%80%93-%E2%80%9CNot-if-but-when%E2%80%9D
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http://theintelhub.com/2012/06/15/syria-impending-false-flag-media-psyop-on-the-horizon/
http://www.aljazeera.com/news/middleeast/2012/06/2012616122032803660.html
Iran's heavy water nuclear facilities near the central city of Arak. Photo by AP /ISNA,Hamid Foroutan
THIS STORY IS BY
Reuters
By Reuters | Jun.15,2012 | 11:24 PM | 
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A former Iranian negotiator on Friday dismissed as "diamonds for peanuts" a proposal by world powers that Tehran halt higher-grade uranium enrichment and close an underground nuclear site in exchange for reactor fuel and civil aviation parts.
Hossein Mousavian, now a visiting scholar at Princeton University in the United States, said he did not believe Iran would accept the offer when the two sides hold a new round of discussions in Moscow on June 18-19.
It will be the third meeting since diplomacy restarted in April after a 15-month hiatus.
"I do not expect too much, said Mousavian, a senior member of Iran's nuclear negotiating team in 2003-05. If the major powers are not ready to move on the critical issues of gradually removing sanctions on Iran and recognizing its right to refine uranium, "I'm afraid the Moscow talks also would fail," he told Reuters in a telephone interview.
Mousavian held his post before conservative President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad took over from his reformist predecessor Mohammad Khatami in 2005. Western envoys who know Mousavian say that at the time he appeared to be genuinely interested in reaching a deal with the West.
The six powers - the United States, France, Germany, Britain, China and Russia - want to make sure Iran does not develop nuclear bombs. The Islamic Republic wants a lifting of sanctions and recognition of what it says are its rights to peaceful nuclear energy, including enriching uranium.
European Union officials said on Monday that Iran had agreed to discuss a proposal to curb its production of higher-grade uranium at the meeting in the Russian capital, an apparent attempt to reduce tensions ahead of the talks.
The development followed more than two weeks of wrangling between Iranian diplomats and Western negotiators over preparations for the closely watched round of negotiations.
Mousavian said Iran was ready for a "big deal" on the decade-old nuclear dispute, but political constraints in the United States ahead of November's presidential election and other factors meant the other side was not.
"President Obama has very limited room to maneuver in an election year," Mousavian said. Barack Obama's Republican opponents have attempted to paint him as soft on enemies of the U.S.
In the immediate term, the powers want Tehran to cease enriching uranium to 20 percent fissile concentration, because such production represents a major technological advance en route to making weapons-grade material.
They put forward a proposal on how to achieve this at a round of talks in Baghdad in May, in which Tehran would stop production, close the Fordow underground facility where such work is done, and ship its stockpile out of the country.
In return, they offered to supply the Islamic state with fuel for a medical research reactor in Tehran, which requires 20-percent uranium, and to ease sanctions against the sale of commercial aircraft parts to Iran.
No agreement was reached in Baghdad but the seven countries agreed to continue discussions in Moscow.
"I believe this is diamonds for peanuts," Mousavian said, adding that Iran already had fuel rods. "Therefore this is not something great to offer Iran."
The International Crisis Group think-tank said the powers' offer "was deliberately ungenerous" and likely to have been meant as an opening bid in what they regarded as a longer process of negotiations.
But a U.S. nuclear expert, David Albright, said Mousavian's comments showed the "difficulty of negotiating" with Iran.
The agreement sought by the powers in Moscow would be a small but important step which does not solve the Iran nuclear issue, said Albright, of the Institute for Science and International Security (ISIS) think tank. "Iran should expect only a small incentive in return - the fact of the matter is that these actions are equivalent to peanuts for peanuts," Albright said in an email.
Mousavian said, however, that Iran was ready for confidence-building measures regarding its enrichment of uranium to 20 percent, which it started in 2010 and has since expanded.
He said his own proposal was that Iran would agree to eliminate such material from its stockpile, either by converting it to fuel, exporting it or lowering its enrichment concentration to 3.5 percent - the level usually required for power plants.
and as Obama poll numberd droop , the risk of military action rises...........
