Articles on the Region

 Lost in translation 
Jonathan Steele, UK Guardian Comment is free... - Experts confirm that Iran's president did not call for Israel to be 'wiped off the map'. Reports that he did serve to strengthen western hawks. more

 Fatal Kiss: the build-up to war with Iran 
Uri Avnery - It sounds like a promo for a second rate soap opera: a 21-year-old woman appears with a much older celebrity, who grabs her, forces a kiss on her and pushes his tongue into her mouth. This scene has been occupying the attention of the Israeli public for months now, more than any other topic, except perhaps the allegation that the President of the State sexually assaulted several of his employees. The war and its consequences have been pushed aside. more

 No clash of civilizations, says UN report 
Dan Murphy in The Christian Science Monitor - A UN-sponsored group called the Alliance of Civilizations, created last year to find ways to bridge the growing divide between Muslim and Western societies, released a first report Monday that says the conflict over Israel and the Palestinian territories is the central driver in global tensions. more

 CNN's Lebanon Problem 
Eric Boehlert in The Huffington Post - I was surprised yesterday afternoon when a Reuters article popped onto my computer screen reporting that 53 Lebanese civilians had been killed by Israeli forces, part of the suddenly chaotic two-front battle Israel's military is fighting in the Middle East. Surprised, because I had been monitoring the day's events on CNN and hadn't heard much about that kind of swelling Lebanese death toll. more

 Report: IDF doctor says Dirani rape claim backed by evidence 
Haaretz - Channel 1 television on Wednesday reported than Israel Defense Forces doctor who examined kidnapped Lebanese guerrilla leader Mustafa Dirani found physical evidence to back his charge that he was raped. more

 Commentary: The US War with Iran Has Already Begun 
Scott Ritter in Al Jazeera - Americans, along with the rest of the world, are starting to wake up to the uncomfortable fact that President George Bush not only lied to them about the weapons of mass destruction in Iraq (the ostensible excuse for the March 2003 invasion and occupation of that country by US forces), but also about the very process that led to war. more

 Tomgram: McGovern on the Iranian and Israeli nuclear programs 
Tom Engelhardt in Tom Dispatch - Here’s the strange thing. In the decade that followed the dismantling of the Berlin Wall, nuclear weapons more or less disappeared from American sight. Those potentially world-ending weapons, which had preoccupied two Cold War generations ever since the first of them was exploded over Hiroshima in August 1945, had to queue up at the back of an ever-growing line of global problems to get even their fifteen seconds of attention, no less fame. Suddenly, after 9/11 (when the site where the World Trade Center had once stood was dubbed “ground zero” as if a nuclear explosion had taken place on American soil), nuclear weapons zoomed back to the head of the line. At least in administration rhetoric, mushroom clouds began to go off over American cities and there was a drumbeat of fear about Saddam Hussein’s nuclear program (and the rest of his – as it turned out, nonexistent – WMD), leading of course to the invasion of Iraq under the rubric of a “counterproliferation war.” more

 Reining in Cheney 
Ray McGovern of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity - As long as the Bush administration continues to trot out the bogus claims of Iraq’s WMD capacity, we will continue to challenge them. This time, Vice President Dick Cheney is basing his claim that Iran is a threat on Iraq’s alleged nuclear capacity before we invaded. McGovern—who spent more than 20 years in the CIA—explains how outraged intelligence analysts are reacting to Cheney’s most recent embellishment of the known facts. more

 Israeli Air Force: Israel Must Be Prepared for an Air Strike on Iran 
Haaretz Staff and the Associated Press - Israel Air Force Commander-in-Chief Major General Eliezer Shakedi said Monday that Israel must be prepared for an air strike on Iran in light of its nuclear activity. more

 The Coming Wars 
Seymour M. Hersh in The New Yorker - George W. Bush’s reelection was not his only victory last fall. The President and his national-security advisers have consolidated control over the military and intelligence communities’ strategic analyses and covert operations to a degree unmatched since the rise of the post-Second World War national-security state. Bush has an aggressive and ambitious agenda for using that control—against the mullahs in Iran and against targets in the ongoing war on terrorism—during his second term. The C.I.A. will continue to be downgraded, and the agency will increasingly serve, as one government consultant with close ties to the Pentagon put it, as “facilitators” of policy emanating from President Bush and Vice-President Dick Cheney. This process is well under way. more

 Why the hawks are circling over Iran 
Rupert Cornwell in the UK Independent - As George W Bush prepares for a second term, his administration is setting its sights on Iran. But, Rupert Cornwell reports, a new foreign policy adventure could be disastrous. more

 Now US ponders attack on Iran 
Julian Borger and Ian Traynor in the UK Guardian - President Bush’s second inauguration on Thursday will provide the signal for an intense and urgent debate in Washington over whether or when to extend the “global war on terror” to Iran, according to officials and foreign policy analysts in Washington. more

 The EU, US, Israel and Iran: The Good, the Bad, the Ugly and the “Mullahs” 
Sasan Fayazmanesh in CounterPunch - Instead of the “good-cop bad-cop” scenario, it would have been more apt for Mr. Armitage to use the good, the bad and the ugly scheme, since Iran faces not two characters, but three. The third character, the “ugly,” is played by Israel. Mr. Armitage conveniently left out the important role of this last character. But this is quite expected. Israel, as the late Edward Said used to say, is the last taboo. It is sacrosanct. No mention of it in the context of the US foreign policy is possible. It is the Teflon state. Nothing sticks to it, not even the charge of spying. more

 On to Iran: Won’t Get Fooled Again? 
Paul Craig Roberts in CounterPunch - It is not yet Bush’s second term. All available US troops are tied down in Iraq by a few thousand lightly armed insurgents. Go-it-alone Bush has isolated America from her allies. And the neocons want to spread their war to Iran. more

 Fanning the Hysteria About Iran: NPR Leads the Charge to War 
Mike Whitney in CounterPunch - When did “liberal” NPR become a champion of American aggression against Iran? Listeners to National Public Radio are increasingly apt to criticize the “rightward shift” in the station’s news coverage. The August 30 “Morning Edition” program, however, reached a new low for slanted journalism and for making the Bush Administration’s case for war with Iran. more

 Israel versus Iran 
Israel Shahak in Open Secrets - Since the spring of 1992 public opinion in Israel is being prepared for the prospect of a war with Iran, to be fought to bring about Iran’s total military and political defeat. In one version, Israel would attack Iran alone, in another it would “persuade” the West to do the job. The indoctrination campaign to this effect is gaining in intensity. It is accompanied by what could be called semi-official horror scenarios purporting to detail what Iran could do to Israel, the West and the entire world when it acquires nuclear weapons as it is expected to a few years hence. more