Iran points finger at Israel for IRGC general’s death, vows revenge
DEBKAfile Special Report February 15, 2013, 7:29 PM (GMT+02:00)
IRGC General Hassan Shateri
The depth of Iran’s loss by the death of senior Iranian Revolutionary Guards general Hassan Shateri aka Hossam Khosh-Nevis was signified by the rank of mourners at his funeral in Iran Thursday, Feb. 15. Among them were Iran’s Defense Minister Ahmed Wahidi, Foreign Minister, Ali Akbar Salehi and Al Qods Brigades commander Gen. Qassem Soleimani.
Gen. Shateri was in fact the live wire of the tremendous military effort Iran is investing in Syria for keeping President Bashar Assad in power, DEBKAfile’s Iran and Persian Gulf sources say. He acted additionally as the vital Iranian link in the military partnership between Assad and the Lebanese Hizballah leader Hassan Nasrallah.
Iran is reported by Gulf intelligence sources to have initially drawn a veil of secrecy over the time and place of his death for fear exposure would force a military confrontation with Israel. They reveal that Gen. Shateri was in fact killed two weeks ago Saturday, Jan. 30, in the course of the alleged Israeli air strike against a Syrian military complex and arms convoy destined for Hizballah in Lebanon.
Gen. Shateri was in fact the live wire of the tremendous military effort Iran is investing in Syria for keeping President Bashar Assad in power, DEBKAfile’s Iran and Persian Gulf sources say. He acted additionally as the vital Iranian link in the military partnership between Assad and the Lebanese Hizballah leader Hassan Nasrallah.
Iran is reported by Gulf intelligence sources to have initially drawn a veil of secrecy over the time and place of his death for fear exposure would force a military confrontation with Israel. They reveal that Gen. Shateri was in fact killed two weeks ago Saturday, Jan. 30, in the course of the alleged Israeli air strike against a Syrian military complex and arms convoy destined for Hizballah in Lebanon.
Those sources claim that that the Iranian general and two aides who were driving in the same car were the real targets of that air strike.
After the event, Damascus reported two people killed and five injured, without identifying them or releasing their photos as would normally have been routine.
After the event, Damascus reported two people killed and five injured, without identifying them or releasing their photos as would normally have been routine.
Targeted assassinations by foreign hands claimed by no one are not unusual Syria. In February 2008, Hizballah’s security chief Imad Mughniyeh, who carried out many of the same functions for Tehran as Gen. Shateri, was assassinated in Damascus. Eight months ago, in July 2012, a mysterious explosion wiped out half of Assad’s inner circle, targeting the men running the war against the Syrian uprising.
Tehran was taken aback this time by the precise foreknowledge of Shateri’s movements and the accuracy of the attack, which presumed deep intelligence penetration in Tehran and Beirut as well as Damascus. Now, the Iranians appear to have decided not to take this setback lying down after all. Israel is in their sights for payback – either directly or through their allies, Syria or Hizballah, which both suffered loss from the general’s death.
DEBKAfile has learned that the IRGC general was in the process of rapidly establishing a small guerrilla army of 5,000 Revolutionary Guardsmen and 5,000 Hizballlah operatives for strengthening the defensive ring around Assad’s governing institutions in Damascus and its outskirts, secure the main Syria-Lebanon road routes and keep them open to free military movement between the two countries.
Tehran was taken aback this time by the precise foreknowledge of Shateri’s movements and the accuracy of the attack, which presumed deep intelligence penetration in Tehran and Beirut as well as Damascus. Now, the Iranians appear to have decided not to take this setback lying down after all. Israel is in their sights for payback – either directly or through their allies, Syria or Hizballah, which both suffered loss from the general’s death.
DEBKAfile has learned that the IRGC general was in the process of rapidly establishing a small guerrilla army of 5,000 Revolutionary Guardsmen and 5,000 Hizballlah operatives for strengthening the defensive ring around Assad’s governing institutions in Damascus and its outskirts, secure the main Syria-Lebanon road routes and keep them open to free military movement between the two countries.