Emissaries from the Free Syrian Army (FSA) have held meetings with high level U.S. government officials in Washington, the Daily Telegraph reported on Saturday. The CIA, MI6 and Mossad supported rebels consulted with Obama’s National Security Council and presented a shopping list of heavy weapons, including surface-to-air missiles.
Members of the Free Syrian Army.
On Thursday, we reported that the Pentagon had finalized plans to attack Syria. “The U.S. military has completed its own planning for how American troops would conduct a variety of operations against Syria, or to assist neighboring countries in the event action was ordered, officials tell CNN.”
Syrian ambassador Robert Ford and Frederick Hoff, special coordinator for the Middle East, also met with FSA representatives in the last week at the State Department.
The high level talks preface a meeting of the G20 next week in Los Cabos, Mexico, where U.S. and British officials will try to convince Russia’s Vladimir Putin to join the effort to militarily overthrow the al-Assad regime. Russia and China have blocked efforts by the United Nations Security Council to intervene in Syria.
According to the Daily Telegraph, western officials have privately admitted they do not expect Russia to change its position.
Funds from the oil-rich sheikdoms of Saudi Arabia and Qatar and weapons imported from Libya, including anti-tank weapons, are expected to be used for the “inevitable” intervention. Officials describe the planned military intervention as “Libya Lite,” according to the newspaper.
At least 30,000 people died as a result of the NATO and U.S. effort to depose the Libyan government. Radical Islamists and al-Qaeda now control much of the country. Tribal and sectarian clashes have engulfed Libya in the wake of NATO’s brutal intervention and the murder of Gaddafi.
Earlier this week, British Foreign Secretary William Hague said Syria may become “the next Bosnia.”
“As we see the regime using heavy weapons against civilian-populated areas and then sending in militias to kill and murder people – this is reminiscent of Bosnia in the early ’90s,” Hague said. “So I don’t think we should be thinking of it in terms of the Libya situation last year.”
In December, an Arab League observers’ report on Syria revealed that the FSA and “armed opposition groups” were responsible for many of the killings. The findings were ignored by the U.S. and the establishment media.
Hague also failed to mention that NATO was responsible for importing al-Qaeda fighters into Bosnia in the 1990s. CIA supported and trained Mujahideen “migrated to Bosnia hoping to assist their Islamic brethren in a struggle against Serbian [and for a time] Croatian forces,” Lenard Cohen, professor of political science at Simon Fraser University, told the National Post. ThePentagon used countries such as Turkey and Iran to arm al-Qaeda and other Islamist warriors in the Balkans in order to foment ethnic and religious tensions.
Moreover, atrocities committed by these Muslim forces were generally ignored by the western media. For instance, the Serb attack on Srebrenica, widely exploited by the West prior to the attack on Yugoslavia by Clinton and NATO, was a response to attacks and beheadings by Muslims.
Muslim forces based in Srebrenica had “engaged in attacks during Orthodox holidays and destroyed villages, massacring all the inhabitants. This created a degree of hatred that was quite extraordinary in the region,” General Philippe Morillon, commander of the UN troops in Bosnia from 1992 to 1993, told International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia.
and....
US military intervention in Syria – “Not if but when”
DEBKAfile Special Report June 16, 2012, 3:51 PM (GMT+02:00)
As the violence in Syria continued to go from bad to worse in scope and intensity, US official sources had this to say Saturday, June 16, about planned US military operations in the war-torn country:
“The intervention will happen. It is not a question of ‘if’ but ‘when.’”
“The intervention will happen. It is not a question of ‘if’ but ‘when.’”
A Syrian Free Army rebel delegation is now in Washington to talk about their requests for heavy weapons from the Obama administration. In their meetings with US Ambassador to Syria Robert Ford and the State Department’s expert on Syria Fred Hof, the rebel leaders handed in two lists for approval: types of heavy weapons capable of challenging Bashar Assad’s armed forces and selected targets of attack to destabilize his regime.
