Roadmap to war against iran #16: Golfoorlog 4 op komst?

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Op zaterdag 31 maart 2007 09:03 schreef Hathor het volgende:

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Misschien zouden ze dat dan eens moeten proberen bij een fregat inplaats van bij wat soldaatjes in wat rubberbootjes, die liggen namelijk ook constant in die regio. Hoe je het ook went of keert, het is een ongelofelijk laffe actie van Iran.

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Op zaterdag 31 maart 2007 10:05 schreef EricT het volgende:

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Ik krijg sterk het vermoeden dat Iran hetzelfde zal proberen als er een fregat hun wateren binnen komt. Ze schijnen erg zeker van hun zaak..

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Iran note ties nuclear stance to fear of attack
CNN


Ali Ashgar Soltanieh, Iran's chief delegate to the IAEA, told the agency that Iran is not cooperating with the agency to protect national security.

VIENNA, Austria (AP) -- Iran, in a confidential letter posted Friday on an internal Web site of the U.N. nuclear monitor, said its fear of attack from the United States and Israel prompted its decision to withhold information from the agency.

In the letter, Iran said the U.N.'s International Atomic Energy Agency had repeatedly allowed confidential information crucial to the country's security to be leaked.

The IAEA, in response, urged Iran to reconsider, saying the decision would be in defiance of the monitor's 35-nation board. Both the Iranian document and the confidential IAEA response were made available to The Associated Press.

The exchange reflected heightened tensions arising from Iran's refusal to heed the U.N. Security Council and freeze uranium enrichment and the council's decision last Saturday to increase sanctions in response.

The IAEA also is waiting for Iran to respond to its requests to install remote cameras at key locations at Iran's underground enrichment plant at Natanz.

No enrichment is yet taking place at Natanz, but diplomats accredited to the IAEA said Friday it may start within days. If so, those cameras are crucial to IAEA experts' efforts to watch for attempts to alter machinery there to make weapons-grade uranium.

Iran insists it wants to enrich only to low levels, suitable for generating nuclear power. But the international community increasingly fears that the country may want to develop enrichment for weapons uses.

Iran said Sunday it would no longer provide the IAEA with advance notice about any new nuclear facilities planned -- a decision government spokesman Gholan Hossein Elham said came in response to the "illegal and bullying resolution by (the) Security Council."

Expanding on the decision, the confidential letter, dated March 29, declared that "the United States and the Israeli regime ... are threatening the use of force and attack against the Islamic Republic of Iran and have repeatedly stressed that military action is an option on the table."

"So long as such threats of military action persist, Iran has no option but (to) protect its security through all means possible, including protection of information which can facilitate openly stated and aggressive military objectives of the war mongers," said the letter, signed by Ali Ashgar Soltanieh, Iran's chief delegate to the IAEA.

Blaming the IAEA for failing "systematically and repeatedly to maintain confidentiality of sensitive information," Soltanieh wrote that "therefore such dangerous dissemination of sensitive information will have to be curtailed through steps which limit their scope and availability."

The agency noted in its Friday response that the move is "contrary to the board's decision" and suggested it may indirectly breach agreements linked to the Nonproliferation Treaty.

Calling Iran's decision "regrettable," the agency, in a letter signed by a deputy of senior IAEA official Vilmos Cserveny, urged the Iranian authorities to reconsider their decision.

Iran had previously committed itself to informing the agency of any planned new nuclear construction before such construction begins -- a commitment it has not always kept.

Former U.N. nuclear inspector David Albright said Iran's decision could allow for clandestine nuclear work related to its enrichment program.

Albright, whose Washington, D.C.-based Institute for Science and International Security tracks Iran's nuclear program, said that Iran may be looking to build a "backup facility" for enrichment that would remain undetected -- and safe -- in case of attack by the United States or Israel.

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Iran releases letter, video of captured Britons
Bron : Reuters


Bekijk de video
By Edmund Blair

TEHRAN (Reuters) - Iran displayed three detained British naval personnel on television on Friday and released a letter from one saying she was being held because of "oppressive" British and U.S. behavior in Iraq.

British Prime Minister Tony Blair said the footage of three of the 15 British captives heightened people's disgust at the treatment of the sailors and marines and risked isolating Tehran further -- but he urged calm and patience over the crisis.

"I am writing to you as a British service person who has been sent to Iraq, sacrificed due to the intervening policies of the Bush and Blair governments," said the third letter from sailor Faye Turney, released by Iran's embassy in London.

