[Slonopotam845]

1.Iran's act is dangerious
2.Israeli news agencies writing allegations about nuking Iran
3.USA always want to change middle east
4.Turkish National Court: Iran used Islamic terrorism against us
5.Turkish Agencies: Iran's nuclear activities are dangerious
6.Head of the FBI+CIA visits Turkey
7.Turkish Generals visiting USA
8.Israeli Generals visiting Turkey
9.Germany's esteemed agency "DPP" says: USA and Turkey will nuke Iran.

[Ifroham4]

I don't think anyone will Nuke Iran. Someone WILL, in short order, Bomb Iran's nuclear facilities. There is no choice. A Nuclear Iran is too dangerous. Its is a far worse scenario than any of the consequences of taking out those facilities.

[Beerinkol]

one question

If the US attacks Iran,

would it be that the Shiites in Southern Iran be attacking the US and british forces there?

further more most of the security forces trained by the US are kurds and Shiites

I see no point in training them as they will become traitors if the US goes to war Against Iran.


either way, US will be hit from all sides, Iranian and Iraqi Shiites and Sunnis.

[S.T.D.]

I was very young, but as I recall, here in the US, issues pertaining to the Middle East were not hotbed issues in the manner they are today. News in general was limited to the major Networks airing their world news broadcasts twice a day, and two major news magazines, plus the expose shows mainly limited to Nightline and 60 minutes. You're seeing far more converage now, in anticipation of Israel's theoretical strike, then Israel's actualized strike on Iraq ever got. The Nuclear discussions were mostly centered around the Soviet Union. Another big topic at the time was the war in El Salvador.

The Hostage crisis earlier that same year, was huge, but that involved the US directly, as did the gas crisis. So Iran was the real demon in those days, and the US continued relations with Iraq at the time. Iran also tried to attack Iraq's facility, for obviouse reasons, but fell on their face. What's interesting to remember, is that Israel and Iran had opened up channels of secret negotiations years before with the pipeline deal around 1968. Some side notes, of random interest, is that Israel had met with Sadat only 3 days before the attack .... they used US satellite photos of the Osirak plant... and they picked the day when they knew the French workers would be off duty.

More to the point, I don't believe there was much talk at all untill after the hit. Then Israel was actually chastised by the UN (with the US siding against Israel) for taking action, and go figure, there was a Resolution condeming them. Leftists started to make a fuss, and a month later Israel went into Lebanon, which gave them cause to stomp their feet some more. I seem to recall the most coverage was on something like 60 minutes, and that was mainly to question how they pulled it off.

Here's an essay that might answer your question some, too ...http://www.ourjerusalem.com/history/...y20010618.html

[Drugmachine]

While it's true that no one can realistically attack Iran, it's tragically wrong to assume that Iran would not use atomic weapons. They have already demonstrated in their war vs. Iraq they are perfectly willing to sacrifice millions for no benefit at all in the name of the Iranian state and its Islamic Revolution. Moreover Iran's M.O. is to outsource so even if they had 'only' one bomb, you can be sure they will attempt to send it to someone under their control who will use it.

Secondly - Iran cares nothing for a) Sunni muslims, b) Palestinians and c) any muslims of any stripe not living in Iran or who are ethnically Farsi. The entire Arab world, and the Iranians have demonstrated for 40 years that they hate the Palestinians almost as much as the Palestinians hate the Jews. There is not a single country in the Arab-Farsi world that has ever offered citizenship to its own Palestinians minority some of whom have been living there 4 generations. If Iran saw a chance to genocide the Jews in Israel (or Brooklyn or London or Paris...) they would gleefully take as many Palestinians or anyone else with them.

[softy54534]

A strike against Iran would not be Iraq style. Instead, it would be Afghanistan style - decapitate and take out nuclear sites. It would not be the stupid "pottery barn" idea - we will break it, but its up to the store owners to fix it.

There would be no occupation. Further, because there is already a semblance of an electoral process, transition away from the mullahcrocy would concievebly happen more quickly.