DEBKAfile’s Washington sources disclose that the administration is very near a decision on the types of weapons to be shipped to the Syrian rebels and when. Most of the items Washington is ready to send have been purchased by Saudi Arabia and Qatar and are ready for shipment.
The White House is also close to deciding on the format of its military operation in Syria. Some sources are defining it as “Libya lite” – that is, a reduced-scale version of the no-fly zone imposed on Libya two years ago and the direct air and other strikes which toppled the Qaddafi regime.Following reports of approaching US military intervention in Syria and a Russian marine contingent heading for Tartus port, the UN observer mission in Syria has suspended operations and patrols. Its commander Maj. Gen. Robert Mood said, “Violence has been intensifying over the past 10 days by both parties with losses and significant risks to our observers.”
DEBKAfile’s Washington sources disclose that the administration is very near a decision on the types of weapons to be shipped to the Syrian rebels and when. Most of the items Washington is ready to send have been purchased by Saudi Arabia and Qatar and are ready for shipment.
The White House is also close to deciding on the format of its military operation in Syria. Some sources are defining it as “Libya lite” – that is, a reduced-scale version of the no-fly zone imposed on Libya two years ago and the direct air and other strikes which toppled the Qaddafi regime.Following reports of approaching US military intervention in Syria and a Russian marine contingent heading for Tartus port, the UN observer mission in Syria has suspended operations and patrols. Its commander Maj. Gen. Robert Mood said, “Violence has been intensifying over the past 10 days by both parties with losses and significant risks to our observers.”
He said the risk is approaching an unacceptable level and could prompt the 300 observers to pull out of the country.
Friday, June 15, DEBKAfile reported:
Friday, June 15, DEBKAfile reported:
A contingent of Russian special forces is on its way to Syria to guard the Russian navy’s deep-water port at the Syria’s Mediterranean coastal town of Tartus, Pentagon officials informed US NBC TV Friday, June 15. They are coming by ship. According to DEBKAfile’s sources, the contingent is made up of naval marines and is due to land in Syria in the coming hours.
In a separate and earlier announcement, US Defense Department sources in Washington reported that the US military had completed its own planning for a variety of US operations against Syria, or for assisting neighboring countries in the event action was ordered – a reference, according to our sources, to Turkey, Jordan and Israel.
The Syrian civil war is now moving into a new phase of major power military intervention, sayDEBKAfile’s military sources. Moscow, by sending troops to Syria without UN Security Council approval, has set a precedent for the United States, the European Union and Arab governments to follow. They all held back from sending troops to Syria because all motions to apply force for halting the bloodshed in Syria were blocked in the UN body by Russia and China.
The Syrian civil war is now moving into a new phase of major power military intervention, sayDEBKAfile’s military sources. Moscow, by sending troops to Syria without UN Security Council approval, has set a precedent for the United States, the European Union and Arab governments to follow. They all held back from sending troops to Syria because all motions to apply force for halting the bloodshed in Syria were blocked in the UN body by Russia and China.
According to US military sources, in recent weeks, the Pentagon has finalized its assessment of what types of units would be needed and how many troops. The military planning includes a scenario for a no-fly zone as well as protecting chemical and biological sites. The U.S. Navy is maintaining a presence of three surface combatants and a submarine in the eastern Mediterranean to conduct electronic surveillance and reconnaissance on the Syrian regime, a senior Pentagon official said.
and never forget , for the WH , it's all about winning the election , collateral damage be damned , intelligence damage be damned , nothing else really matters....
http://patriotpost.us/opinion/13832
Who Benefits From the 'Avalanche of Leaks'?
They seem designed to glorify President Obama and help his re-election campaign.
What is happening with all these breaches of our national security? Why are intelligence professionals talking so much -- divulging secret and sensitive information for all the world to see, and for our adversaries to contemplate?
