Operation Bite: April 6 sneak attack by US forces against Iran planned, Russian military sources warn

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The United States will be ready to launch a missile attack on Iran's nuclear facilities as soon as early this month, perhaps "from 4 a.m. until 4 p.m. on April 6," according to reports in the Russian media on Saturday.

According to Russian intelligence sources, the reports said, the US has devised a plan to attack several targets in Iran, and an assault could be carried out by launching missiles from fighter jets and warships stationed in the Persian Gulf.

Russian news agency RIA Novosti quoted a security official as saying, "Russian intelligence has information that the US Armed Forces stationed in the Persian Gulf have nearly completed preparations for a missile strike against Iranian territory."

Iran fears strike by 'warmongers'

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The Russian Defense Ministry rejected the claims of an imminent attack as "myths." There was no immediate response from Washington.

The reports come as the Iranian chief of staff, Hassan Fayrouz Abadi, was quoted on Saturday by Iran's Fars news agency warning leaders of Arab countries that Israel plans to open a "suicidal attack" on its neighbors this summer, to "prevent the withdrawal of the US troops from Iraq and the area."

"I warn the dear leaders and Muslim brothers in the neighboring countries of the occupied territories that this suicidal attack of the Zionists is threatening them," he said.

The countries in danger, he said, were "Lebanon and Syria, and later Egypt, Jordan and Saudi Arabia."

Also on Saturday, Russia urged Britain and Teheran to resolve the dispute over 15 British sailors and marines captured by Iran last week, a local news agency reported.

Russian Foreign Ministry spokesman Mikhail Kamynin urged the two sides to provide the United Nations with their own assessments as to what happened and where exactly the detention occurred so that the body could conduct an independent probe.

"We hope these actions will provide a foundation for the soonest possible resolution of the crisis," Kamynin was quoted as saying by the Interfax news agency.

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad insisted that the captured British sailors and marines trespassed in Iranian waters and called world powers "arrogant" for failing to apologize, the country's official news agency reported.

"The British occupier forces did trespass our waters. Our border guards detained them with skill and bravery. But arrogant powers, because of their arrogant and selfish spirit, are claiming otherwise," IRNA quoted Ahmadinejad as saying during a speech in the southeastern city of Andinmeshk.

The European Union grappled with a double bind over Iran Saturday - the country's nuclear program and its seizure of the British troops - and reported no progress on either issue.

A debate about Iran's nuclear ambitions had been scheduled as a key agenda item but "was overshadowed to a certain extent by the issue of the sailors and marines," German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier said after hosting a two-day EU foreign ministers meeting in Bremen, Germany.

The Foreign Ministry in Iran dismissed the EU's "biased and meddlesome" comments on the captured troops, saying the dispute solely involved the governments of Iran and Britain.

Speaking to reporters in Bremen, British Foreign Secretary Margaret Beckett urged Iran to resolve the crisis over the military personnel peacefully, saying London remains open to dialogue.

"We encourage Iran to peacefully resolve this issue," she said.

"We continue to express our willingness to engage in dialogue and discussions with Iran," she added. "That is very much in the best interest of our people and that is our foremost concern."

"I think everyone regrets that this position has arisen," she said. "What we want is a way out of it."

AP contributed to this report.

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Operation Bite: April 6 sneak attack by US forces against Iran planned,
Russian military sources warn
By Webster G. Tarpley
Online Journal Contributing Writer

Mar 26, 2007, 01:02

WASHINGTON DC, — The long awaited US military attack on Iran is now on
track for the first week of April, specifically for 4 am on April 6, the
Good Friday opening of Easter weekend, writes the well-known Russian
journalist Andrei Uglanov in the Moscow weekly ³Argumenty Nedeli.² Uglanov cites Russian military experts close to the Russian General Staff for his account.

The attack is slated to last for 12 hours, according to Uglanov, from 4 am until 4 pm local time. Friday is the sabbath in Iran. In the course of the attack, code named Operation Bite, about 20 targets are marked for bombing; the list includes uranium enrichment facilities, research centers, and laboratories.

The first reactor at the Bushehr nuclear plant, where Russian engineers are working, is supposed to be spared from destruction. The US attack plan reportedly calls for the Iranian air defense system to be degraded, for numerous Iranian warships to be sunk in the Persian Gulf, and for the most important headquarters of the Iranian armed forces to be wiped out.

The attacks will be mounted from a number of bases, including the island of Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean. Diego Garcia is currently home to B-52 bombers equipped with standoff missiles. Also participating in the air strikes will be US naval aviation from aircraft carriers in the Persian Gulf, as well as from those of the Sixth Fleet in the Mediterranean. Additional cruise missiles will be fired from submarines in the Indian Ocean and off the coast of the Arabian peninsula. The goal is allegedly to set back Iran¹s nuclear program by several years, writes Uglanov, whose article was reissued by RIA-Novosti in various languages, but apparently not English, several days ago. The story is the top item on numerous Italian and German blogs, but so far appears to have been ignored by US websites.

Observers comment that this dispatch represents a high-level orchestrated leak from the Kremlin, in effect a war warning, which draws on the formidable resources of the Russian intelligence services, and which deserves to be taken with the utmost seriousness by pro-peace forces around the world.

Asked by RIA-Novosti to comment on the Uglanov report, retired Colonel
General Leonid Ivashov confirmed its essential features in a March 21
interview: ³I have no doubt that there will be an operation, or more
precisely a violent action against Iran.² Ivashov, who has reportedly served at various times as an informal advisor to Russian President Vladimir Putin, is currently the vice president of the Moscow Academy for Geopolitical Sciences.

