Israel has 'eight days' to hit Iran nuclear site: US envoy

SHASH2K2

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WASHINGTON: Israel has "eight days" to launch a military strike against Iran's Bushehr nuclear facility and stop Tehran from acquiring a functioning atomic plant, a former USenvoy to the UN has said.

Iran is to bring online its first nuclear power reactor, built with Russia's help, on August 21, when a shipment of nuclear fuel will be loaded into the plant's core.

At that point, John Bolton warned Monday, it will be too late for Israel to launch a military strike against the facility because any attack would spread radiation and affect Iranian civilians.

"Once that uranium, once those fuel rods are very close to the reactor, certainly once they're in the reactor, attacking it means a release of radiation, no question about it," Bolton told Fox Business Network.

"So if Israel is going to do anything against Bushehr it has to move in the next eight days."

Absent an Israeli strike, Bolton said, "Iran will achieve something that no other opponent of Israel, no other enemy of the United States in the Middle East really has and that is a functioning nuclear reactor."

But when asked whether he expected Israel to actually launch strikes against Iran within the next eight days, Bolton was skeptical.

"I don't think so, I'm afraid that they've lost this opportunity," he said.

The controversial former envoy to the United Nations criticized Russia's role in the development of the plant, saying "the Russians are, as they often do, playing both sides against the middle."

"The idea of being able to stick a thumb in America's eye always figures prominently in Moscow," he added.

Iran dismissed the possibilities of such an attack from its archfoes.

Foreign MinistryspokesmanRamin Mehmanparast said Tuesday that "these threats of attacks had become repetitive and lost their meaning."

"According to international law, installations which have real fuel cannot be attacked because of the humanitarian consequences," he told reporters at a news conference in Tehran.

Iranian officials say Iran has stepped up defensive measures at the Bushehr plant to protect it from any attacks.

Russia has been building the Bushehr plant since the mid-1990s but the project was marred by delays, and the issue is hugely sensitive amid Tehran's standoff with the West and Israel over its nuclear ambitions.

The UN Security Council hit Tehran with a fourth set of sanctions on June 9 over its nuclear programme, and the United States and European Union followed up with tougher punitive measures targeting Iran's banking and energy sectors.

The Bushehr project was first launched by the late shah in the 1970s using contractors from German firm Siemens. But it was shelved when he was deposed in the 1979 Islamic revolution.

It was revived after the death of revolutionary founder Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini in 1989, as Iran's new supreme leaderAli Khamenei and his first president, Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, backed the project.

Read more: Israel has 'eight days' to hit Iran nuclear site: US envoy - Middle East - World - The Times of India http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/...S-envoy/articleshow/6325488.cms#ixzz0wrepKyRP
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/world/middle-east/Israel-has-eight-days-to-hit-Iran-nuclear-site-US-envoy/articleshow/6325488.cms
 

SHASH2K2

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Readers on Iran, Bombing, and the Atlantic (very long)
As mentioned earlier, it's awkward for me to quote and answer hostile mail about Jeff Goldberg's cover story, and about my subsequent claim that it is a valuable work of reportage that does not constitute warmongering. Partly that's because you can't "answer" contumely ("spineless moron," "blood-soaked corridors of the Atlantic," etc). More basically it's because this is not my article to explain, defend, or elaborate on.

During the Atlantic's upcoming online "debate" about the article I'll try to re-cast my 2004 argument against a decision to bomb, plus this much tougher early-2007 item about indications that the Bush Administration was contemplating Iran as a next front of war. But as a prelude to that debate, and because messages like the ones below involve the magazine's larger journalistic approach and presentation of the Iran question, here are some highly critical but non-vitriolic reader responses. They strike these main themes:

- That the pre-war arguments Jeff Goldberg made about the urgency of invading Iraq (which I disagreed with at the time, as I did about the need for that war) are so fundamentally connected to his current reporting and analysis about Iran that this article must be seen as a continuation of his previous views;

- That while the article's reporting might seem impressive, the framing of the issue predetermines a conclusion (by making the Iranian threat more imminent-seeming, and elevating the need for a military response);

- That the very existence of the article implicitly advances the interests of Israeli hardliners, by artificially creating an emergency atmosphere -- over the risk of impending Israeli action -- which, if believed, could induce action from the United States [Jeff Goldberg's response, of course, is that the article is reporting as actual news the emerging views of the Israeli government]; and

- That the article assumes rather than examines or proves the "existential" nature of an Iranian threat to Israel -- that Israel simply could not exist in peace with the knowledge that Iran had a nuclear bomb, even though it coexists with a nuclear-armed Pakistan and has enough of its own nuclear weapons to threaten a total-devastation retaliatory below against Iran.

I would have no problem quoting such criticisms -- and trying to answer them -- if they were about something I'd written, and indeed many of them involve my own judgment; so I figure they are part of a fair kicking-off of the debate. Contrary to normal practice, I've insisted that all readers let me use their real names.
 

SHASH2K2

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If Israel Attacks Iran, What About China?
Posted by Bill Bishop
Iran, Tehran, Milad Tower

Image by Hamed Saber via Flickr

The Atlantic Monthly has a must read cover story on the possibility that Israel may attack Iran within the next year, called "The Point of No Return." The author-Jeffrey Goldberg–had remarkable access to both U.S. and Israeli policy elite. If you take the time to read Goldberg's long article I urge you to read both Glenn Greenwald's critique of Goldberg and this story and Jim Fallows' very thoughtful defense.