In the past few months we have read that the U.S. penetrated Al Qaeda in Yemen and foiled a terror plot; that the Stuxnet cyberworm, which caused chaos in the Iranian nuclear program, was a joint Israeli-American operation; and that President Obama personally approves every name on an expanding "kill list" of those targeted and removed from life by unmanned drones. According to the New York Times, Mr. Obama pores over "suspects' biographies" in "what one official calls 'the macabre 'baseball cards' of an unconventional war."
From David Sanger's new book, "Confront and Conceal: Obama's Secret Wars and Surprising Use of American Power," we learn that Stuxnet was "the most sophisticated, complex cyberattack the United States had ever launched." Its secret name was "Olympic Games." America and Israel developed the "malicious software" together, the U.S. at Fort Meade, Md., where it keeps "computer warriors," Israel at a military intelligence agency it "barely acknowledges exists."
The Pentagon has built a replica of Iran's Natanz enrichment plant. The National Security Agency "routinely taps the ISI's cell phones" -- that's the Pakistani intelligence agency. A "secret" U.S. program helps Pakistan protect its nuclear facilities; it involves fences and electronic padlocks. Still, insurgents bent on creating a dirty bomb, if they have a friend inside, can slip out "a few grams of nuclear material at a time" and outwit security systems targeted at major theft. In any case, there's a stockpile of highly enriched uranium sitting "near an aging research reactor in Pakistan." It could be used for several dirty bombs.
It's a good thing our enemies can't read. Wait, they can! They can download all this onto their iPads at a café in Islamabad.
It's all out there now. Mr. Sanger's sources are, apparently, high administration officials, whose diarrhetic volubility marks a real breakthrough in the history of indiscretion.
What are they thinking? That in the age of Wikileaks the White House itself should be one big Wikileak?
More from the Sanger book: During the search for Osama bin Laden, American intelligence experts had a brilliant idea. Bin Laden liked to make videotapes to rouse his troops and threaten the West. Why not flood part of Pakistan with new digital cameras, each with a "unique signature" that would allow its signals to be tracked? The signal could function as a beacon for a drone. Agents got the new cameras into the distribution chain of Peshawar shops. The plan didn't catch Osama, because he wasn't in that area. But "traceable digital cameras are still relied on by the CIA ... and remain highly classified."
Well, they were.
There was a Pakistani doctor named Shakil Afridi who was sympathetic to America. He became involved in a scheme to try and get the DNA of Osama's family. He "and a team of nurses" were hired by the U.S. to administer hepatitis B vaccinations throughout Abbotabad. The vaccinations were real. Dr. Afridi got inside Osama's compound but never got to vaccinate any bin Ladens.
In the days after bin Laden was killed, the doctor was picked up by Pakistani agents and accused of cooperating with the Americans. He was likely tortured. He's in prison now, convicted of conspiring against the state.
No word yet on the nurses, but stand by.
Mr. Sanger writes that President Obama "will go down in history as the man who dramatically expanded" the use of drones. They are cheaper than boots on the ground, more efficient. But some of those who operate the unmanned bombers are getting upset. They track victims for days. They watch them play with their children. "It freaks you out," a former drone operator told Mr. Sanger. "You feel less like a pilot than a sniper."
During the Arab Spring, King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia was insistent that Mr. Obama needed to stick with Egypt's Hosni Mubarak, even, Mr. Sanger reports, "if he started shooting protestors in the streets."
King Abdullah must be glad he called. Maybe he'll call less in the future.
All of this constitutes part of what California Sen. Dianne Feinstein calls an "avalanche of leaks." After she read the Stuxnet story in the Times, she was quoted as saying "my heart stopped" as she considered possible repercussions.
Why is this happening? In part because at our highest level in politics, government and journalism, Americans continue to act as if we are talking only to ourselves. There is something narcissistic in this: Only our dialogue counts, no one else is listening, and what can they do about it if they are? There is something childish in it: Knowing secrets is cool, and telling them is cooler. But we are talking to the world. Should it know how, when and with whose assistance we gather intelligence? Should it know our methods? Will this make us safer?