For Tehran, an open highway between Syria and Lebanon is an overriding strategic goal in view of its determination to get Hizballah’s stock of sophisticated weapons out of Syrian stores and across to Lebanon whatever it takes - despite Israel’s reported action to frustrate the transfer.
In Tehran, the influential IRGC preacher, Hojjat-ol-Eslam Mehdi Ta’eb, declared Wednesday in a sermon that Syria’s importance to the Islamic Republic is greater even than the oil region of Khuzestan in southern Iran.
In Tehran, the influential IRGC preacher, Hojjat-ol-Eslam Mehdi Ta’eb, declared Wednesday in a sermon that Syria’s importance to the Islamic Republic is greater even than the oil region of Khuzestan in southern Iran.
and....
http://www.businessinsider.com/mali-insurgency-is-a-giant-islamic-bomb-2013-2
The Absurdity Of The War On Terror Is Finally Becoming Clear
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In the days following French President Francois Hollande's victory lap around the country, the U.N. declared Mali a humanitarian disaster. Literally just weeks after Hollande said his own troops would leave in weeks, the U.N. declares it's sending 6,000 of its own troops.
"As the situation evolves, attacks and reprisals risk driving Mali into a catastrophic spiral of violence," said the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay during a Security Council meeting Tuesday.
Meanwhile, undeterred by America's flying robots, Yemen's super-potent Al Qaeda in the Arab Peninsula put out a call for global jihadis to pilgrimage to Mali to wage Holy War on infidel occupiers (— exactly like Iraq, circa 2006, where Libyan fighters learned their craft).
Current reports are that the toughened Malian insurgents are chilling out in the mountains of Gao, where they plan and stage attacks with near impugnity — a scenario right out of Afghanistan in 2002. With an influx of weapons from Libya, and global jihadists joining the battle, the fighting could last for ...
That's just it, no one knows for how long. The two most recent counterinsurgency fights started a decade ago and are still going.
Folks are already pointing to an imminent fight with the Islamic Boko Haram and others in Mali's neighboring Niger, and fighting in Mali isn't even finished yet. Neither is fighting in Libya, according to the website SOFREP, whose recently published e-book claims that the Benghazi attacks were in part a reprisal for the U.S.'s continued targeted raids in the green mountains.
AP Photo/Ibrahim Alaguri
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Indeed, the Global War on Terror (GWOT), if it wasn't at the start, has become a game of Global Whack-A-Mole — with SEALs, drones, and now French Legionnaires as hammers.
And let's hope the West's arm doesn't get tired. Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, Al Shabaab, and North Africa's Al Qaeda in the Islamic Meghrib didn't even exist until the insurgency in Iraq was at its most pitched — in 2006. Not to suggest causality, but the correlation is undeniable.
Now they seem to get stronger by the day.
Furthermore, Mali wouldn't be getting arms and fighters if Libya hadn't been "liberated" — and some of it prominent groups ignored by the American government. Not to mention Yemen: the more it's groups get whacked with that hammer, the more concerted their efforts become.
For every mole America takes out, two more rise up.
and...
http://english.alarabiya.net/articles/2013/02/14/266291.html
Gulf monarchies reject ‘provocative’ Iran talks idea
Thursday, 14 February 2013
The Gulf monarchies on Thursday rejected as a provocation an Iranian proposal to include the Syria crisis and the situation in Bahrain on the agenda of upcoming talks on Tehran’s nuclear program.The head of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), Abdellatif Zayani, announced the “total rejection” of the Iranian proposition, calling it “a provocation” and “interference in the internal affairs of Arab states.”
He was reacting to comments by Iran’s deputy minister for Asian affairs, Abbas Araghchi, who was cited by the Mehr news agency on Tuesday as saying Tehran had “proposed that the crises in Syria and Bahrain be the subject of talks with the Western powers in Kazakhstan.”