As for the other points, Iran is not an ancient culture. PERSIA is. Iran is a name, taken from Nazi ARYAN, and it includes non-persian areas and peoples.

People are predicting that they may test a nuclear weapon (underground) as early as this March.

Finally, Iran is not a rational actor under the Mullahs. They have publically stated that they would trade 100 million muslims for 5 million Jews. They do not care one bit about the Pal Arabs. They aren't even Arabs. The Pal Arabs would be "shahids" in the noble cause of returning land to dar-Islam.

The UN is corrupt and useless. A big joke, really. The UN didn't give permission for Bosnia, either, and Israel was condemned for Osirak. The UN excuse is just that - whining from people who want nothing done, knowing that the disparate (ie. slave to oil and gas) interests on the UNSC won't allow any action to be taken against an oil producing nation.

As for Iraq/Iran... who knows. Some have announced, others have not. This would be a legitimate issue to worry about - the carry over to Iraq.

Oh, one last thing, a succesful attack on Iran would NOT make Iran Islam's standard bearer. It would expose them for the weak paper tigers they are, humiliate the mullahs, and for the greater part destroy teh credibility of the Jihadist enterprise.

[S.T.D.]

I just read this incredible piece in the San Francisco Chronicle Insight section on Sunday, January 8. It was about the relationship between Iran and Nazi Germany. Definitely worth exploring due to events in the region today! Read it here:

Denial of Holocaust nothing new in Iran
Ties to Hitler led to plots against British and Jews
- Edwin Black
Sunday, January 8, 2006

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has shot to the forefront of Holocaust denial with his rabble-rousing remarks last month. But it’s more like self-denial. The president of Iran need only look to his country’s Hitler-era past to discover that Iran and Iranians were strongly connected to the Holocaust and the Hitler regime, as was the entire Islamic world under the leadership of the mufti of Jerusalem.

Iran’s axis with the Third Reich began during the prewar years, when it welcomed Nazi Gestapo agents and other operatives to Tehran, allowing them to use the city as a base for Middle East agitation against the British and the region’s Jews.

Key among these German agents was Fritz Grobba, Berlin’s envoy to the Middle East, who was often called “the German Lawrence,” because he promised a Pan-Islamic state stretching from Casablanca to Tehran.

Relations between Berlin and Tehran were strong from the moment Hitler came to power in 1933. At that time, Reza Shah Pahlavi’s nation was known as Persia. The shah became a stalwart admirer of Hitler, Nazism and the concept of the Aryan master race. He also sought the Reich’s help in reducing British petro-political domination.

So intense was the shah’s identification with the Third Reich that in 1935 he renamed his ancient country “Iran,” which in Farsi means Aryan and refers to the Proto-Indo-European lineage that Nazi racial theorists and Persian ethnologists cherished.

The idea for the name change was suggested by the Iranian ambassador to Germany, who came under the influence of Hitler’s trusted banker, Hjalmar Schacht. From that point, all Iranians were constantly reminded that their country shared a common bond with the Nazi regime.

Shortly after World War II broke out in 1939, the Mufti of Jerusalem crafted a strategic alliance with Hitler to exchange Iraqi oil for active Arab and Islamic participation in the murder of Jews in the Mideast and Eastern Europe. This was predicated on support for a pan-Arab state and Arab control over Palestine.

During the war years, Iran became a haven for Gestapo agents. It was from Iran that the seeds of the abortive 1941 pro-Nazi coup in Baghdad were planted. After Churchill’s forces booted the Nazis out of Iraq in June 1941, German aircrews supporting Nazi bombers escaped across Iraq’s northern border back into Iran.

Likewise, the mufti of Jerusalem was spirited across the border to Tehran, where he continued to call for the destruction of the Jews and the defeat of the British.

His venomous rhetoric filled the newspapers and radio broadcasts in Tehran. The mufti was a vocal opponent of allowing Jewish refugees to be transported or ransomed into Jewish Palestine. Instead, he wanted them shipped to the gas chambers of Poland.