Liberally quoted in the Sanger book, and in Dan Klaidman's "Kill or Capture: The War on Terror and the Soul of the Obama Presidency," is the White House national security adviser, Thomas Donilon. When I was a child, there was a doll called Chatty Cathy. You pulled a string in her back, and she babbled inanely. Tom Donilon appears to be the Chatty Cathy of the American intelligence community.
It is good Congress has become involved. They wonder if the leaks have been directed, encouraged or authorized, and by whom. One way to get at that is the classic legal question: Who benefits?
That is not a mystery. In all these stories, it is the president and his campaign that benefit. The common theme in the leaks is how strong and steely Mr. Obama is. He's tough but fair, bold yet judicious, surprisingly willing to do what needs to be done. He hears everyone out, asks piercing questions, doesn't flinch.
He is Abraham Lincoln, Vampire Slayer.
And he is up for re-election and fighting the constant perception that he's weak, a one-man apology tour whose foreign policy is unclear, unsure, and lacking in strategic depth.
There's something in the leaks that is a hallmark of the Obama White House. They always misunderstand the country they seek to spin, and they always think less of it than it deserves. Why do the president's appointees think the picture of him with a kill list in his hand makes him look good? He sits and personally decides who to kill? Americans don't think of their presidents like that. And they don't want to.
National security doesn't exist to help presidents win elections. It's not a plaything or a tool to advance one's prospects.
After the killing of bin Laden, members of the administration, in a spirit of triumphalism, began giving briefings and interviews in which they said too much. One of the adults in the administration, then-Defense Secretary Robert Gates, reportedly went to Mr. Donilon's office. "I have a new strategic communications approach to recommend," he said. What? asked Mr. Donilon.
"Shut the [blank] up," Mr. Gates said.
Still excellent advice, and at this point more urgently needed.
and....
Syria: Impending False Flag Media PSYOP On The Horizon
With the Syrian crisis heating up amidst heightened agitation by NATO powers and the announcement by Russian officials that two military combat divisions and one brigade of Russian troops are being readied in order to support the Assad government, very disturbing reports are now being echoed by reliable sources such as Thierry Meyssan and Webster Griffin Tarpley regarding a potential false flag in the region.
The event, which would take the form of staged massacres, rebellions, and resignations, using television studios and the commandeering of Syrian television, would serve the purpose of both spreading disinformation across the world and a campaign of demoralization against the Syrian people.
According to Meyssan, the event could take place as early as Friday, June 15, at noon.
Meyssan states that, although the time and date are not set in stone, the plan, which has been in the works for months, has been accelerated due to the recent announcements made by Vladmir Putin.
Meyssan writes:
Studio-shot images will show massacres that are blamed on the Syrian government, people demonstrating ministers and generals resigning from their posts, President al-Assad fleeing, the rebels gathering in the big city centers, and a new government installing itself in the presidential palace.The plan, according to Meyssan, has been largely organized by Ben Rhodes, US Deputy National Security Advisor For Strategic Communication and speechwriter for Barack Obama.Meyssan states that the Arab League has officially asked satellite operators Arabsat and Nilesat to stop broadcasting Syrian media, regardless of whether those broadcasts are government-based or private.However, although Syrian media will be cut, television broadcasts presenting the staged scenarios mentioned above will replace the regularly scheduled programming.Meyssan says that, according to his sources, several international meetings were held in the last week where a discussion took place regarding how to coordinate the disinformation operation. He claims that the first meeting held in Doha, Qatar, was of a technical nature and the third meeting, held in Riyad, Saudi Arabia dealt with political ramifications.Meyssan writes:The first meeting assembled PSYOP officers, embedded in the satellite TV channels of Al-Arabiya, Al-Jazeera, BBC, CNN, Fox, France 24, Future TV and MTV. It is known that since 1998, the officers of the US Army Psychological Operations Unit (PSYOP) have been incorporated in CNN.Since then this practice has been extended by NATO to other strategic media as well.They fabricated false information in advance, on the basis of a ‘story-telling’ script devised by Ben Rhodes’s team at the White