US Rice: At Some Point Iran Must Be Held Accountable

NEW YORK -(Dow Jones)- U.S. Secretary of State nominee Condoleezza Rice said Tuesday that "at some point Iran has to be held accountable for its unwillingness to live up to its international obligations."

In testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Rice said the International Atomic Energy Agency has been documenting the fact that Iran hasn't been "serious" about its obligations under nuclear agreements.

Rice said the U.S. is making some progress in "unifying peoples' views" about what the Iranians are doing and putting pressure on Tehran.

After saying that at some point Iran has to be held accountable for its obligations, Sen. Ben Nelson, D-Fla., said "hopefully, sooner than later."

Rice replied "I couldn't agree with you more."

The committee hearing on Rice's nomination to replace Colin Powell is being aired live by cable news outlets.


Bush won't rule out action against Iran

By Reuters

01/18/05 "Boston Globe" -- WASHINGTON -- President Bush said yesterday he would not rule out military action against Iran if Tehran is not more forthcoming about its suspected nuclear weapons program.

"I hope we can solve it diplomatically, but I will never take any option off the table," Bush told NBC News, adding that he could act if Iran "continues to stonewall the international community about the existence of its nuclear weapons program."

Iran denies that it has been trying to make nuclear weapons.

Bush's comments followed Pentagon criticism yesterday of a published report that it was mounting reconnaissance missions in Iran to identify potential nuclear and other targets. Pentagon spokesman Lawrence DiRita said Sunday's article in The New Yorker magazine was "so riddled with errors of fundamental fact that the credibility of his entire piece is destroyed."

The report said Bush authorized secret commando groups and other special-forces military units to conduct covert operations against suspected terrorist targets in as many as 10 nations in the Middle East and South Asia. DiRita and other Pentagon officials did not comment on whether military forces had been doing reconnaissance in Iran.

The New York Times reported today the Bush administration imposed penalties on eight Chinese firms it thinks aided Iran in improving ballistic missiles. The State Department did not name the technology allegedly exported. The firms are barred from doing business with the US government.

US slaps sanctions against Chinese, other Asian firms over trade with Iran

01/18/05 "AFP" --

WASHINGTON : The United States has slapped new sanctions against seven Chinese companies as well as two firms from Taiwan and North Korea, charging they may have helped Iran in its quest for weapons of mass destruction and more modern ballistic missiles.

A State Department notice published in the latest issue of the Federal Register said the nine conglomerates are being penalized for transferring to Iran "equipment and technology controlled under multilateral export control lists."

No specifics have been provided, but the action comes amid increased concerns the administration of President George W. Bush may be toughening its stance toward the Islamic republic accused of harboring nuclear ambitions.

The companies now barred from doing business with the United States include Beijing Alite Technologies Limited, China Aero-Technology Import Export Corporation, China Great Wall Industry Corporation, China North Industry Corporation (Norinco), Q.C. Chen, Wha Cheong Tai Company, and Zibo Chemet Equipment Corporation.

Norinco and China Great Wall Industry that have close ties to the People's Liberation Army are already under US sanctions for violating various export control regimes, and it was not immediately clear how the new measures will affect their business.

The cited Taiwanese firm was identified as Ecoma Enterprise. The list also includes Paeksan Associated Corporation of North Korea, a firm controlled by the country's Communist government.

The measures call for a full US government embargo against the listed businesses and their subsidiaries as well as their exclusion from any US federal assistance program.

All export licenses that involve the nine companies are being suspended, and "no new individual licenses shall be granted," according to the notice.

"These measures shall be implemented by the responsible departments and agencies of the United States government and will remain in place for two years from the effective date," the document said.

The sanctions follow a Central Intelligence Agency report to Congress pointing out that assistance from Chinese companies had "helped Iran move toward its goal of becoming self-sufficient in the production of ballistic missiles."

In addition, the US spy agency reported, firms from China provided Iran and other countries with dual-use items, raw materials and assistance that could present proliferation concern, including equipment and technology that could be used for manufacturing chemical weapons.

China is not a member of the Missile Technology Control Regime, an international agreement designed to stem proliferation of ballistic missiles, but it pledged in October 1994 to uphold some of its key provisions.

The new crackdown against Iran's trading partners preceded amid new warnings to Tehran, which US officials insist is trying to use its allegedly peaceful nuclear program as cover for building an arsenal of atomic weapons.

"I hope we can solve it diplomatically, but I will never take any option off the table," Bush said Monday in an interview with NBC News when asked whether his administration was willing to take military action if Iran continued to stonewall the international community about the suspected existence of its nuclear weapons program.

The comment followed a report by award-winning journalist Seymour Hersh in The New Yorker magazine that said US commandos have been already operating inside Iran since mid-2004 selecting suspected weapons sites for possible air strikes.

The Pentagon has dismissed the article as "riddled with errors."

But Bush moved to assuage worries about possible military strikes by saying, in a separate interview with ABC News, that "our policy toward Iran is to deal with them diplomatically."


As America Sleeps, the Strausscon Plan for Iran is on Schedule

By Kurt Nimmo

01/18/05 "Another Day" -- It is a constant drumbeat and will become more so over the next few months: Iran has nukes, or is feverishly working to develop nukes (no easy task), and will ultimately nuke Israel and Europe.

