I didn't protest the Iraq war when I was younger because I didn't understand what was happening. I will protest this war if our country intervenes in aid to Israel.

Iran hasn't started a war in 300 years. Israel just doesn't want Iran to have nuclear capability because it would make it harder for them to attack them.

Israel is the problem here with its puppet slave, the USA (with 25 military bases surrounding Iran). Iran is no saint, but to highlight what they do to their own population is hypocritical on the US's part (still the only country to use nukes on another nation) and with Israel who suppress the Palestinians.

I opt to take Iran for its word, it wants nuclear powered stations. If Iran develops nukes then that's a different story. But has anybody thought they want to protect itself? It works for Israel, they're allowed.

Iran is no threat, because words are only words and it has no nuclear weapons. Washington also delivers a lot of words, threatening words, menacing promises etc, but it does have nuclear weapons. In fact, in terms of defence spending the US outspends Iran by a 100 to 1. Iran is a military minnow whose neighbours do not see it as a threat. They do have a lot of oil, though.

Jackass - you owe me an apology mate. i am pro the people in Iran and clearly anti the Iranian regime. since you rant and smear me, then you may as well aim your venom at the author of this article.

Hopefully, if Israel drags big brother America into a conflict with Iran, the Iranians will leapfrog the Straits of Hormuz and S Arabia by using intermediate missiles against Israel's water resources.
This will put the ball back in the Israeli/US court and buy time.
Armageddon may be just round the corner with Iranian suicide missiles and the intractable Israeli military facing off.
Will it be another 'Gunfight at the OK Corral"? Or a stand-off.

Sucker Bet

Aw, Jackass, so easily coerced, showing his colors, blinkers on, he'll happily listen to the anti-Israel propaganda but wont have it when it comes to Iran, LOL.

Hitler was a terrible man but he had it right about somethings, eh Jackboots, LOL

You can lead a Jackass to water and you can make him drink.

"i do think that Gideon has it right as far as points 1, 2, and 6 go.

no?" - Looking for reassurance from your little friends you sad muppet.

The secret life of Sir Michael Mitty. A story of the fool on the hill, watching to world go round. With his very important insights such as Princess Diana is alive and well in the South of France but wears a beard now, that man has never been to the moon only to the Arizona Desert - just like the film, that the Loch Ness monster was created in a Lab by the UK government to increase Scottish Tourism, That the Yeti is a US soldier dressed in a Ape outfit to scare people away from a secret military bunker, that Black is White and that White is Black, that we should hate ourselves and our governments and flagellate ourselves for being and supporting such terrible people, but would jeopardize everything to suit Politically correct madness.

When you question nuts like him on how you would do things differently there is always a load of Pyscho Babble bullshit that doesn't make sense and that wouldn't work in reality. As Sir M Mitty is not living in the real world please ignore the self hating and self loathing little man.

Unlike nuclear-armed, race-based, war criminal and genocidal Apartheid Israel, Iran (1) is a signatory to the Nuclear Non-proliferation treaty (NPT), (2) does not have nuclear weapons (Israel reportedly has 400) , (3) does not want nuclear weapons, (4) has not conducted nuclear tests (Apartheid Israel probably conducted tests with Apartheid South Africa), (5) wants a nuclear weapons-free Middle East (opposed by the US and Apartheid Israel), (6) has not invaded any other country for centuries (Apartheid Israel has attacked or invaded 10), (7) does not have territorial ambitions re other countries (Israel occupies and continues to ethnically cleanse Palestine, occupies part of Lebanon, and has occupied and ethnically cleanse a large slab of Syria), (8) Iran is a world-leader in the fight against drugs, notably US-protected opiates from Afghanistan (Apartheid Israel leads the world in the Ecstasy trade as well as the illegal human body parts trade), (9) Iran has a Net Carbon Credit or Net Climate Credit (Apartheid Israel is a typical Western high carbon polluter with a Net Carbon Debt), (10) Iran is a democracy with theocratic oversight (Apartheid Israel is a race-based democracy or ethnocracy like Apartheid South Africa with democracy based on genocide - of 12 million Palestinians only the adults of 1.5 million Palestinian Israelis, albeit as Third Class citizens, can vote for the government ruling all of former Mandated Palestine; 6 million Palestinians cannot even live in their own country; 4.3 million Occupied Palestinians are confined under Israeli guns to the Gaza Concentration Camp or to ever-dwindling West bank mini-Bantustans), and (11) notwithstanding Sharia law and misogynist abuses, Iran has a vastly better human rights record than the war criminal, genocidal US Alliance countries including Apartheid Israel (12 million Muslim violent deaths and avoidable deaths from foreign-imposed deprivation in the Zionist-backed US Alliance War on Muslims, 1990-2012 (see "Muslim Holocaust, Muslim Genocide": https://sites.google.com/site/muslimholocaustmuslimgenocide/ and "Stopping the war with Iran": http://mwcnews.net/focus/editorial/16770-iran-war.html ).