House. A procedure of reciprocal validation was installed, with each media quoting the lies of the other media to render them plausible for TV spectators.The participants also decided not only to requisition the TV channels of the CIA for Syria and Lebanon (Barada, Future TV, MTV, Orient News, Syria Chaab, Syria Alghad) but also about 40 religious Wahhabi TV channels to call for confessional massacres to the cry of ‘Christians to Beyrouth, Alawites into the grave!’The second meeting was held for engineers and technicians to fabricate fictitious images, mixing one part in an outdoor studio, the other part with computer generated images.During the past weeks, studios in Saudi Arabia have been set up to build replicas of the two presidential palaces in Syria and the main squares of Damascus, Aleppo and Homs. Studios of this type already exist in Doha (Qatar), but they are not sufficient.The third meeting was held by General James B. Smith, the US ambassador, a representative of the UK, prince Bandar Bin Sultan (whom former U.S. president George Bush named his adopted son so that the U.S. press called him ‘Bandar Bush’).In this meeting the media actions were coordinated with those of the Free ‘Syrian’ Army, in which prince Bandar’s mercenaries play a decisive role.As Webster Tarpley has pointed out, this plan sounds eerily familiar to the false broadcast of the Green Square in Tripoli, Libya which turned out to be faked film footage created on a film set in Qatar.It should also be pointed out that Victoria Nuland, Spokesperson for the U.S. State Department, has recently predicted more massacres similar to the Houla incident.Indeed, she was quite precise with her predictions, providing the exact locations of the “potential” massacres.Obviously, one cannot predict with certainty whether this disinformation plan will be utilized or not. However, it is the goal of reports such as this one to shed enough light on the operation to see that it is not.
http://www.aljazeera.com/news/middleeast/2012/06/2012616122032803660.html
| UN mission suspends activities in Syria | |||
Head of observer mission says escalating violence is impeding mission's ability to carry out its mandate.
Last Modified: 16 Jun 2012 13:36
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Hundreds of people have been killed in Syria despite the presence of about 300 observers [Reuters]
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| The UN observer mission to Syria has suspended its activities, saying escalating violence is impeding the monitors' ability to carry out its mandate. "UN observers will not be conducting patrols and will stay in their locations until further notice," the mission's chief General Major Robert Mood said in a statement on Saturday.
About 300 observers were deployed in Syria, tasked with monitoring a ceasefire and supporting the full implementation of a six-point peace plan drafted by UN-Arab League envoy Kofi Annan, which was supposed to lead to talks between the two sides.
However, hundreds of people have been killed since the first observers were deployed in April and the mission has been harshly criticised by the opposition. "The lack of willingness by the parties to seek a peaceful transition, and the push towards advancing military positions is increasing the losses on both sides: innocent civilians, men women and children are being killed every day," Mood's statement said. "It is also posing significant risks to our observers." He said intensifying violence in the last 10 days was "limiting our ability to observe, verify, report as well as assist in local dialogue and stability projects". Mood said the suspension would be reviewed on a daily basis and operations would resume when the situation was fit. 'Days were numbered' Al Jazeera's Anita McNaught, reporting from the Turkish capital Istanbul, where Syrian opposition groups were meeting on Saturday, said the reaction to the move by the UN mission was "a lack of surprise on the whole". "One delegate said to me [the monitors] were there to observe and, from where they sat, the regime had done everything to obstruct the mission to go in and actually view things," McNaught said.
Another delegate told our correspondent he he felt the mission's "days were numbered" after an attack last week on a UN convoy trying to reach the town of Haffeh. Shots were fired at the car carrying the UN observers after they were turned away from Haffeh by angry supporters of President Bashar al-Assad, who threw stones and metal rods at their convoy, a spokeswoman for the monitors said at the time. Saturday's suspension signals the unraveling of Annan's plan as the conflict that began in March 2011 with peaceful protests challenging the regime spirals closer toward civil war. Activists say some 14,000 people have been killed in the conflict.
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