But this is a blog about China, so I will get to the point. What I found remarkable about Goldberg's opus is that there is not a single mention of China, its interests in the Middle East, its relationship with Israel, its commercial and diplomatic relationships with Iran or its role in keeping sanctions against Iran relatively weak.

An attack on Iran would be devastating to China's economy and thus its political stability. As Goldberg writes, such a strike, among many bad outcomes, would likely cause "the price of oil to spike to cataclysmic highs, launching the world economy into a period of turbulence not experienced since the autumn of 2008, or possibly since the oil shock of 1973."

Israel has tried in the last few months to impress upon the Chinese the seriousness of their intentions to never allow an Iranian nuclear bomb, and the possible consequences for China in the event of an attack. To lobby China for support for tougher UN sanctions, Israel in April sent Major-General Amir Eshel, chief of the IDF's Planning Directorate, to "warn China of the international consequences of military action, particularly the potential disruption to oil supplies on which much of China's manufacturing and international trade depend."

Will Goldberg's article make a positive contribution to efforts to convince the Chinese government that the Israelis feel threatened enough to attack, China and the world's economies be damned, and so they need to agree to serious sanctions against Iran? Or do the Chinese have no real understanding of Israeli psychology and the historical forces that make many Israelis think an attack on Iran is justified, without regard for global consequences?

Goldberg's discussion of how an attack might unfold is also a stark reminder that in spite of China's increasing economic and diplomatic clout, the U.S. remains the world's only superpower. China has minimal force projection capabilities, no meaningful military presence in the Middle East, and no likely military role in the event of war after an Israeli attack, other than making lucrative arms sales (probably to many participants).

If the U.S.-led diplomatic efforts to force Iran to renounce nuclear weapons development fail and Israel attacks, China risks being seen again as a less than responsible stakeholder in the international system, whether or not you believe Israel is justified in such an attack. China's support of North Korea in the wake of the Cheonan attack has demonstrated once again to many neighboring Asian countries that China can not be relied upon. As with North Korea, most people believe China could play a very positive role in pushing Iran towards a "good" outcome, but that it refuses to do so, for commercial reasons as well as very narrow and likely miscalculated "strategic" gains at America's expense.

In March 2010 the Jamestown Foundation published an interesting article on the China-Iran relationship, in the context of a possible Israeli attack–Hobson's Choice: China's Second Worst Option on Iran. The author, Yitzhak Shichor, argues that China will ultimately be willing to side with the international community in favor of tougher Iran sanctions. He wrote this piece before the last round of disappointing sanctions, and his conclusion, that "compelled to make a choice between sanctions and war, Beijing may ultimately prefer the former to the latter," was premature. But it is not too late, and we should all hope that China understands the determination of the Israelis, and their willingness to possibly plunge the world into war and another Depression.

Please tell me what you think in the comments.

If you use RSS you can subscribe to this blog's feed here, and if you use Twitter you can follow my more frequent updates @niubi, and if you use Sina Weibo you can follow me here. You can also follow my blogging on digital media and the Internet in China at DigiCha.

On a positive note, this is the first blog post written in Beijing's first and best cupcake shop, soon to be opened by my spouse. By the end of the month CCSweets will have locations in Central Park in CBD and the Village North in Sanlitun. And you can always order online.

http://blogs.forbes.com/china/2010/08/16/if-israel-attacks-iran-what-about-china/?boxes=Homepagechannels
 

bhramos

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'Israel has 8 days to strike Iran'


 
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SHASH2K2

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Attack on nuclear plant is 'international crime': Iran

Iran on Tuesday warned that an attack on its first nuclear power plant would amount to an "international crime," as the countdown started for the launch of the Russian-built facility. "Attacking an international plant is an international crime as the consequences will not be limited to the hosting
country but will have a global aftermath," Iran's nuclear chief Ali Akbar Salehi told the state IRNA news agency.

Iran's first and much-delayed nuclear power plant near the southern port city of Bushehr will go online on August 21 to eventually generate electricity, at a time of mounting international pressure on Tehran over its atomic programme.

The United States and Israel, which accuse the Islamic republic of seeking nuclear weapons, have never ruled out a military strike to curb Iran's atomic drive. Iran insists the programme is solely aimed at peaceful ends.

Former US envoy to the United Nations John Bolton on Monday said that Israel has "eight days" to launch a military strike against Iran's Bushehr nuclear facility to stop Tehran from acquiring a functioning atomic plant.

Iran's foreign ministry spokesman dismissed a possible Israeli attack on the Bushehr plant.

"These threats had become repetitive and lost their meaning," Ramin Mehmanparast told reporters on Tuesday.

"According to international law, installations which have real fuel cannot be attacked because of the humanitarian consequences," he said.
 

sandeepdg

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The aftermaths of such an action will be devastating, not just for Israel and the Middle-East but for whole world !! Hope, the Israelis know what they are doing !
 

SHASH2K2

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The aftermaths of such an action will be devastating, not just for Israel and the Middle-East but for whole world !! Hope, the Israelis know what they are doing !
Its catch 22 situation for them they cannot keep quite either . Nuclear Iran will be greatest threat for them.
 

Param

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The aftermaths of such an action will be devastating, not just for Israel and the Middle-East but for whole world !! Hope, the Israelis know what they are doing !
What devastating ? A nuclear Iran would be a bigger danger. And if a nuclear war happens between those two countries in the future Israel could initiate the " SAMSON OPTION" & that would be the end of the world. Better to nip Iran's nuclear ambitions in the bud.
 

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