Iran seized the sailors and marines in the northern Gulf last Friday when they were on a U.N. mission searching for smugglers in Iraqi waters. Tehran says they strayed into Iranian waters but Britain insists they were well in Iraqi territory.

London has been pushing for international condemnation but failed to get the U.N. Security Council to pass a strongly worded draft statement. Instead, it expressed "grave concern."

In London, Iran's embassy said both governments were working together closely to find a mutually acceptable solution and that it could be settled bilaterally.

Russia, which had blocked moves for a stronger position, said it wanted the U.N. Secretariat to deal with the dispute.

EU foreign ministers voiced solidarity with Britain at a summit in Germany and deplored the seizure of the naval personnel but stopped short of suspending normal business with Tehran over the week-old row as London has done.

White House spokeswoman Dana Perino said: "Tony Blair has made his comments and we strongly stand behind him."

Asked if she believed the crisis was closer to confrontation and armed conflict, she said: "There's no indication of that. No, I believe that everyone believes it can be solved diplomatically."

The Gulf Cooperation Council, a loose political and economic alliance of Iran's U.S.-allied Gulf Arab neighbors -- Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Qatar, Bahrain, Oman and the United Arab Emirates, also urged an end to the confrontation.

"Gulf Cooperation Council Secretary-General Abdul-Rahman al-Attiya called for the release of the British sailors held in Iran, in compliance with international maritime law," the official Qatari News Agency reported.

"He expressed hope that the British and Iranian governments would apply self-restraint, flexibility and wisdom to solve this crisis," the agency said.

British forces have been deployed in southern Iraq since joining the U.S.-led invasion of the country in 2003. Britain and the United States accuse Iran of allowing sophisticated weapons used to target their forces to be brought into Iraq.

The crisis, at a time of heightened Middle East tensions over Iran's nuclear ambitions, has helped push oil prices to six-month highs over concerns an escalation might curb crucial oil exports from the region.

The video showed two men in khaki uniforms and a woman in blue fatigues and a headscarf talking calmly and smiling in a room with a floral wallpaper background.

"We trespassed without permission," said the sailor, who gave his name as Nathan Thomas Summers and said they were being treated well. "I would like to apologize for entering your waters without any permission ... I deeply apologize."

Blair said the only possible outcome from the standoff was the release of the British personnel and that London would consult its allies over the weekend.

"I really don't know why the Iranian regime keeps doing this. All it does is enhance people's disgust at captured personnel being paraded and manipulated in this way," he said.

"What the Iranians have to realize is that if they continue in this way they will face increasing isolation."

COMPLICATED STRUCTURE

The video release came as Britain said it was considering a note from Tehran that appeared to resemble a statement used to resolve a similar standoff in 2004 when Iran seized eight British servicemen and held them for three days.

However Britain's Foreign Secretary Margaret Beckett said after the video was shown that there was nothing in the note from Iran to suggest Tehran was looking for a way out.

The letter said Iran respected the rules and principles of international law concerning the territorial integrity of states

and that Britain must accept its responsibility for the consequences of any border violation.

The letter did not appear to demand an apology from Britain as several Iranian officials had previously called for.

Analysts said efforts to resolve the standoff were complicated by Iran's political structure.

"The Iranian Foreign Ministry is not in charge here," said Mark Fitzpatrick, senior fellow for non-proliferation at the International Institute for Strategic Studies.

"They're having to work out a face-saving diplomatic solution, but I don't think the Revolutionary Guards want a diplomatic solution. So it's going to be hard to choreograph something when you have internal friction."

The hardline Guards are the ideological wing of Iran's armed forces with a separate command structure.

(Additional reporting by Jeremy Pelofsky in Washington, Lou Charbonneau in Bremen, Sophie Walker, Paul Hughes and Peter Graff in London)

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I explained that in international law the Iranian government were not out of order in detaining foreign military personnel in waters to which they have a legitimate claim. For the Royal Navy to be interdicting shipping within the twelve mile limit of territorial seas in a region they know full well is subject to maritime boundary dispute, is unneccessarily provocative. This is especially true as apparently they were not looking for weapons but for smuggled vehicles attempting to evade car duty. What has the evasion of Iranian or Iraqi taxes go to do with the Royal Navy? The ridiculous illogic of the Blair mess gets us further into trouble.

Incidentally, they would under international law have been allowed to enter Iranian territorial waters if in "Hot pursuit" of terrorists, slavers or pirates. But they weren't doing any of those things.