It was a way of “mixing up the cards,” which reflected “Iran’s procrastination and lack of seriousness in reaching a settlement that puts an end to regional and international concerns over its nuclear programme,” Zayani said in a statement.
Iran’s charge d’affaires was summoned on Thursday by Bahrain’s foreign ministry, where he was handed a note of protest, the official BNA news agency reported.
The Iranian proposal was “an interference in Bahrain’s internal affairs and a violation of sovereignty,” which “stirs regional tensions and instability,” the agency added.
Saudi Arabia's Prince Saud added, “we are seeking neither conciliation nor a settlement between Iran and any entity that wants to negotiate with it. Instead, we are seeking a solution to evade any increase in nuclear weapons in the Middle East. We would like to see a nuclear-free Middle East, as this is the policy we are pursuing.”
Relations between Iran and the GCC have plunged to a new low, with Tehran suspected of supporting Shiite opposition protests in Bahrain against the Sunni monarchy.
The Islamic Republic is also a staunch ally of Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad, while the Gulf monarchies are key backers of the rebels in the conflict that has raged for almost two years and cost tens of thousands of lives.
Fears of a nuclear weapon
The comments by the Gulf States come less than two weeks before Iran and the so-called P5+1 - Britain, China, France, Russia, the United States and Germany - are due to resume discussions in Kazakhstan, eight months after they were suspended.
The talks aim to address a key Western concern about Iran’s capacity to enrich uranium to fissile purities of 20 percent, a process that can be used for peaceful atomic purposes as well as for making the core of a nuclear bomb.
Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Saud Al-Faisal Tuesday criticized Iran’s lack of cooperation with the international community and called on Iran to be more forthcoming about its nuclear program to remove any doubts that surround its peaceful use.
Iran recently sought to garner tens of thousands of specialized magnets that are commonly used in centrifuge machines, sparking concerns that the country is planning a major expansion of its nuclear program.
Purchase orders, copies of which were obtained by the Washington-based Institute for Science and International Security (ISIS) and shown to The Washington Post, show an attempt, by the Iranians, to buy 100,000 ring-shaped magnets.
The magnets are currently banned from export to Iran under a U.N. resolution. However the order was requested from China about one year ago. It is not clear whether the attempt was successful.
The order is considered unusual due to its sheer size and due to the nature of the items. Iran has allegedly ordered enough magnets to, theoretically, outfit 50,000 new centrifuges reported the Washington Post on Thursday.
Iran recently announced that it plans to add thousands of more advanced, second generation centrifuges to its current lineup. This will allow the country to ramp up production of enriched uranium even further state experts. The purchase orders have sparked concern abroad.
The talks aim to address a key Western concern about Iran’s capacity to enrich uranium to fissile purities of 20 percent, a process that can be used for peaceful atomic purposes as well as for making the core of a nuclear bomb.
Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Saud Al-Faisal Tuesday criticized Iran’s lack of cooperation with the international community and called on Iran to be more forthcoming about its nuclear program to remove any doubts that surround its peaceful use.
Iran recently sought to garner tens of thousands of specialized magnets that are commonly used in centrifuge machines, sparking concerns that the country is planning a major expansion of its nuclear program.
Purchase orders, copies of which were obtained by the Washington-based Institute for Science and International Security (ISIS) and shown to The Washington Post, show an attempt, by the Iranians, to buy 100,000 ring-shaped magnets.
The magnets are currently banned from export to Iran under a U.N. resolution. However the order was requested from China about one year ago. It is not clear whether the attempt was successful.
The order is considered unusual due to its sheer size and due to the nature of the items. Iran has allegedly ordered enough magnets to, theoretically, outfit 50,000 new centrifuges reported the Washington Post on Thursday.
