The Thomas Chronicles

While writing my previous post, two related news items came in.

1. Iran has formally threatened the Strait of Hormuz to hurt Western economies should either America or Israel attacks.

Iranian Major General Mohammed Ali Jafari said, “Regarding the main route for exiting energy, Iran will definitely act to impose control on the Persian Gulf and Strait of Hormuz.”

It seems they’ve declared that closing or disrupting the Strait of Hormuz will be one of their opening moves in this potential war. 20 to 40 percent of the world’s energy passes through those narrow waters.

2. It was reported today in China View and other locations that Iran is digging 320,000 graves on their border provinces for our troops.

“We do not wish the families of enemy soldiers to experience what Americans had to go through in the aftermath of the Vietnam War,” said Baqerzadeh, who is also head of Iran’s search committee for missing soldiers.

The preemptive measures would decrease the time during which slain soldiers would be buried, the Iranian military official said, adding “the burial of slain soldiers will be carried out decently and in little time.”

I would say this is more than the usual rhetoric, wouldn’t you?

Update 7/1/08:

It doesn’t take a genius to figure out that, in a energy starved world, closing or disrupting this supply would lead to at least a Great Depression. If you think it’s just about oil, you are absolutely correct.

I try to explain to people (if they are willing to listen) that petroleum doesn’t just go into your cars. It makes all your plastics, all the fertilizers for our food– in a word, it is what drives out entire world. We are practically bubblewrapped in petroleum products.

So, when people chant, “No blood for oil!” think about this. Without oil, millions will die from starvation, poverty, and eventually, disease (no plastic syringes and no plastics in machinery to create the vaccines). There will be plenty of blood flowing without oil, more than we can imagine.

We know what life without oil is like— it’s the kind of life during the Civil War on back where people were white-haired, toothless and dying by 40 years old.

North Korean Disarmament

People have been golf clapping at North Korea’s actions of late.

It was report last week as a diplomatic victory for the Bush Administration. North Korea has suddenly— and seemingly without any smoking-gun reason— has decided to fold on virtually every point in the negotiations to halt their nuclear weapons program.

All this comes after over two decades of diplomacy, which were full of mendacity and trickery on their part. Their delaying tactics, including an enormous incentives package naively negotiated by the Clinton Administration, allowed them to create functioning nuclear weapons, one of which they detonated unin 2006.

But one thing no one— and I mean NO ONE, not the MSM, not bloggers, not talking heads (not that I heard of)— in the media has ask is: why now? After all of North Korea’s maneuverings and defiance for over the past 20 years, why have they chosen at this time to cave?

Allow me to set the stage for what I think the implications of this are.

I blogged last week about our proximity to war with Iran. It leaked through CBS consultant, Michael Oren, that Israel had quietly approached the United States and said in effect:

“If you won’t attack Iran, we will.”

I’m sure you don’t need me to spell out what would happen should war erupt in the Middle East between Israel and Iran, but for those unversed in how intertwined things are, allow me to elucidate.

Iran have allies in Russia and China, both of whom are heavily invested in Iran. Russia has given them countless technological transfers, including their burgeoning nuclear weapons technology, and China is heavily dependent on Iran for energy, without which they sink as a country.

Periphery players are Iranian sponsored proxies, Hamas and Hezbollah, Lebanon (which is predominately controlled by Hezbollah now) and Syria, who is a close Iranian ally.

All these players, not to mention Europe, has an incredibly large stake in the outcome of this crisis, and I don’t believe any one of them are willing to sit on the sidelines as a spectator. Not when their survival depends on it.

Should conflict erupt, Israel’s only ally, the United States, will also not idly sit by and watch the Jewish race be destroyed from the face of the earth. One Holocaust is enough, as far as the United States is concerned.

How does all this fit in with North Korea’s recent cave-in to all our demands, evidenced in their very public destruction of their nuclear cooling tower?

In the fall of 2007, September in fact, Israeli warplanes destroyed a secret site in Syria which was housed nuclear material— material that originated from North Korea.

