Iran: novi front

[Prospero]

The Sources of Iranian ConductThirty-three years after Shi‘a Islamists seized power in Tehran, we are still far from appreciating the sources of their conduct. We therefore stand little chance of altering it.Sohrab AhmariJuly 13, 2012The collapse of the latest round of negotiations between the great powers and the Islamic Republic of Iran in Moscow has prompted the usual soul-searching in Washington and Brussels: Did we misread the mullahs’ psychology yet again? Could a sweeter Western proposal have overcome their natural mistrust? These are worthwhile questions to ask. But the emotional rollercoaster accompanying each cycle of failed talks—from fear and trembling to boisterous optimism, then back to anxiety—suggests that the West lacks the proper conceptual framework for answering them. Thirty-three years since Shi‘a Islamists seized power in Tehran, we are far from appreciating the sources of their conduct. We therefore stand little chance of altering it. As George Kennan understood when he wrote “The Sources of Soviet Conduct” in 1946, the behavior of every long-term adversary is rooted in a specific combination of ideology and circumstance. The mullahs are no exception. Unlocking the sources of their conduct can narrow the range of realistic options, and disclose new ways for dealing with the Iranian threat.First, the ideology. Whether they call themselves “principlists” or “reformists,” Iran’s leaders are Khomeinists before anything else. They are still burning the initial reserve of revolutionary fuel tapped by the regime’s founder, the Ayatollah Khomeini. Its religious trappings often lend it an exotic air, yet Khomeinism is a modern concoction. For starters, it breaks decisively with traditional Shi‘a doctrine, which held that the pious should defer to earthly rulers on matters of state. Khomeinists show no such restraint. Indeed, they have sought to radically reengineer the Persian soul—with its love of wine and erotic poetry—by regulating every sphere of Iranian life. The mullahs thus closely resemble the totalitarians of the Third Reich and the Soviet Union. This is no accident. Consider Ali Shariati, the Sorbonne-educated sociologist widely credited as the Islamic Republic’s intellectual architect. Shariati’s philosophy blended Marxist doctrine, Frantz Fanon-style third worldism, and Shi‘a Islamism. In his writing, Shariati substituted the opposition between the (more Islamic-sounding) “arrogant” and “dispossessed” for Marx’s class struggle. But his teaching was structurally similar to Marxism, especially in its faith in Islamic history’s inevitable march toward the total state promised by the Prophet Muhammad and the Shi‘a saints. From Lenin, Shariati borrowed the notion of an Islamist intellectual vanguard led by scholars like himself and called by history to help hasten the arrival of that state. Shariati died in 1978, before the revolution he preached came to full fruition. Nevertheless, today’s second-generation Khomeinists retain the Manichean opposition at the heart of his worldview—above all, Shariati’s conviction that Iran and the broader Islamic world must be cleansed of Western influence. “The Westerners have polluted our world with their capitalism and our religion with their churches,” Shariati seethed. “They obscured and ruined everything we hold dear.” How to counter the Western cultural menace? Shariati proposed that a revolutionary imamate—the Shi‘a equivalent of the dictatorship of the proletariat— should rule until the Islamic utopia could be fully achieved. That’s where Khomeini stepped in with his doctrine of the guardianship of the jurisconsult: the notion that the clerical class must exercise paternal care over the people, much as in the olden days a local mullah would take charge of orphans and invalids. They would do so until the Shi‘a messiah, or Mahdi, emerges from a millennial state of occultation to herald the end of days.Khomeini saw himself as that steward and, after coming to power, decreed that his guardianship extends across the Muslim world. And this is where Khomeini and Shariati’s ideologies ran up against the Middle East’s harsh historical realities. The rest of the Mideast, it turned out, wasn’t so eager for an Iranian ayatollah’s paternal guidance. True, anti-Westernism ran deep across the region, but it wasn’t strong enough to overcome an Arab-Persian hatred that long predates it. Inside Iran, Khomeinism had to contend with a populace that had experienced some five decades of modernization under the previous regime. The things Shariati hated most about the West—“dandyism, dancing, cocktail partying, wine drinking, and sexual freedoms in the name of civilization”—had penetrated broad sections of Iranian society before the Khomeinists could build an Islamic firewall around it. So it had a robust secularist tradition. In response, the Khomeinists went to war. They incepted the terrorist group Hizballah as a proxy to fight the region’s only non-Muslim sovereign, Israel. Iran soon became the world’s largest state sponsor of terrorism. Back home, the mullahs targeted intellectuals, women, minorities, and the young, among others. This war, too, caused enormous suffering. Thousands were tortured and executed. Many more were exiled. It is this catastrophe that stares back at Khomeinism’s standard-bearers today—including Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad—as they survey the regime’s moral and historical legacy. Their domestic repression and defiance abroad have left them isolated on both fronts. The circle of loyal citizens gets smaller by day. “It is an undeniable privilege of every man to prove himself right in the thesis that the world is his enemy,” Kennan wrote of Soviet leaders’ paranoia. “For if he reiterates it frequently enough and makes it the background of his conduct he is bound eventually to be right.” The observation applies equally well to Tehran, where paranoia and messianic fervor combine to create a dangerously neurotic leadership class. Yet these leaders must press on, brushing off critics by reminding them, as Mr. Khamenei reportedly has on a few occasions, that “I only imprison my opponents; Imam [Khomeini] killed them.” And anyhow, Khomeinism is a self-reinforcing ideology: The disapproval of the international community and their own people’s discontent only affirm adherents in the rightness of their cause. The recent rise of Islamic radicalism, albeit of the Sunni variety, looks to Tehran like a new opportunity for resurrecting pan-Islamism.It is this intersection of ideology and circumstance which explains the Iranians’ intransigence, and which renders Western attempts to reach a negotiated settlement to the nuclear crisis highly unlikely to succeed. Even if a particular actor within the Iranian regime were open to rapprochement, the system as a whole is designed to perpetuate existential enmity against the West. No Iranian leader can make nice with “global arrogance” after all the misery inflicted on Iranians in the name of defying it. Permanent enmity against the West, the cornerstone of Khomeini and Shariati’s worldviews, is thus a basic condition of the regime’s existence. When Ahmadinejad claims that the “Imam of the Ages” directs the events of the Arab Spring against the “Satanic” West, he is dead-serious. When he denies the Holocaust, he is not merely expressing frustration with the lack of progress on the peace process; he means business. Yet such rhetoric—not to mention the cries of “Death to America” and “Death to Israel” regularly emanating from Tehran—has become a quotidian fact of life for most Western leaders. We either dismiss it as the inchoate rage of a mysterious land or else try to justify it as a reaction to legitimate postcolonial grievances. Khomeinism shouldn’t be condescended to in this way. It is an alternative vision of the world that sees itself in competition with the liberal order led by the United States. If this fact has eluded us, especially during the Obama era of “engagement”, it is because we have forgotten a lesson we mastered during the Cold War: namely, how to think and fight ideologically. We will not win the contest with Tehran if we insist on proposing economic and diplomatic solutions to what is fundamentally a moral and ideological problem. The Iranian regime is convinced—mistakenly—that the West is actively undermining Khomeinism as an ideology and a way of life. Woe onto to them once we actually set our minds to it.