Iran recently announced that it plans to add thousands of more advanced, second generation centrifuges to its current lineup. This will allow the country to ramp up production of enriched uranium even further state experts. The purchase orders have sparked concern abroad.
“They are positioning themselves to make a lot of nuclear progress quickly,” said a European diplomat who spoke on the condition of anonymity. “Each step forward makes the situation potentially more dangerous.”
Engineers in Iran installed more than 1,000 new IR-1 centrifuge machines at the country’s largest uranium plant, close to the city of Natanz. This adds to the 9,000 IR-1 machines currently in operation, said officials of the International Atomic Energy Agency.
Furthermore, 2,800 IR-1s have been installed near the city of Qom at a small enrichment plant built beneath a mountain.
U.S. intelligence officials have not commented on the magnet case.
According to an ISIS investigation the company that placed the order had previously been linked to Iran’s attempts to acquire controversial technology.
The recent move would shorten Iran’s timeline to obtaining nuclear weapons capability.
“Adding new machines just means you get there a lot faster,” a Western diplomat privy to internal IAEA reports said.
A U.N. watchdog report, outlining Iran’s nuclear attempts, will be released this week.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/feb/14/elite-iranian-general-assassinated-syria-lebanon
Elite Iranian general assassinated near Syria-Lebanon border
Syrian rebels claim responsibility for killing of General Hassan Shateri, a senior figure in the Revolutionary Guards
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An undated photograph of General Hassan Shateri, released by Iran's semi-official Fars news agency. Photograph: Ehsan Rajabi/AP
A senior commander of Iran's elite Revolutionary Guards has been killed while travelling from Syria to Lebanon, according to Iranian authorities.
A man identified as General Hassan Shateri was reportedly assassinated by what Iranian officials described as "the agents and supporters of the Zionist regime" while travelling from Damascus to Beirut.
It was not immediately clear in which of the two countries Shateri was killed but a Syrian rebel commander said an Iranian official was killed in an attack carried out by Syrian rebels in Zabadani in southwestern Syria, close to the Lebanese border.
"General Hassan Shateri was martyred by the agents and supporters of the Zionist regime on his way to Beirut from Damascus," the semi-official Mehr news agency quoted the Revolutionary Guards' spokesman, Ramezan Sharif, as saying on Thursday.
Iran's state English-language television, Press TV, reported that Shateri was killed on Tuesday and described him as the man who "led the Iranian-financed reconstruction projects in the south of Lebanon". By pointing the finger at "Israeli agents", Sharif was probably referring to Syrian rebels whom Iranian officials portray as terrorist armed groups backed by Tel Aviv.
Iran is a staunch supporter of the Syrian regime of Bashar al-Assad and Lebanese militant group Hezbollah, providing both with military and financial support. Syria gives Iran physical access to Lebanon and Hezbollah, which is strategically important for Tehran's leaders because of the group's geographical position in respect to Israel. Iran does not recognise Israel as a country and usually refers to it as "the Zionist regime".
After the 2006 war between the Israeli military and Hezbollah, Iran's elite forces bolstered their presence in southern Lebanon, saying they were willing to revamp the region's war-stricken infrastructure. This became a contentious issue for Tel Aviv but boosted the popularity of Iran among Hezbollah supporters.
Mehr said Shateri was a veteran of the eight-year Iran-Iraq war who in recent years "had devoted his time to the reconstruction of damaged areas after the 33-day Israeli war on Lebanon".
Iran's embassy in Lebanon, meanwhile, identified the dead man as Hessam Khoshnevis, leading to confusion that there might be a second death. But the circumstances given about Khoshnevis's death and his job title were similar to those of Shateri.
The British-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights told AFP that Shateri was killed when a rebel group ambushed his vehicle while he was returning to Lebanon from Syria.
On Thursday Iran held a funeral ceremony for Shateri in Tehran that was attended by the foreign minister, Ali Akbar Salehi, and the commander of the Revolutionary Guards, Mohammad Ali Jafari. Ghasem Suleimani, the man who heads the external arm of the Revolutionary Guards, known as the Quds force, members of which usually shun public ceremonies, also attended the funeral.
