Middle East
Publisher: The Times of Israel
17 Nov 2014
Iran TV airs cleric’s threats to raze Tel Aviv, target US bases
n a sermon carried on state TV, an Iranian cleric threatened that his country will raze Tel Aviv and Haifa to the ground and target US bases. Ayatollah Ali Movahedi-Kermani, whose Friday sermon was translated on Sunday by MEMRI, a US-based media watchdog group, spoke extensively about Iran s ballistic missile capabilities. Movahedi-Kermani claimed that Tehran would use Iranian-made Sejjil missiles against Israel as a defensive deterrent if Jerusalem ever decided to attack the Islamic Republic.
Publisher: Independent
11 Nov 2014
Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Khamenei outlines plan to ‘eliminate’ Israel
The Supreme Leader of Iran s official Twitter account has posted a set of answers to what are described as the "key questions", saying that Israel is guilty of a host of "crimes". The first question asked is: "Why should the Zionist regime be eliminated?" To this, the response is given: "During its 66 years of life so far, the fake Zionist regime has tried to realise its goals by means of infanticide, homicide, violence and iron fist while boasts [sic] about it blatantly". However the statement adds that "the elimination of Israel does not mean the massacre of the Jewish people in this region.
Publisher: National Post
30 Sep 2014
Israel didn’t assassinate Iranian physicist in 2007 – Revolutionary Guard did, sister says
When Iranian nuclear physicist Ardeshir Hosseinpour was gassed to death in 2007, the finger of suspicion was immediately pointed at Israel. Now, his sister claims he was murdered by Iran s Revolutionary Guard (IRI) because he would not cooperate with its efforts to divert nuclear work from peaceful purposes to building an atomic bomb. If Mahboobeh Hosseinpour s account can be confirmed, it could affect the next round of nuclear negotiations between Iran and the P5+1, the five permanent members of the UN Security Council and Germany
Publisher: Reuters
24 Sep 2014
Israel says Iran used Parchin military site for testing nuclear detonation technology
Israel said on Wednesday that Iran has used its Parchin military base as the site for secret tests of technology that could be used only for detonating a nuclear weapon. The Jewish state has been a severe critic of six big powers' negotiations with Iran on curbing its nuclear energy programme, suspecting Tehran is only trying to buy time to master sensitive nuclear know-how and would evade the terms of any final deal.
Publisher: The Guardian
29 Aug 2014
Persian paranoia: America’s fear of Iranian cyber power
When Israel stepped up Operation Protective Edge in Gaza in July, a crew of hackers going under the name of the Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Cyber Fighters readied their attack tools to show support for their Palestinian brothers. They attempted to flood a core piece of Israel s internet infrastructure, the Domain Name System that acts as the web s phone book for the country. They also tried to take down websites for the national stock exchange and Mossad, the intelligence and special operations body. Months of research into Iranian networks uncovered at least 16,000 systems controlled by Iran outside of its borders.
Publisher: Alarabiya
4 Aug 2014
Iran Says It Gave Missile Technology to Hamas
Hamas is able to fire missiles into Israel because Tehran provided weapons technology to the militant group to defend itself against Israeli attacks, a senior Iranian official said Monday. Officials from Iran's powerful Revolutionary Guards have said in the past that Fajr-5 missiles are part of Hamas' Gaza Strip arsenal, whose technology has been supplied by Iran and produced locally without needing direct shipment.
Publisher: National Post
27 Jul 2014
Jonathan Kay: Ending Iran’s support of Hamas must be part of any final P5+1 nuclear deal
Iran s efforts to supply Hamas with missiles and supporting technology has fuelled the current conflict and it would be unconscionable for Western leaders to ignore the blood on Tehran s hands to sign a (flawed) nuclear deal. Any final agreement with Iran should require that regime not only agree to stringent and verifiable controls on its nuclear development, but also end to its logistical support of terrorists in Gaza and elsewhere. Iran is likely to balk at such conditions, of course. But better no deal than one that effectively gives an international imprimatur to Iran s destructive role in the Middle East.
Publisher: Reuters
23 Jul 2014
Iran’s supreme leader calls for end to ‘murderous’ Israeli regime
Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei on Wednesday called for a referendum canvassing the Arabs and Jews that live in Israel in order to end the "Zionist state", but said until such a vote could be held, armed resistance was necessary. Khamenei and his predecessor the Ayatollah Rouhollah Khomeini have called repeatedly over the years for an end to the Jewish state, including through a referendum in the region, where Palestinians are in the majority.
Publisher: Reuters
15 Apr 2014
Israel Says Kerry Remarks on Iran Nuclear Threshold ‘Not Acceptable’
Israel described as "unacceptable" on Monday remarks by U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry suggesting cautious openness to negotiating a nuclear deal that would keep Iran six to 12 months away from bomb-making capability. "In the past, and also recently, what we heard from the Americans, including publicly, and from the Europeans and even from the Russians, was that Iran must be distanced years - not months but years - from nuclear weaponry," said Yuval Steinitz, the Israeli cabinet minister in charge of nuclear affairs.
Publisher: xystwhat
24 Mar 2014
Israelis allocate $3 billion of defense budget for strikes on Iran
For months, President Obama has been secretly telling the Israelis that his accord between six world powers and Iran would work out. Now Israel has broken with the agreement and are literally fending for themselves, unable to trust the president s plan. Netanyahu in fact is again making implied threats about a possible unilateral Israeli strike.
Publisher: Al Jazeera
29 Jan 2014
In the shadow of the Green Movement in Iran
Pro-Israeli warmongers in Washington DC and elsewhere have abused the absence of democracy in Iran for their own belligerent purposes. But antiwar activists should not lose sight of the equally critical domestic scene. The diplomatic position of Iran when negotiating with the US and its allies would be infinitely more powerful if they could speak from a position of popular legitimacy. But in want of that legitimacy, the Islamic Republic remains a constitutionally flawed republic, ruled by a vast and deeply integrated mafia of wealth and power. Precisely for that reason, the history of the Islamic Republic is replete with social uprisings, from the Reformist Movement of the 1990s to the Green Movement of 2009, to the presidential election of 2013.