Um.... letting the Israelis bomb Iran

So Saudis can get rid of an irritating neighbor while getting to point fingers of blame at Israel... a win/win situation!

Saudi Arabia gives Israel clear skies to attack Iranian nuclear sites

Saudi Arabia has conducted tests to stand down its air defences to enable Israeli jets to make a bombing raid on Iran’s nuclear facilities, The Times can reveal.

In the week that the UN Security Council imposed a new round of sanctions on Tehran, defence sources in the Gulf say that Riyadh has agreed to allow Israel to use a narrow corridor of its airspace in the north of the country to shorten the distance for a bombing run on Iran.

To ensure the Israeli bombers pass unmolested, Riyadh has carried out tests to make certain its own jets are not scrambled and missile defence systems not activated. Once the Israelis are through, the kingdom’s air defences will return to full alert.

“The Saudis have given their permission for the Israelis to pass over and they will look the other way,” said a US defence source in the area. “They have already done tests to make sure their own jets aren’t scrambled and no one gets shot down. This has all been done with the agreement of the [US] State Department.”

Um.... what the hell is being planned right now? I thought we'd given up on WWIII after Dick and George's excellent adventure was over....

MAYDAY!!!

Three German-built Israeli submarines equipped with nuclear cruise missiles are to be deployed in the Gulf near the Iranian coastline.

via Sailor at SteveAudio.

Nothing to see here.... move along.

Talk about breaking into a sweat

Poor guy. Someone should take away his shovel...

Oh, look, Cheney.

Iran is offering to talk. Just so you know there's another way to deal with Iran besides dropping all those wonderful bunker buster shock'n'awe bombs that make you feel so ... manly:

VIENNA, Austria — Iran's ambassador to the International Atomic Energy Agency said Friday that his country could suspend uranium enrichment if the United States and Western Europe agreed to acknowledge that its nuclear program was peaceful.

But Ambassador Ali Asghar Soltanieh said there was a "serious confidence gap" between his country and the United States and Western Europe and that he saw little point in trying to "build confidence" with an American administration that had none in his country.

"We don't trust the United States," he told McClatchy Newspapers after the IAEA Board of Governors finished its latest round of talks on Iran's nuclear program. "We could suspend nuclear enrichment. We did it before for two and half years. But it wasn't enough then, and wouldn't be enough now. We will not suspend enrichment again because there is no end to what the United States will demand."

Diplomats said Soltanieh's remarks reflected what he'd been saying in private. "Iran is willing to deal," one said. "But they've made it clear there would have to be a quid pro quo, and they don't believe that's possible." The diplomats said they couldn't be quoted by name because of the sensitivity of the issue.

You really don't have to start WWIII or IV or whatever, you know, Dick. Talking actually does get things done occasionally...

Is it just me?

Or is Admiral Fallon the only thing between us and WWIII? (WWIV? Just what number are we on?):

Admiral William Fallon, the head of U.S. Central Command, said a strike against Iran is “not in the offing.” Fallon added that the rhetoric of right-wing war hawks is unhelpful:

“None of this is helped by the continuing stories that just keep going around and around and around that any day now there will be another war which is just not where we want to go,” he said.

“Getting Iranian behaviour to change and finding ways to get them to come to their senses and do that is the real objective. Attacking them as a means to get to that spot strikes me as being not the first choice in my book.”

It will be interesting to find out how much we owe to Admiral Fallon for the non-war we're in with Iran.

Thank you, sir, for your service.

(I've posted about him before.)

What Putin's visit to Iran accomplished

Attack Iran and you attack Russia:

The barely reported highlight of Russian President Vladimir Putin's visit to Tehran for the Caspian Sea summit last week was a key face-to-face meeting with Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

A high-level diplomatic source in Tehran tells Asia Times Online that essentially Putin and the Supreme Leader have agreed on a plan to nullify the George W Bush administration's relentless drive towards launching a preemptive attack, perhaps a tactical nuclear strike, against Iran. An American attack on Iran will be viewed by Moscow as an attack on Russia.