[Prospero]

Cops name Iran military arm for attack on Israeli diplomatNeeraj Chauhan, TNN Jul 30, 2012, 01.58AM ISTNEW DELHI: Alleging that an Iranian state agency was involved in the February 13th bomb attack on an Israeli diplomat in the capital, the Delhi Police has concluded that the suspects were members of Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, a branch of the nation's military. The investigation report, exclusively accessed by TOI, states that the IRGC members had discussed the plan to attack the Israeli diplomats in India and other countries with Indian journalist Syed Mohammad Ahmad Kazmi in January 2011, after Iranian scientists had been attacked allegedly by the Israelis. The cops have also learnt that Kazmi was in touch with these people for almost 10 years.Details about the suspects have been shared with Iran through a letter rogatory. Delhi Police has sought more details of the five IRGC members, including the main bomber, Houshang Afshar Irani, who mentions his profession in Iran as a builder, Sedaghatzadeh Masoud (sales employee in a commercial company on Baharestan St, Tehran), Syed Ali Mahdiansadr (a mobile shopkeeper in Tehran), Mohammad Reza Abolghasemi (clerk in the finance department of Tehran's water authority) and Ali Akbar Norouzishayan (a retired accountant in Tehran). According to the sources, Masoud is said to be the operational head and it was he who planned the attacks in Georgia, Bangkok and Delhi. Apart from these five, police have also come across the role of an Iranian woman, identified as Leila Rohani, in the February 13 attack in New Delhi as well as the attacks in Bangkok and Georgia, and has sought details about her as well from Iran. Rohani had allegedly helped Iranian suspects in Bangkok attack of February 14 in getting a flat, after which she fled to Tehran.

[Roger Sanchez]

Bibi’s Secret War Plan

The Israeli attack will open with a coordinated strike, including an unprecedented cyber-attack which will totally paralyze the Iranian regime and its ability to know what is happening within its borders. The internet, telephones, radio and television, communications satellites, and fiber optic cables leading to and from critical installations—including underground missile bases at Khorramabad and Isfahan—will be taken out of action. The electrical grid throughout Iran will be paralyzed and transformer stations will absorb severe damage from carbon fiber munitions which are finer than a human hair, causing electrical short circuits whose repair requires their complete removal. This would be a Sisyphean task in light of cluster munitions which would be dropped, some time-delayed and some remote-activated through the use of a satellite signal.A barrage of tens of ballistic missiles would be launched from Israel toward Iran. 300km ballistic missiles would be launched from Israeli submarines in the vicinity of the Persian Gulf. The missiles would not be armed with unconventional warheads [WMD], but rather with high-explosive ordnance equipped with reinforced tips designed specially to penetrate hardened targets.The missiles will strike their targets—some exploding above ground like those striking the nuclear reactor at Arak–which is intended to produce plutonium and tritium—and the nearby heavy water production facility; the nuclear fuel production facilities at Isfahan and facilities for enriching uranium-hexaflouride. Others would explode under-ground, as at the Fordo facility.A barrage of hundreds of cruise missiles will pound command and control systems, research and development facilities, and the residences of senior personnel in the nuclear and missile development apparatus. Intelligence gathered over years will be utilized to completely decapitate Iran’s professional and command ranks in these fields.After the first wave of attacks, which will be timed to the second, the “

