From the Jerusalem Post
On Monday, Russia’s Novaya Gazeta newspaper reported that part of Ukraine’s Soviet-era nuclear arsenal may well have found its way to Iran. With the breakup of the Soviet Union, the Ukrainians agreed to transfer the Soviet nuclear arsenal that remained in Ukraine after its independence to Russia. According to Novaya Gazeta, some 250 nuclear warheads never made it to Russia and are thought to have been sent to Iran instead. The report further noted that the warheads will remain operational until 2010.
Responding to the report, Gen. Yuri Baluyevsky, Russia’s deputy defense minister and the chief of General Staff, said, “Russia’s General Staff has no information about whether Ukraine has given 250 nuclear warheads to Iran or not.”
It is impossible to assess the accuracy of the report. The Ukrainian government has dismissed its allegations. Russia may well have invented the story to shift media attention away from the growing awareness that Russian support for Teheran, Damascus and Hamas effectively places it in the enemy camp in the US-led war against global jihad.
But whether this particular report is true or false, there is no doubt that the danger to Israel and the rest of the Western world emanating from Iran and its allies is growing by the day.
In recent testimony before the US Congress, John Negroponte, director of National Intelligence, said that the danger that Teheran “will acquire a nuclear weapon and the ability to integrate it with ballistic missiles that Iran already possesses” is a cause “for immediate concern.”
EVEN IF both Negroponte’s testimony and the council’s report are perceived by some as alarmist, this week Iran itself continued to make every effort to convince the world that assessments like these are grossly understated.
Iran conducted an enormous naval exercise called “Great Prophet” in the Persian Gulf and the Sea of Oman. Almost every day of the exercise Iranian forces demonstrated new radar-evading ballistic missile systems. While Western defense establishments have had tepid responses to Iran’s show of force, the regime built on its provocations Wednesday when the supreme commander of its Revolutionary Guards, Maj.-Gen. Yahya Rahim Safavi, issued a thinly veiled threat to close the Straits of Hormuz – the narrow waterway through which 40 percent of the world’s oil passes.
While President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s poisonous and apocalyptic rhetoric has caused the Western world to step away from him, Teheran is far from isolated. To the contrary, today it perceives itself and is perceived by others as the leader of a regional Islamist axis.
In February Canada’s Globe and Mail published a report in which Hussein Hajj Hassan, a Hizbullah member of the Lebanese parliament, declared that on January 20 the Islamist axis was formally cemented in Damascus.
The parley which brought about the entente was led by Ahmadinejad and attended by axis members:
~ Syrian President Bashar Assad,
~Hizbullah chief Hassan Nasrallah,
~Hamas chief Khaled Mashaal,
~Islamic Jihad chief Ramadan Abdullah Shalah
~and the commanders of PLO breakaway front groups.
~Iraqi Shi’ite terror chief Muqtada al-Sadr also pledged his allegiance to the axis.
The jihad summit took place five days before the Palestinian elections and on the same day a suicide bomb exploded in Tel Aviv.
Wild Thing’s comment………
My prayer is we have and keep a strong loyal bond between the US and Israel and NEVER allow the likes of the Clintons and Carter etc. to be in office again or America and Israel will be doomed. I am a postive person, a big time the glass is half full type, but when it comes to evil/ terrorists/ lefties reality is what it is and no fluff can lighten up the dangers that are being created by followers of Islam and those aiding the enemy.
Also in February…article HERE , Israel’s ambassador to the United Nations, Danny Gillerman, warned of a new “terror axis” of Iran, Syria and Hamas, which could kick start “the first world war of the 21st century.”
“Imagine al-Qaeda or the PKK running in elections? A dictator’s democracy is a dangerous false impression,” Gillerman told the Council.
Gillerman warned of Hamas’ venture in politics, saying “the world is witnessing a new alliance between Iran, Syria and Hamas, which constitutes an axis of terror.”
Victor Davis Hanson at National Review Online has presented his opinion that Imadickweed and the boneheaded Mullahs have miscalculated in their brinkimanship. He’s presented Israel with the absolute necessity of a preemptive strike, and allowed Western states no other option. Even the EU seems to be coming around.
Having no experience of the modern world, and acting like enraged sand monkeys, they’re threatening to obliterate us with radar-evading flying carpets, wooden airplanes, super-duper cavitation torpedoes and their own stink.
Something will almost certainly happen within the next month or two. The sooner the better. It’ll be nasty, but the time has come.
When Israel gave up the West Bank settlements to the PLA, that was a mistake. It was mistake in the 80’s when they did it, and it remains a mistake. Everytime Israel is attacked by anyone, they should take a few square miles of land. The west this week, south the next, then the north, repeat. And along the way, give the Pali’s the boot out of Dodge. World may not like it, but if I’m Israeli and stand the chance of gettin’ blown up the grocery store, the heck with world sentiment and concensus. We get attacked; we exile some Pali’s, expand and move that wall.
Thank you so much Rhod,it will be nasty I agree, but I can’t think of any other way to do this.
razOr I hated that they gave up land. I knew in my gut that the PLA would jump up and down with glee and they did among doing even more attacks. Grrrr
Thank you so much for commenting on this.
I still have some glimmer of hope of the Iranian regime being overthrown from within. Reports of massive disatisfaction among the younger crowd wanting more Westrn lifestyle and less religios fervor.
I am sure the Israelis have good intel and will act accordingly, either blowing the shit out of Iranian facilities or helping foment an internal revolution. This Internet could be our most powerful non-lethal weapon yet.
Tom there are students and others that sure are fighting back. Thanks for your input on this, like you said Israel has excellent Intel on all of this.