[snip]

Iranian hawks close to Ahmadinejad are spinning that Putin's proposal involves Iran temporarily suspending uranium enrichment in exchange for no more United Nations sanctions. That's essentially what International Atomic Energy Agency chief Mohammad ElBaradei has been working on all along. The key issue is what - in practical terms - will Iran get in return. Obviously it's not the EU's Solana who will have the answer. But as far as Russia is concerned, strategically nothing will appease it except a political/diplomatic solution for the Iranian nuclear dossier.

US Vice President Dick Cheney - who even Senator Hillary Clinton now refers to as Darth Vader - must be foaming at the mouth; but the fact is that after the Caspian summit, Iran and Russia are officially entangled in a strategic partnership. World War III, for them, is definitely not on the cards.

Just something you might want to consider, Georgie. Don't know if Unka Dick warned you about this part.

The only thing we have to fear

Is the group who continually tells us to be afraid.

Paul Krugman:

...there isn’t actually any such thing as Islamofascism — it’s not an ideology; it’s a figment of the neocon imagination. The term came into vogue only because it was a way for Iraq hawks to gloss over the awkward transition from pursuing Osama bin Laden, who attacked America, to Saddam Hussein, who didn’t. And Iran had nothing whatsoever to do with 9/11 — in fact, the Iranian regime was quite helpful to the United States when it went after Al Qaeda and its Taliban allies in Afghanistan.

Beyond that, the claim that Iran is on the path to global domination is beyond ludicrous. Yes, the Iranian regime is a nasty piece of work in many ways, and it would be a bad thing if that regime acquired nuclear weapons. But let’s have some perspective, please: we’re talking about a country with roughly the G.D.P. of Connecticut, and a government whose military budget is roughly the same as Sweden’s.

Meanwhile, the idea that bombing will bring the Iranian regime to its knees — and bombing is the only option, since we’ve run out of troops — is pure wishful thinking. Last year Israel tried to cripple Hezbollah with an air campaign, and ended up strengthening it instead. There’s every reason to believe that an attack on Iran would produce the same result, with the added effects of endangering U.S. forces in Iraq and driving oil prices well into triple digits.

So this group of Neocons who knew that attacking Iraq would be a slam dunk and we'd be wallowing in candy and flowers is pushing for an attack on Iran. Just a quick fly over. A few bombs. No problem.

So what will happen AFTER our bombing raid on Iran? You know.... an exit strategy? A Plan B for those unexpected things that happen when you attack a sovereign country?

Do they really expect Iran, the Islamic countries, the world to just stand there after we do this? Have they really given it ANY thought at all?

Or do they really really want to start WWIII?



Update: Phoenix Woman of Firedoglake and Bryan of Why Now? show the world reaction to Bush's beating of the war drums over Iran.

You and whose army?

Just thought I'd ask...

LEESBURG, Va. — The United States and other nations will not allow Iran to obtain a nuclear weapon, Vice President Dick Cheney said Sunday."Our country, and the entire international community, cannot stand by as a terror-supporting state fulfills its grandest ambitions," Cheney said in a speech to the Washington Institute for Near East Studies.

He said Iran's efforts to pursue technology that would allow them to build a nuclear weapon are obvious and that "the regime continues to practice delay and deceit in an obvious effort to buy time."

If Iran continues on its current course, Cheney said the U.S. and other nations are "prepared to impose serious consequences." The vice president made no specific reference to military action.

"We will not allow Iran to have a nuclear weapon," he said.

Cheney's words seemed to only escalate the U.S. rhetoric against Iran over the past several days, including President Bush's warning that a nuclear Iran could lead to "World War III."

Didn't Georgie have a saying about this? I mean, we all saw how well this rhetoric worked for Iraq...