Having said all that, the Iranian authorities, their point made, should now hand the men back immediately. Plainly they were not engaged in piracy or in hostilities against Iran. The Iranians can feel content that they have demonstrated the ability to exercise effective sovereignty over the waters they claim.

Any further detention of the men would now be unlawful and bellicose. One of the great problems facing those of us striving hard to prevent a further disastrous war, this time on Iran, is that the Iranian government is indeed full of theocratic nutters.

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Op vrijdag 30 maart 2007 17:06 schreef Caesu het volgende:
The USS Nimitz and its support ships will be departing San Diego Monday, April 2, to join the John C. Stennis Strike Group in the Persian Gulf. The nuclear carrier is due to relieve the USS Dwight D. Eisenhower , but military sources in the Gulf believe all three US carriers will stay put if tensions continue to climb or if fighting breaks out involving American, British and Iranian forces.

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Op zaterdag 31 maart 2007 13:11 schreef Doderok het volgende:
Commentaar van Craig Murray op 26 maart:
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http://www.craigmurray.co.uk/weblog.html

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Op zaterdag 31 maart 2007 13:34 schreef Steenarend het volgende:
Komt er nou dus wel weer oorlog??

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Op zaterdag 31 maart 2007 13:34 schreef Steenarend het volgende:
Komt er nou dus wel weer oorlog??

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Op zaterdag 31 maart 2007 13:43 schreef persian2008 het volgende:
met iran valt niet te spotten. ze houden niet van grappemakers. ik vind dat de EU en de VN niet moeten bemoeien.

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Op zaterdag 31 maart 2007 14:04 schreef -skippybal- het volgende:

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Beste eerste post ooit! Echt waar!

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Op zaterdag 31 maart 2007 14:23 schreef persian2008 het volgende:

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waarheid is hard?

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Op zaterdag 31 maart 2007 13:43 schreef persian2008 het volgende:
met iran valt niet te spotten. ze houden niet van grappemakers. ik vind dat de EU en de VN niet moeten bemoeien.

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Op zaterdag 31 maart 2007 14:23 schreef persian2008 het volgende:

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waarheid is hard?

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Op zaterdag 31 maart 2007 14:25 schreef Hathor het volgende:

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Doen ze ook niet, de bommen zullen puur van Amerikaanse makelij zijn.

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Op zaterdag 31 maart 2007 14:24 schreef -skippybal- het volgende:

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Welke waarheid? Dat ze niet van "grappemakers" houden? Waarom kiezen ze dan zo'n president?
Of dat de EU en de VN zich er niet mee moeten bemoeien? Guess what?! Ze doen het al

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Op zaterdag 31 maart 2007 13:43 schreef persian2008 het volgende:
met iran valt niet te spotten. ze houden niet van grappemakers. ik vind dat de EU en de VN niet moeten bemoeien.

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Op zaterdag 31 maart 2007 14:31 schreef persian2008 het volgende:

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. en de bommen die op telaviv vallen zullen van iraanse makelij zijn. niet zo goed als de amerikaanse maar het kan wel een land naar de klote brengen.

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Op zaterdag 31 maart 2007 14:31 schreef persian2008 het volgende:

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. en de bommen die op telaviv vallen zullen van iraanse makelij zijn. niet zo goed als de amerikaanse maar het kan wel een land naar de klote brengen.

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Op zaterdag 31 maart 2007 14:34 schreef gronk het volgende:

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Het israelisch/iraanse reltopic is ----> die kant op.

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Op zaterdag 31 maart 2007 14:33 schreef persian2008 het volgende:

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eh. het volk heeft ahmadinejad gekozen en niet andersom. dus jij denkt dat de EU en VN mag bemoeien?

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Op zaterdag 31 maart 2007 14:37 schreef Kaalhei het volgende:
Hij zal dus helemaal niets doen, behalve knuffelen met Chavez en Castro en een paar soldaatjes vasthouden.

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Op zaterdag 31 maart 2007 14:37 schreef Kaalhei het volgende:

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Denk je dat die paar raketjes van Iran Israel klein krijgen?
De kernbommen in de onderzeers van de Israeli's staan 24/7 op Teheran gericht. Dat weet jij, dat weet ik en dat weet die Amehoela van jou ook. Hij zal dus helemaal niets doen, behalve knuffelen met Chavez en Castro en een paar soldaatjes vasthouden.