Decent people around the world must oppose the remorseless Neocon American and Zionist Imperialist (NAZI) push for war on peaceful, remote Iran. What can people do? Decent people everywhere – and especially decent folk in US Alliance countries - must (a) inform everyone they can about the above disparities and (b) impose sanctions and boycotts against all avoidable goods and services from Apartheid Israel and US Alliance countries involved in the worsening Muslim Genocide. The World must tell the genocidal racist Zionists and the genocidal, racist, pro-Zionist Anglo-American neocons that we will not tolerate any more of their obscene, genocidal wars. Decent folk everywhere must impose where practicable boycotts, divestment and sanctions (BDS) against Apartheid Israel and all countries, corporations, people, politicians and parties who support this endlessly warmongering, race-based, genocidal, nuclear terrorist Apartheid rogue state (see "Boycott Apartheid Israel": https://sites.google.com/site/boycottapartheidisrael/ ).

@ George Eaton

The Iranian authorities are well aware that Americans or Israelis while attacking the sites they will simultaneously attack Iran's air and ground defence systems in order to destroy any prospect of military retaliation by the Iranian forces.

Therefore, if the threats from US and Israel become more real it is very, very likely that Iran will take the pre-emptive strike against Israel to defend its sovereignty and given the ongoing threats and the assassination of Iranian scientists by the west, Iran will not be so much in the wrong, otherwise Iranians will face the same situation the Arab countries faced in their war with Israel when suddenly their air defence was first targeted and their capabilities were reduced to none.

Therefore we are heading for a full military conflict, not just an attack of the sites as the end of the story.

@ Claus and Andy

no argument from me on either of your posts. the main issue i have is with our own politicians. they ignore hard evidence, readily dive into the gutter to garner votes, and then look like two faced hypocritical morons with our foreign policy.

@Julia

" i am pro the people in Iran"

rubbish. you hate Islam, the people of Iran are followers of Islam, they're not about to ditch their religion which you've called the most dangerous ever. you believe that all Muslim males are ready and willing to honour kill their women given the slightest chance, purely because they follow Islam.

so clearly you are lying, unless you've changed your mind now and don't see Islam as a danger in and of itself? care to answer that Julia?

(see how plagiarising my post almost verbatim gets you into trouble? poor love eh..)

^

know what you mean, those rants are more than a little wearing. though i do think that Gideon has it right as far as points 1, 2, and 6 go.

no?

War with Iran is a truly fearsome prospect.

Its likely consequences would include attacks on US air bases from thousands of Iranian missiles, the unleashing of terrorist attacks within the US and Europe, the rocketing of Israeli towns from the tens of thousands of missiles trained on Israel from Lebanon, the closing of the Straits of Hormuz thus paralysing western oil supplies, and doubtless other horrors.

But however fearsome this prospect, that of a nuclear-armed Iran is worse. The consequences are simply insupportable.

A regime which has seen itself at war with the west ever since it came to power in 1979, and which has been involved in arguably every major terrorist atrocity against it, will be equipped with nuclear weapons to bring the west to its knees. Working as it does through puppet rogue regimes and terror organisations, it could perpetrate acts of nuclear terrorism – or threaten to do so.

It could mount its long-threatened attempt to wipe Israel off the map, thus provoking a nuclear response to prevent a second genocide of the Jews. Last but by no means least, it will spark a nuclear arms race throughout the region, thus ensuring that nuclear weapons come under the control of some of the most unstable and belligerent regimes on earth. To all these threats and more, the west will be paralysed by Iran’s nuclear capacity, just as it is currently paralysed over North Korea.

This is a nightmare to which the west seems to have woken up only very recently, with the hands on Iran’s nuclear clock fast approaching midnight. Now it has sprung into action. The EU has imposed tough sanctions, including a freeze on the assets of the Iranian central bank within the EU, hitting Iranian oil exports for the first time. With the rial falling on the stock market, Iran threatened to close the Straits of Hormuz. The US responded by sailing two aircraft carriers through the Straits. Iran did not close them. The US said Iran had blinked first. Iran said the same of the US.

Now what? The war drums are beating – but is this all just bluff and bluster by the west?

Some think its belated show of strength is just sabre-rattling in a US presidential year. This is unlikely. What’s much more likely is that the west is putting on a show of strength to show Iran that the west ‘really, really means it’ in order to get Iran to ‘come to its senses’.

To which there are three points to make. First, this is all far, far too late. Tough sanctions that would really hurt Iran were being urged years ago, when some of us started warning that Iran’s nuclear programme simply had to be stopped before the situation became dangerously out of control – and were derided as ‘neo-con war-mongers’ for our efforts.

Nothing was done; the UK and EU vaguely wrung their hands and shook the occasional fist; while for his part, Obama advertised US weakness by extending his hand in friendship to the Iranian regime which at the time was busy blowing up American and coalition soldiers in Iraq. Obama’s catastrophic strategy gave the Iranian regime the one thing it needed above all else – time to bring its infernal nuclear programme to fruition. And now we read – surprise, surprise – that the regime has built at Fordow a secret nuclear plant inside a mountain where it is presumed to be impervious to bombing raids.