Since North Korea is up to its earlobes in international intrigue with nuclear material in the Middle East, if the United States were to attack Iran any time in the immediate future, North Korea would have to also be on the cross-off list of rogue regimes. I.E. If we’re gonna put down one nuclear-aspiring rogue regime, we’re going to have to take down the one with ready nuclear capabilities as well.

We couldn’t afford to have a nuclear hostile sitting on our flank on the Korean Peninsula that could deal us tremendous amount of harm (Japan would be in jeopardy). Optimal would be to take them both out at the same time.

I don’t think North Korea would sue for terms if they didn’t know for certain that we are proceeding to Tehran. The fact that they would fold totally and in an instant underlines just how close we are.

I think North Korea went belly up to get out of our way, fearing they would be in our sights.

I think this also means that we are on the doorsteps of open war with Iran… and possibly World War III…

In keeping with my bleak theme of late, I now turn Iran.

For years now, the United States and our allies have been trying to talk Iran down from a cliff that they clearly want to jump from. We are talking, of course, of their nuclear weapons ambitions.

Such ambitions are serious enough considering their heavy investments in terrorist organizations, like Hamas and Hezbollah; but not content with destablizing the region through international terrorism, Iran’s president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, has repeatedly called for Israel to be “wiped off the map.”

And with achieving the proverbial “bomb”, they have also achieved their means to following through on their threat.

It should be noted here that the Iranians are not Arabs. They are Persians. They are the oldest continuous civilization in the world, older than China in unbroken continuity. We underestimate them at our peril.

And the Persians don’t bluff.

Then, two days ago on June 24th it was leaked to CBS consultant Michael Oren that if the United States will not strike at Iran’s nuclear build up, Israel will.

“The Israelis have been assured by the Bush administration that the Bush administration will not allow Iran to nuclearize… Israelis are uncertain about what would be the policies of the next administration vis-à-vis Iran.”

In other words, Israel is not going to wait for the U.S. Presidential election. They will act before then unless we act first. Which means such an attack could happen some time within the next four months.

News of this leak is reverberating through the world, and many fear that we are on the edge of a precipice and World War III. Some articles like this one, even outlined how it could start.

Israel, without doubt, does not have the resources to sustain a war with Iran. If they do attack Iran, they will be destroyed by their opponents, unless the U.S. (whom is their closest ally) does not provide military relief (i.e. combat Iranian forces).

Now here is where it gets hairy (and scary).

Iran’s closest ally is another powerful country, you may have heard of it; Russia. They have together (Iran and Russia) what is called a ‘mutual cooperation agreement’ which includes a stipulation that explicitly aims to allow, encourage, and protect the Iranian atomic program.

In short, Russia has agreed to defend Iran - specifically if their nuclear ambitions are derailed by another country.

What’s more - Russia has a very similar agreement with their closest ally, and you have heard of them too, they boast ‘the million man army’; China. The agreement between Russia and China is far more blunt. They aim to work together militarily and economically in order to counter ‘western’ hegemony in both fields.

However, what this author failed to factor in is the terrible necessities of Europe, China and likelihood of the surrounding Arab nations joining the conflict against Israel and America.

Europe would have to be dragged into the fray because their lifeline depends on Russia and Middle Eastern natural resources. If those supplies fail to reach them, their lights go out; and European winters are very, very cold.

Ditto China. China is buying oil futures like there was no tomorrow because, like Europe, if the oil does not flow from the Middle East through the Strait of Hormuz, their lights also go out. The difference between China and Europe is that China is desperate in extremis. I suspect they wouldn’t need any nudging from Russia to enter the war or to fulfill their treaty commitments.

China’s very survival depends on the war’s outcome.

It is clear that Israel does not trust a possible Obama Presidency. Why should they?

Obama’s advisor has met with Hamas on numerous occasions. Obama’s church gave an open invitation to Hamas to promote their propaganda in their church bulletin.

The fact that he has left the church alleviate any concerns with regard to Obama’s relationship with this church. If anything, his farewell comments to the church indicated that he approved of what the church has done.