Ivashov attributed decisive importance to the decision of the Democratic
leadership of the US House of Representatives to remove language from the just-passed Iraq supplemental military appropriations bill that would have demanded that Bush come to Congress before launching an attack on Iran. Ivashov pointed out that the language was eliminated under pressure from AIPAC, the lobbing group representing the Israeli extreme right, and from Israeli Foreign Minister Tsipi Livni.

³We have drawn the unmistakable conclusion that this operation will take
place,² said Ivashov. In his opinion, the US planning does not include a
land operation: ³ Most probably there will be no ground attack, but rather massive air attacks with the goal of annihilating Iran¹s capacity for military resistance, the centers of administration, the key economic assets, and quite possibly the Iranian political leadership, or at least part of it,² he continued.

Ivashov noted that it was not to be excluded that the Pentagon would use
smaller tactical nuclear weapons against targets of the Iranian nuclear
industry. These attacks could paralyze everyday life, create panic in the population, and generally produce an atmosphere of chaos and uncertainty all over Iran, Ivashov told RIA-Novosti. ³This will unleash a struggle for power inside Iran, and then there will be a peace delegation sent in to install a pro-American government in Teheran,² Ivashov continued. One of the US goals was, in his estimation, to burnish the image of the current Republican administration, which would now be able to boast that they had wiped out the Iranian nuclear program.

Among the other outcomes, General Ivashov pointed to a partition of Iran
along the same lines as Iraq, and a subsequent carving up of the Near and Middle East into smaller regions. ³This concept worked well for them in the Balkans and will now be applied to the greater Middle East,² he commented.

³Moscow must exert Russia¹s influence by demanding an emergency session of the United Nations Security Council to deal with the current preparations for an illegal use of force against Iran and the destruction of the basis of the United Nations Charter,² said General Ivashov. ³In this context Russia could cooperate with China, France and the non-permanent members of the Security Council. We need this kind of preventive action to ward off the use of force,² he concluded.

Resources:

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Webster G. Tarpley is a journalist. Among other works, he has published an investigation on the manipulation of the Red Brigades by the Vatican¹s P2 Suite and the assassination of Aldo Moro, a non-authorized biography of George H. Bush, and more recently an analysis of the methods used to perpetrate the September 11, 2001 attacks.

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___________________________________________________________________________US to Attack Iran by End of April: Report

Yahoo India ^  4/4/2007 IANS| 

Kuwait City, April 4 (Xinhua) The US is planning to attack Iran's nuclear reactors and other nuclear facilities by the end of this month, the Kuwait-based Arab Times newspaper reported Wednesday.

Citing anonymous sources in Washington, it said that various White House departments had started preparing the political speech to be delivered by the US president later this month, announcing the military attack on Iran.

The speech will provide the 'evidence' and the 'justification' for the US to resort to the military option after failing to persuade Tehran to give up its nuclear ambitions, said the report.

According to the Times, one of the justifications expected in the speech is Iran's alleged role in the killing of American soldiers in Iraq by supporting various militias with money and arms.

The US president's speech will also point to Iran's political interference in Iraq, obviously in cooperation with Syria.

The sources were quoted as saying that US will not resort to a ground attack in order to avoid human losses.

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Russian News Agency-Us Plans Easter Week Attack On Iran


RIA Novosti ^ | 3-19-2007 | RIA Novosti

Translated from French by Google:

MOSCOW, March 19 - RIA Novosti. The Russian military experts estimate that the planning of the American military attack against Iran passed the point of nonreturn on February 20, when the director of the IAEA, Mohammed El Baradei, recognized, in his report/ratio, the incapacity of the Agency “to confirm the peaceful character of the nuclear program of Iran”.

According to the Russian weekly magazine Argoumenty nedeli, a military action will proceed during the first week of April, before Easter catholic and orthodoxe (this year they are celebrated the 8), when the “Western opinion” is on leave.

It may be also that Iran is struck on Friday 6 (April) public holiday in the Moslem countries.

According to the American diagram, it will be a striking of only one day which will last 12 hours, 4 hours of morning at 16 o'clock in afternoon.

The code name of the operation is to date “English C-ck” (Bite).

A score of Iranian installations should be touched. With their number, centrifugal machines of uranium enrichment, centers of studies and laboratories.

But the first block of the nuclear thermal power station of Bouchehr will not be touched. On the other hand, the Americans will neutralize the DCA, will run several Iranian buildings of war in the Gulf and will destroy the stations - keys of command of the armed forces. As many measurements which should remove in Teheran any capacity to counteract.

Iran projected to run several tankers in the strait of Ormuz with an aim of cutting the provisioning of the international markets of oil and of striking with the Israel missile.

The analysts affirm that strike them American will be launched from the island of Diego-Garcia, in the Indian Ocean, from where will take off of the bombers with long operating range B-52 with on their board cruise missiles; by the embarked aviation of the American aircraft carriers deployed in the Gulf and belonging to the 6th American Fleet in the Mediterranean; cruise missiles will be also drawn since the submarines concentrated in the Pacific and off Arabia. Result, the Iranian nuclear program will be rejected several years behind.

In private talks, American Generals suppose that the times of deployment of American anti-missile defense in Europe can be deferred to later.

Another event envisaged, the oil barrel could fly away to 75-80 dollars and this for one prolonged period.

Meanwhile, the new resolution on Iran and whose project was adopted by the five permanent members of the Security Council and Germany should be voted with CS as of this week.

The text envisages sanctions against 10 Iranian public companies and to three companies concerned with the Body of the guards of the Islamic revolution, unit of elite to the orders of the spiritual leader of the Islamic Republic, the ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

Sanctions are also envisaged against 15 physical people: eight leaders placed high of companies of State and seven characters - keys with the Body of the guards of the Islamic revolution.

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