In May 2012, a senior Quds force commander conceded for the first timethat Iranian forces were operating in Syria in support of the Assad regime.
"If the Islamic republic was not present in Syria, the massacre of people would have happened on a much larger scale," Ismail Gha'ani, the deputy head of the Quds force, said at the time.
In February 2012, Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, went public to say that the Icountry has provided assistance to Hezbollah and Palestinian group Hamas.
"We have intervened in anti-Israel matters, and it brought victory in the 33-day war by Hezbollah against Israel in 2006, and in the 22-day war [in Gaza Strip]" he said at the time.
http://landdestroyer.blogspot.co.uk/2013/02/hypocrisy-us-arms-al-qaeda-in-syria.html
Hypocrisy: US Arms Al Qaeda in Syria, Mass-Slaughters Civilians in Afghanistan
February 13, 2013 (LD) - AFP has reported that a recent NATO airstrike in Afghanistan has killed over 10 civilians in an all-too-familiar headline glossed over by the Western media in an exercise of both depravity and hypocrisy. RT's article, "NATO airstrike kills 10 Afghan civilians, mostly women and children - officials," notes in particular that up to 11,864 civilians were killed in Afghanistan between 2007 and 2011, and that civilian deaths before 2007 were not even tracked by the UN.
Such facts reveal alarming hypocrisy as the UN keeps almost daily, inflated tallies of civilian deaths elsewhere, in particular, in nations like Libya and Syria where Western interests have been heavily involved in regime change and in dire need of manipulating public perception worldwide. The United Nations had in fact pieced together a dubious report crafted from "witness accounts" compiled not in Syria, or even beyond its borders in a refugee camp, but instead, in Geneva by "witnesses" supplied by the so-called Syrian "opposition."
For the people of the world, we must realize that these institutions were created for and by big-business special interests, and the legitimacy they are portrayed as having is a mere illusion created by the corporate media. We must begin identifying these special interests, boycotting and replacing them permanently at a local level. If it is peace we want, it is clear that the UN, NATO, and all institutions in between, sow only death and destruction amidst a myriad of hypocrisy, double standards, and immeasurable corruption, and we must move into the future without them.
Such facts reveal alarming hypocrisy as the UN keeps almost daily, inflated tallies of civilian deaths elsewhere, in particular, in nations like Libya and Syria where Western interests have been heavily involved in regime change and in dire need of manipulating public perception worldwide. The United Nations had in fact pieced together a dubious report crafted from "witness accounts" compiled not in Syria, or even beyond its borders in a refugee camp, but instead, in Geneva by "witnesses" supplied by the so-called Syrian "opposition."
Image: Just some of the corporate members of the US-Qatar Business Council, whose president just so happens to sit on the same board of directors of the Middle East Policy Center as Karen AbuZayd, co-author of one of many conveniently timed UN Human Rights Council reports on Syria.
Worse yet, that UN report was co-authored by Karen Koning AbuZayd, a director of the US Washington-based corporate think-tank, Middle East Policy Council. Its board of directors includes Exxon men, CIA agents, representatives of the Saudi Binladin Group (Osama Bin Laden's family business), former ambassadors to Kuwait, Oman, and Qatar, US military and government representatives, and even the president of the US-Qatar Business Council, which includes amongst its membership, Al Jazeera, Chevron, Exxon, munitions manufacturer Raytheon (who supplied the opening salvos during NATO's operations against Libya), and Boeing.
In other words, the very underwriters of the armed militancy that is consuming Syria are sitting along side the head of the UN commission producing reports portraying the Syrian government as guilty of "war crimes and crimes against humanity.