“This is not a decision that I come to lightly, and frankly it’s one that I made with some sadness…Trinity was where I found Jesus Christ, where we were married, where our children were baptized. We have many friends among the 8,000 congregants.”

…

“It’s clear that now that I am a candidate for president, every time something is said in the church by anyone associated with Trinity, including guest pastors, the remarks will be imputed to me, even if they totally conflict with my long-held views, statements and principles.”

It seemed he showed great reluctance to leave a church that shouts racism from the pulpit and supports terrorists.

Israel’s misgivings are not unfounded.

So, instead of sitting on their hands to see the election’s outcome, Israel is going strike, and God help us when or if they do.

If you haven’t read or heard about the tensions rising in the Persian Gulf yet, this video should clue you in. Compliments of Breitbart and the Drudge Report.

What surprised me the most about the description of the event given by the video is how five Iranian ships charged and circled the US ships multiple times. It doesn’t matter that the Iranian ships were smaller. Given the damaging attack on the USS Cole, I am surprised the captain didn’t give the order to fire after the first time the Iranian ships charged them.

But it is understandable why he didn’t.

One third of the world’s energy flows through the Strait of Hormuz on a daily basis. Whatever the Iranian intention, this is a very very dangerous game their playing.

*** Update below ***

To my previous post, commenter Hass had the following things to say:

“Nonsense. The IAEA report says no such thing about “building a warhead”. And, those Iranian centrifuges make low-enriched uranium which CANNOT be used to make bombs - doesn’t matter if there’s 3000 or 30 million of them - and they’re under constant IAEA surveillance.

The Iranians have offered to place additional restrictions on their enrichment program - beyond their legal obligations - to ensure that the centrifuges can’t even theoretically be secretly used to make bomb-grade enriched uranium. For example, they’ve offered to operate the facility as a joint venture with foreign governments.

Even Brazil and Argentina, which have recently developed the same technology, have not made such an offer.”

To this I have to confess, the IAEA made no mention about “building a warhead”. However, this doesn’t mean they’re not buiding one either. So, for the sake of accuracy, I was wrong and Hass was correct in this particular. But that is where it ends.

In any honest assessment of the Iranian situation, you would have to come to grips with the public statements of its President Ahmadinejad that he will wipe Israel off the face of the map. He has made his intentions quite clear to the world and to his own people.

Continue Reading »

Great Britain’s Guardian reported today that the Iranians have reached a critical mass. The official report released by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) stated that “Iran has installed 3,000 centrifuges for enriching uranium - enough to begin industrial-scale production of nuclear fuel and build a warhead within a year.“

I have a curious feeling that what we decide now as a nation will determine the nature of our actions in the following years to come. The Bush Administration has asserted that this is a major demarcation, a line across which we won’t allow Iran to pass. However, through rhetorical loopholes and a peculiar paralysis of action on the part of the West, Iran casually strolled cross this “red line” without so much as a whimper.

Will this be our Munich?

Continue Reading »

… if this Palestinian Civil War spills outside of the Gaza Strip, that is. And such a calamity would not just be a hypothetical possibility either.

Just so that we can have a valid frame of reference toward understanding the level of hostility in Palestine, I’ve heard accounts of Palestinians in the Gaza Strip wanting Israel, the enemy of their blood, to invade. This is on par with us inviting al-Qaeda to invade California because the situation there has become so awful. And lacking an Israeli invasion at the moment, it was just reported today that Gazans are fleeing the Gaza Strip toward Israel.

For the moment at least, it seems both the Fatah faction and the Hamas faction has slowed down hostilities in favor of consolidating their power. Hamas in the Gaza Strip can’t influence Fatah in the West Bank, and vice-a-versa, but the situation is far from stable.

People forget that next door is the Kingdom of Jordan, a key US ally. About half of their population is Palestinian, and many of the ones inside refugee camps support Hamas.

