Iran war watch; Pat Lang quotes a Ha’aretz story about the Israeli air force practising long-range missions towards Gibraltar as preparation for an attack on Iran. The original is here. The first thing that is interesting is that this story has been repeated at regular intervals for some time. In fact, I believe it’s been…
Read More still no war with IranInteresting to see Ahmed Chalabi admit essentially everything I suspected of him back in 2004. This must surely count in the top ten intelligence triumphs of history, along with ULTRA, VENONA, the Rote Kapelle and the Normandy deception plan.
Read More Chalabi: a place in historyPredicting Iraqi election results is one thing this blog has been so awful at that it basically gave up. I will, however, venture a couple of comments on the results of Iraqi provincial elections. It seems more than clear that the current Iraqi government’s Dawa side gained over the ISCI (ex SCIRI) side, that the…
Read More ill-considered Iraqi election postOK, so about them Iranian superbomb spookologists. We’re not convinced. Even at the height of the nonsense, a lot of the military in Iraq were regularly quoted pouring cold water on the tale. Later, we looked into just how hard it would be to find out how to make an EFP. (All you need is…
Read More beating the statue with my shoesAh, MEND – everyone’s favourite dark-globalisation guerrilla gang, whose strategy is based on the world oil market as they career around Nigeria in RIBs with six or so huge outboards and silly numbers of heavy machine guns, while God knows where their leader/committee/nameless mobile phone number is. You can see why the defence establishment loves…
Read More kings and queens and generals learn your nameThe naval incident in the Strait of Hormuz has rapidly been blogged into next week; I think there may still be some angular momentum to be had, though. It now looks like the USN is backing off from the claim that the voice taunting them on an open radio channel was someone aboard one of…
Read More Away sea boat’s crew!Says Iranian foreign minister Manoucher Mottaki: “America, today, in the international system is facing a serious challenge … Americans are in a very, very difficult situation. “The people of Afghanistan would not allow America to use Afghanistan against any country. This is our … belief,” he said. Mottaki said Tehran’s findings from three rounds of…
Read More Let’s lay this one to restIn my last “there will be no war with Iran” post, I asked if there were any other indicators I ought to be watching. Having given it some thought, I have indeed been looking at some others; for a start, I would expect that before such a strike the US Government’s Strategic Petroleum Reserve would…
Read More Any Other IndicatorsIn the light of renewed War! War! War! fears, it’s clearly time to check out the indicators; currently, there is one US Navy carrier group in the Middle East (Enterprise and Co). This is down from two for most of this year, and is the lowest for some time – although not quite, as there…
Read More Even More CarrierwatchRecall this post from December, 2006? It was about how the Iranian government was actually rebuilding things in Afghanistan; things like electricity supply, fibre-optic interconnection, roads, and maybe even a railway. Not just that, but they were supplying today’s version of Marlboros and jeans; the best Internet connection in town. The Christian Science Monitor goes…
Read More Iranian Money: Rebuilding Afghanistan