The hypocrisy does not end there. The pretense the US and NATO have used for over a decade to occupy, subjugate and slaughter the people of Afghanistan - in a conflict increasingly creeping over both Afghanistan's borders with Pakistan and Iran - is supposedly to fight "terrorism." Western interests have been allowed to fight this "war on terrorism" with impunity, and even without UN monitoring for years, while Syria was immediately condemned for fighting against Al Qaeda terrorists overtly flooding into their nation with NATO assistance.
Indeed, as NATO claims to fight terrorism in Afghanistan, it has already handed over the North African nation of Libya to Al Qaeda terrorists, specifically the the US State Department, United Nations, and the UK Home Office (page 5, .pdf)-listed terrorist organization, the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG). The US in particular oversaw the rise of the Al Qaeda terror-emirate Benghazi, even having a US ambassador slain there by the very terrorists it had armed, funded, trained, provided air support for, and thrust into power.
These same terrorists have been documented extensively as spearheading the invasion of northern Syria via NATO-member Turkey, with NATO cash and weapons in cooperation with Saudi Arabia and Qatar. The glaring hypocrisy of so-called "international law" and "international institutions" is on full display. Nations like Russia, China, Iran, India, Pakistan, Indonesia, Brazil, and many others should give serious thought to peeling away from the United Nations, the compromised International Criminal Court, and other corrupt, Western-serving institutions that will, and in many cases already are, being turned against them, their interests, and national sovereignty.
Worse yet, that UN report was co-authored by Karen Koning AbuZayd, a director of the US Washington-based corporate think-tank, Middle East Policy Council. Its board of directors includes Exxon men, CIA agents, representatives of the Saudi Binladin Group (Osama Bin Laden's family business), former ambassadors to Kuwait, Oman, and Qatar, US military and government representatives, and even the president of the US-Qatar Business Council, which includes amongst its membership, Al Jazeera, Chevron, Exxon, munitions manufacturer Raytheon (who supplied the opening salvos during NATO's operations against Libya), and Boeing.
In other words, the very underwriters of the armed militancy that is consuming Syria are sitting along side the head of the UN commission producing reports portraying the Syrian government as guilty of "war crimes and crimes against humanity.
The hypocrisy does not end there. The pretense the US and NATO have used for over a decade to occupy, subjugate and slaughter the people of Afghanistan - in a conflict increasingly creeping over both Afghanistan's borders with Pakistan and Iran - is supposedly to fight "terrorism." Western interests have been allowed to fight this "war on terrorism" with impunity, and even without UN monitoring for years, while Syria was immediately condemned for fighting against Al Qaeda terrorists overtly flooding into their nation with NATO assistance.
Indeed, as NATO claims to fight terrorism in Afghanistan, it has already handed over the North African nation of Libya to Al Qaeda terrorists, specifically the the US State Department, United Nations, and the UK Home Office (page 5, .pdf)-listed terrorist organization, the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG). The US in particular oversaw the rise of the Al Qaeda terror-emirate Benghazi, even having a US ambassador slain there by the very terrorists it had armed, funded, trained, provided air support for, and thrust into power.
These same terrorists have been documented extensively as spearheading the invasion of northern Syria via NATO-member Turkey, with NATO cash and weapons in cooperation with Saudi Arabia and Qatar. The glaring hypocrisy of so-called "international law" and "international institutions" is on full display. Nations like Russia, China, Iran, India, Pakistan, Indonesia, Brazil, and many others should give serious thought to peeling away from the United Nations, the compromised International Criminal Court, and other corrupt, Western-serving institutions that will, and in many cases already are, being turned against them, their interests, and national sovereignty.
For the people of the world, we must realize that these institutions were created for and by big-business special interests, and the legitimacy they are portrayed as having is a mere illusion created by the corporate media. We must begin identifying these special interests, boycotting and replacing them permanently at a local level. If it is peace we want, it is clear that the UN, NATO, and all institutions in between, sow only death and destruction amidst a myriad of hypocrisy, double standards, and immeasurable corruption, and we must move into the future without them.
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