As odd as this sounds, one almost pines for the return of the Fatah Party to the Gaza Strip because, as bad as Yasser Arafat’s Fatah party and their cronies were, they never really had the level of state sponsorship that Hamas enjoys. Hamas is armed and funded by the Iranians, whose President has said on numerous occasions that he’ll “wipe Israel off the face of the map.”

Reports are spreading since late Saturday that the Israeli government is drawing up plans to invade Gaza.

ISRAEL’s new defence minister Ehud Barak is planning an attack on Gaza within weeks to crush the Hamas militants who have seized power there.

According to senior Israeli military sources, the plan calls for 20,000 troops to destroy much of Hamas’s military capability in days.

The raid would be triggered by Hamas rocket attacks against Israel or a resumption of suicide bombings.

Barak, who is expected to become defence minister tomorrow, has already demanded detailed plans to deploy two armoured divisions and an infantry division, accompanied by assault drones and F-16 jets, against Hamas.

The Israeli forces would expect to be confronted by about 12,000 Hamas fighters with arms confiscated from the Fatah faction that they defeated in last week’s three-day civil war in Gaza.

Details of the plan emerged as Fatah forces in the West Bank stormed Hamas-run buildings, including the parliament in Ramallah, where they tried to seize the deputy speaker.

Israeli officials believe their forces would face even tougher resistance in Gaza than they encountered during last summer’s war against Hezbollah in south Lebanon.

A source close to Barak said that Israel could not tolerate an aggressive “Hamastan” on its border and an attack seemed unavoidable.

“The question is not if but how and when,” he said.

It is clear that a Hamas dominated Gaza Strip is intolerable for Israeli national security, yet simultaneously, Israel’s invasion can spark a larger regional war. In a separate but perhaps not unrelated event, rockets are being fired from Southern Lebanon into Israel.

ADAYSSEH: Lebanese troops and UN peacekeepers were on full alert in Southern Lebanon Monday, a day after rockets were fired into northern Israel for the first time since the August 14, 2006, UN-brokered cease-fire that ended the summer war. Armored vehicles from both the Lebanese Army and the UN Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) patrolled the road running parallel to the border with Israel.

The army and police also set up snap checkpoints in the border zone a day after unidentified militants fired two rockets into northern Israel, causing no injuries and minor damage in Kiryat Shmona.

The attack, the first since Israel’s devastating invasion last year, raised tensions in Lebanon, which since May 20 has suffered a string of deadly bombings and further shaken by battles with Islamist forces in the North.

One day after the rocket-fire, Southerners voiced concerns about the renewal of violence with Israel, which forced hundreds of thousands from their homes last summer.

Fatmeh Sheet, a resident of the border town of Kfar Kila, said she was worried because the source of the rocket fire still had not been identified. The attack was a “negative development because now all of us Southerners will be accused,” she added.

Another Kfar Kila resident, Zeinab Bazzi, said she was not particularly worried, “as the army is now deployed in the South and we fully trust it to protect us and our land.”

Lebanese security sources told The Daily Star the incident was “extremely dangerous,” adding that it carried “internal as well as external messages.”

“Those responsible for the incident wanted the Lebanese to [believe] that the launching of rockets on Israel was tightly connected with bombings in Beirut and battles between the Lebanese Army and Fatah al-Islam militant group at the Nahr al-Bared Palestinian refugee camp in the North,” one of the sources said.

UNIFIL spokeswoman Yasmine Bouziane described the incident as a “serious breach” of a nearly year-long truce and urged all parties to exercise restraint.

No matter how you look at this, from which angle, when you scratch bare the surface of these events you’re going to see Iran standing there at the side.

Israel is almost fully bracketed by Iran now. Iranian-backed Hezbollah is directly north of them in Southern Lebanon. To the Northeast of the them is Iran’s staunch military ally, Syria. To the direct east of them are all the Palestinians in the Kingdom of Jordan who support Hamas.

Buckle up your seatbelts, ladies and gents. It’s going to be a bumpy ride.

For more coverage, you can check out these commentaries here and here and here and here and here and here.