This is essentially the same pretext used to invade Iraq. So blood-thirsty and crazed are the Muslims—and the secular Ba’athist Arabs—they will attack civilized people with nuclear weapons if allowed to do so. It is our task—indeed, our duty—to save the world from Arab-Iranian savagery. Of course, after Iraq was invaded, no weapons of mass destruction were found, so the emphasis shifted from saving the world from Saddam Hussein’s Pandora’s box of nuke-bio-chem weapons to a selfless desire to deliver freedom and democracy to the Iraqi people, beleaguered for so long under Saddam’s tyrannical rule. Of course, all of this is nonsense, so obviously transparent as to be a bad joke, not that most Americans realize, so deep is their sleep and ambivalence.

It must be remembered that Saddam Hussein was a CIA assassin and the CIA worked to install the brutal Ba’ath regime in Iraq. American and European corporations sold Saddam Hussein all the biological and chemical materials he wanted in the 1980s and the Reagan administration encouraged this so long as Iran and Iraq were at war with each other. Iraqi chemical and biological weapons, subsequently eliminated by UNSCOM after Bush I’s invasion, were a threat to Iranians, not Europeans and Israelis. All of this is not some outlandish conspiracy theory but historical fact. It should also be remembered that the CIA overthrew a popular and democratically elected leader in Iran and with Israeli help created a secret police apparatus (SAVAK) that was so brutal Iran “had the worst human rights record on the planet, and … the number and variety of torture techniques the CIA had taught SAVAK were ‘beyond belief,’” as Mark Zepezauer notes.

In other words, the alleged threat faced by “civilized nations” —the United States is so “civilized” it is the only country to actually have nuked defenseless civilians—is a product of CIA intervention in the Middle East. In Iran, as Zepezauer explains, “the Iranian people overthrew the bloodstained Shah, with great bitterness and hatred toward the US for installing him and backing him all those years. The radical fundamentalist regime that rules Iran today could never have found popular support without the CIA’s 1953 coup and the repression that followed.”

None of this is mentioned in the corporate media as the Strausscons prepare to invade, or at least “shock and awe” Iran, destroying its social and political infrastructure the same way they did in Iraq, resulting in misery for millions of people. As Seymour Hersh documents in his latest article published in the New Yorker, the Strausscon plan against Iran is in motion and has worked behind the scenes “at least since last summer.” Hersh also documents the fact the Strausscon “civilians in the Pentagon” are working in tandem with the Israelis to destabilize Iran.

Of course, an invasion of Iran would be insane, considering how badly the occupation of Iraq is going. In Bushzarro world, however, such realities are irrelevant. “Strategists at the headquarters of the U.S. Central Command, in Tampa, Florida, have been asked to revise the military’s war plan, providing for a maximum ground and air invasion of Iran,” writes Hersh. How they will do this with the U.S. military now stretched so thin is not explained.

None of this is surprising. The PNAC Strausscons, with Michael Ledeen leading the charge, have made no secret of their desire to kill Iranians and replace their government with a “democracy,” that is to say a plaint military dictatorship that will follow orders and bow down to Israel. Bush’s “re-election” serves as an affirmation of the Strausscon-Likudite Master Plan for the Muslim Middle East. In fact, the Strausscon-Likudite plan is Bush’s raison d’etre.

Disaster is up the road and around the bend. Seymour Hersh’s article provides further evidence that the Bush Strausscons are on schedule, anxious to kill hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of Muslims in the Middle East (and South Asia as well). It was only a few months ago the corporate media was fantasizing about the demise of Strausscon influence in Washington. As I said at the time, Bush would “win” the election—by hook, crook, bogus terror alerts, and Diebold voting machines owned by Republicans—because Israel’s agenda is of paramount importance.

Now America has to live with the result—perpetual war and a further eroding of America’s precious treasure and resources. Unfortunately, there is no organized or effective way to stop this madness. It will run its course and eventually reality will grind the Strausscon plan to a halt, in the process economically destroying America and impoverishing its people. Finally, on the day the Strausscon machine breaks and Americans wake up and figure out they were scammed, will they place blame where blame is due or will they look elsewhere, guided by the corporate media, and find new scapegoats to blame?

UPDATE 2-US warns Iran over missiles, punishes Chinese firms
By Adam Entous

WASHINGTON, Jan 18 (Reuters) - The Bush administration expressed concern on Tuesday about Iran's pursuit of longer-range ballistic missiles and imposed sanctions on Chinese companies it accused of helping Tehran in those efforts.

The economic sanctions -- which the Chinese government denounced as unjustified -- were part of a broader campaign by the Bush administration to keep Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons and the means to deliver them. Iran denies its nuclear facilities are to be used to make weapons.

"I hope we can solve it diplomatically. But I will never take any option off the table," President George W. Bush told NBC television in an interview when asked about the potential for military action against Iran.

The Bush administration made no public announcement of the sanctions, first reported by The New York Times on Tuesday. The penalties and the Chinese companies affected were disclosed in government documents published earlier this month.

U.S. officials say the exports to Iran included high-performance metals, the Times said.

White House spokesman Scott McClellan said Bush will work with European allies "to find a diplomatic resolution to Iran's pursuit of nuclear weapons."

"They made some very clear commitments and we will see by their actions whether or not they are finally serious and willing to follow through on those commitments," McClellan said.

"We have a number of concerns about Iran, including their pursuit of nuclear weapons and their interest in longer-range ballistic missiles, and we've expressed those concerns," McClellan added.

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