Blue and White” radar satellite

, whose systems enable us to perform an evaluation of the level of damage done to the various targets, will pass over Iran. Only after rapidly decrypting the satellite’s data, will the information be transferred directly to war planes making their way covertly toward Iran. These IAF planes will be armed with electronic warfare gear previously unknown to the wider public, not even revealed to our U.S. ally. This equipment will render Israeli aircraft invisible. Those Israeli war planes which participate in the attack will damage a short-list of targets which require further assault.Among the targets approved for attack—

Shihab 3

and Sejil ballistic missile silos, storage tanks for chemical components of rocket fuel, industrial facilities for producing missile control systems, centrifuge production plants and more.

[Agni]

These IAF planes will be armed with electronic warfare gear previously unknown to the wider public, not even revealed to our U.S. ally. This equipment will render Israeli aircraft invisible.

[Aion]

Za sta ovaj smajli? Ceo plan mi deluje dosta realno, ukljucujuci i citirani deo.

[Roger Sanchez]

Imamo i krajnji rok, do 6. 11. ove godine. Obama da se pridruži, ili će ispast čikn. I ako ispadne čikn će ga Mićo™ razvaliti na izborima i onda će bombati zajedno Iran, valjda u siječnju...

[nautilus]

nego, kako ce se te podmornice, koje inace ne nose balisticke nego krstarece rakete, neopazeno provuci kroz suecki kanal? lupetanje od clanka

[Aion]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Submarine-launched_ballistic_missile

[Roger Sanchez]

Pa išle su oko Afrike..

[nautilus]

ma izraelske podmornice su suvise male da bi nosile balisticke rakete. nemaju posebne "silose" na pramcu u kojima bi se smjestile te rakete. nose samo one krstarece koje se ispaljuju kroz torpedne cijevi. pa to oko afrike bi bilo opako putesestvije za dizelelektricnu podmornicu, moglo bi se izvesti uz par brodova za opskrbu uz put, ali opet zeznuto za rat.

[Roger Sanchez]

Izrael ima Delfinke švapske provenijencije koje nijesu dizelektrične... drugo, Suez nije zatvoren za izraelske podmornice ni u vrijeme rata ni u vrijeme mira, jedina začkoljica je da bi Iranu vjerojatno neko telefonirao da je prošla. Ako već nije tamo sve vrijeme..

[nautilus]

The submarine is powered by three 16V 396 SE 84 diesel engines developing 3.12MW sustained power and supplied by MTU (Motoren und Turbinen Union) Munchen GmbH, based in Munich. The submarine is equipped with three 750kW alternators, and a 2.85MW sustained power motor supplied by Siemens. The machinery drives a single shaft.The propulsion system provides a speed of 20kt dived and a snorting speed of 11kt. The range of the submarine is 8,000 miles at a surface speed of 8kt and over 400 miles at an economical speed of 8kt dived. The hull is rated for a diving depth of 350m. The endurance of the submarine is 30 days.http://www.naval-technology.com/projects/dolphin/

[Roger Sanchez]

Je, al ima i fjuel cells, i bazu u Eilatu.Nema u tom tekstu faktografskih greški koje ga diskreditiraju (osim možda ovih Teslinih zraka koje skrivaju avijone :D ), ali očito ima stilskih. Uzmi u obzir da je preveden sa hebrejskog..

[Agni]

Za sta ovaj smajli? Ceo plan mi deluje dosta realno, ukljucujuci i citirani deo.

Deluje ti realno da Ameri bace 66 milijardi dolara na razvoj "nevidljivog lovca", koji uz to kosta oko 150 miliona po komadu (cifre sa wikipedie) zrtvuju mu domet i manevarske sposobnosti zarad smanjenja radarskog odraza, a lukavi Izraelci ih zajebu i dodju do istog rezultata dodajuci neko nevidjeno sokocalo na njihove F-15 ili F-16? Meni jok.

[Aion]

Postoje uredjaji koji sluze za ometanje rada radara. Ima ih od veoma jednostavnih (snazan snop radio talasa sa sumom oko frekvencije na kojoj radar radi) do veoma sofisticiranih koji mogu da projektuju laznu sliku stanja u vazduhu na nekoj teritoriji. Naravno postoji i citav skup kontra-kontra mera koje se koriste u radarima (uglavnom sluze da se omoguci razlikovanje sopstvenih impulsa od impulsa koji se generisu sa strane), a i u celom sistemu pvo. Sve zavisi od toga kakve radare ima Iran.