In the summer of 1941, the mufti, with the support of key Iranian military and government leaders, advocated implementing in Iran what had failed months earlier in Iraq. The plan once again was for a total diversion of oil from the Allies to the Nazis, in exchange for the accelerated destruction of the Jews in Eastern Europe and the Nazis’ support for an Arab state. Through the Anglo-Iranian Oil Co., Iran had already been supplying Hitler’s forces in occupied Czechoslovakia and Austria.

Now, the mufti agitated to cut off the British and the Allies completely and supply Germany in its push against Russia.

In October 1941, British, USSR other allied forces invaded Iran to break up the Iran-Nazi alliance. Pro-Nazi generals and ministers were arrested, and the shah’s son was installed in power. The mufti scampered into the Italian embassy, where he shaved his beard and dyed his hair. In this disguise, he was allowed to leave the country along with the rest of the Italian delegation.

Once the mufti relocated permanently to Berlin, where he established his own Reich-supported “bureau,” he was given airtime on Radio Berlin. From Berlin and other fascist capitals in Europe, the mufti continued to agitate for international Jewish destruction, as well as a pan-Islamic alliance with the Nazi regime.

He called upon all Muslims to “kill the Jews wherever you see them.” In Tehran’s marketplace, it was common to see placards that declared, “In heaven, Allah is your master. On Earth, it is Adolf Hitler.”

When the mufti raised three divisions of Islamic Waffen SS to undertake cruel operations in Bosnia, among the 30,000 killers were some volunteer contingents from Iran. Iranian Nazis, along with the other Muslim Waffen SS, operated under the direct supervision of Heinrich Himmler and were responsible for barbarous actions against Jews and others in Bosnia. Recruitment for the murderous “Handschar Divisions” was done openly in Iran.

Iran and its leaders were not only aware of the Holocaust, they played both sides. The country offered overland escape routes for refugee Jews fleeing Nazi persecution to Israel — and later fleeing postwar Iraqi fascist persecution — but only in exchange for extortionate passage fees.

Thousands of Jews journeyed to Israel via Iran both during the Holocaust and during the years after the fall of Hitler, when Arab leaders, especially in Iraq, tried to continue Germany’s anti-Jewish program. Iran profited handsomely.

Since the shah’s downfall, Iran has become a center for organized international Holocaust denial and has helped elevate the endeavor from fringe hate speech to a state-approved pseudo-intellectual debate.

In international forums and on state-controlled radio, Iranian university experts and journalists help validate the revisionist views that Jews were never gassed or murdered in great numbers during the Holocaust.

Indeed, Iran has become a refuge for the biggest names in European Holocaust denial. When in 2000, revisionist author Jürgen Graf was sentenced in Switzerland to 15 months in prison for Holocaust falsification, Graf fled to Tehran “at the invitation of a group of Iranian scholars and university professors who are sympathetic to Holocaust revisionism,” according to the Institute for Historical Review, a denial clearinghouse.

What’s more, in May 2000, Iran’s embassy in Vienna granted asylum to Austrian Holocaust denier Wolfgang Fröhlich, who testified as a so-called expert witness during Graf’s 1998 trial. This saved Fröhlich from Austria’s severe anti-Holocaust denial statutes. Fröhlich argued that evidence proved no Jews were killed by Zyklon B gassing.

Earlier, about 600 journalists and 160 members of the Iranian parliament signed petitions supporting French revisionist Roger Garaudy, who was fined $40,000 by French authorities for his book claiming the Holocaust was a myth. When Garaudy landed in Iran, the country’s supreme spiritual leader, Ayatollah Sayyad Khamenei, granted him an audience and lauded his work.

Iran has played a leading role in the Holocaust drama and now tries to deny it. That should be very hard in a nation that was named for Hitler’s master race.

Edwin Black is the author of “Banking on Baghdad” about the Nazi-Arab alliance. Contact us at insight@sfchronicle.com.