Second, even these tougher sanctions are likely to be ineffective as they will be circumnavigated by Russia, China and others. And in any event, what exactly is the outcome the west hopes that sanctions will bring about? That Iran shuts down its centrifuges, locks the doors on its nuclear plants and promises it won’t open them ever again and that the IAEA inspectors can set up monitoring stations at Fordow, Natanz and all the other secret nuclear locations which it will now make available for international inspection? Does anyone seriously believe that’s a realistic proposition? And if not that, then what, precisely?

But third, the deeper problem is the west’s assumption that the Iranian regime is capable of ‘coming to its senses’ – its assumption that these are rational actors who ultimately will act in their own interest. Few in the west understand that, on the contrary, the Iranian regime is impervious to reason. Educated, intelligent and cunning they may be – but they are religious fanatics driven by an entirely different set of considerations. That’s what makes this situation so terrifying.

As I have written over and over again, from the Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamanei downwards the Iranian regime is dominated by people (adherents of a sect called the ‘Twelvers’) who believe that the Shia messiah, the Mahdi, will return to earth either as result of or to bring about the apocalyptic end of days. It is that apocalypse that they are intent upon facilitating. That is why the argument that ‘they wouldn’t dare launch a nuclear attack because they know half of Iran would be obliterated as a result’ is so fatuous. They would be happy if that were to occur.

Reza Kahlili (a pseudonym) is reportedly a former CIA spy within the Revolutionary Guards. As he has written:

‘Khamenei has been heard to say that the coming of the last Islamic Messiah, the Shiites’ 12th Imam Mahdi, is near and that specific actions need to be taken to protect the Islamic regime for upcoming events. Mahdi, according to Shiite belief, will reappear at the time of Armageddon... Many in the Guards and Basij have been told that the 12th Imam is on earth, facilitated the victory of Hezbollah over Israel in the 2006 war and soon will announce publicly his presence after the needed environment is created.

'... Ayatollah Mesbah Yazdi, an influential cleric and a radical Twelver, previously had stated that Khamenei ascends to the sky every year to take direction from Imam Mahdi, and sources close to the cleric have disclosed that Khamenei has been ordered by Imam Mahdi to continue with the nuclear program despite worldwide objection as it will facilitate his coming.’

Last December, Kahlili warned that the previous May Khamenei had ordered the Revolutionary Guards to speed up the nuclear-bomb program and arm Iran’s missiles with nuclear warheads. Now, he wrote, Khamenei had ordered the guards to prepare for war:

‘Though the Islamic regime never should have been allowed to continue with its suppression of its people, its terrorist activities worldwide and its continuation of its missile and nuclear programs despite U.N. sanctions, one cannot imagine a world with nuclear arms in the hands of the jihadists in Iran.

‘With officials from both Israel and the U.S. calling a nuclear-armed Iran a red line, leaving the possibility of a military option on the table, we must realize that the only possible solution to this dilemma is a regime change in Iran, which a majority of Iranians support. The price we pay today to save world peace and security will be minuscule to what the world will pay in the not-so-distant future.’

What really threatens to bring the west to its knees is its own cultural hubris. Refracting everything in the world through the prism of its unshakeable faith in universal reason, it is incapable of recognising or understanding religious fanaticism – and insists instead upon treating the fanatic as a rational actor. Ironically, it is this belief in reason which has led the west to behave so irrationally in refusing to acknowledge the evidence of the mortal threat to itself posed by Iran -- and that there is no alternative to force if it is to be stopped. And now, alas, we’re about to discover the consequences.

@JUlia

JH does Israel no favours by resorting to plagiarism. In the light of the forthcoming debate in the UK parliament: I would like to see the UK government be at the forefront of world efforts at the UN to impose sanctions on Israel.

@Julia

I feel sure that the people in Iran are heartened by your messages of support for their plight. However I am not sure that the Jewish community in Iran agrees with your comments on AHmadinajad. This is what they said in www.yyetnews.com: The Jewish community in Iran slams US protest against Ahmadinejad's visit. Heads of Iran's Jewish community 'outraged by the disrespect' shown to the Iranian president during Columbia visit
The Jewish community in Iran published a statement Wednesday, slamming the disrespect shown to Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad by human rights and freedom activists on his recent visit to the United States. The Iranian president visited the US earlier this week, where he attended a forum at Columbia University and addressed the United Nation's General Assembly. The statement was signed by Morris Mottaned, the Jewish delegate to the Iranian parliament and by the heads of the Iranian Jewish communities.

Since Israel is keen to gather up the Jewish diaspora is not the Jewish community in Iran on Israel's next list of targets? Is that what this nuclear debacle is all about??

@julia harris

must have taken you ages to write that. glad to see it was wasted.

you really dont get it do you

When Cameron becomes, as Mandela said of Blair, "foreign minister of the United States" it is no surprise when Hague parrots Obama in his recent statement that the Iranians "are clearly continuing their nuclear weapons programme". No longer a nuclear programme but a nuclear weapons programme. This is the sort of garbage you expect from the Israeli embassy troll above. You need to worry when governments start spouting the same odure.