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Russia suspicious over Iran test
MOSCOW (BBC News) Feb. 5, 2008 – Russia thinks the launch of an Iranian rocket into space raises suspicion over the true aim of its nuclear programme, a foreign ministry official has said.
“Long-range missiles are one of the components of a [nuclear] weapons system,” Deputy Foreign Minister Alexander Losyukov told Interfax.
TEHRAN/MOSCOW, February 4 (RIA Novosti) – Iran successfully launched a research rocket as a preliminary step toward sending its first homebuild research satellite into orbit, national media said. VIDEO
Iran’s state television earlier reported that Iranian scientists had built the Omid (Hope) research satellite under a project that took 10 years to complete. The satellite was unveiled on Monday during an official ceremony and may be launched by March 2009.
Iranian media gave no details about the rocket, called Kavoshgar-1, but some experts believe it could be a variant of the Shahab-3 missile, which has a range of up to 2,000 kilometers (about 1,200 miles).
Iran’s official news agency IRNA said the Omid advanced research satellite had been designed to operate in a low earth orbit and provide a variety of scientific data.
Iran’s space program, along with other technological advancements in the country that have potential military applications, has been received warily by Western powers which suspect Tehran of secretly developing nuclear weapons.
Sinah-1, the first Iranian satellite, was built by Russia and launched on October 28, 2005 on a Kosmos-3 booster rocket from North Russia’s Plesetsk Space Center, making Iran the 43rd country to possess its own satellite. Iran still hopes to become a satellite-launching nation.
TEHRAN, February 5 (RIA Novosti) – Iran is currently involved in a long-running dispute with the West over its controversial uranium enrichment program, with two sets of UN sanctions against Tehran in effect.
The U.S. and its allies fear that both programs may serve as a cover for the development of nuclear weapons and long-range ballistic missiles.
The White House said Iran’s rocket launch was “unfortunate” and would only further isolate Tehran from the international community.
“It’s unfortunate Iran continues to test ballistic missiles. This regime continues to take steps that only further isolate it and the Iranian people from the international community,” White House spokesman Gordon Johndroe said.
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Perhaps the missing router in Iran has another explanation than Internet connectivity to the whole nation? See also Florida and Germany
Tata Indicom Cable (TIC) is Singapore’s first fully Indian-owned, undersea fiber-optic cable that is in operation since 2004. The 3,175-km cable lands in Chennai in India and in Changi in Singapore.
In the case of India, services were largely restored within 24 hours of the cable cut, by diverting traffic through the TIC and SEA-ME-WE 3 cables.
DUBAI, U.A.E. (Khaleej Times) Feb. 5, 2008 — An estimated 1.7 million Internet users in the UAE have been affected by the recent undersea cable damage, an expert said yesterday, quoting recent figures published by TeleGeography, an international research Web site.
Quoting TeleGeography and describing the effect the cuts had on the Internet world, Mahesh Jaishanker, executive director, Business Development and Marketing, du, said, “The submarine cable cuts in FLAG Europe-Asia cable 8.3km away from Alexandria, Egypt and SeaMeWe-4 affected at least 60 million users in India, 12 million in Pakistan, six million in Egypt and 4.7 million in Saudi Arabia.”
A total of five cables being operated by two submarine cable operators have been damaged with a fault in each. These are SeaMeWe-4 (South East Asia-Middle East-Western Europe-4) near Penang, Malaysia, the FLAG Europe-Asia near Alexandria, FLAG near the Dubai coast, FALCON near Bandar Abbas in Iran and SeaMeWe-4, also near Alexandria.
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."
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Let me repeat, Iran is not disconnected from the Internet!
We have gotten a few queries about why we did not highlight Iran in our review of the network outages that resulted from the cable breaks. (See here, here and here.) Like most countries in the region, the outages in Iran were very significant, but for the most part they did not exceed 20% of their total number of networks. Now 20% is a significant loss, but in the context of an event where countries lost almost all of their connectivity, such a loss did not place Iran into the top 10 of impacted countries. So we focused most of our attention where the losses where the highest.
But then there was this Slashdot posting, claiming Iran had zero connectivity. This was news to us. It’s said that “the first casualty of war is truth.” Something similar can probably be said with regard to catastrophic failures. Truth might not be first, but it is a very close second. Journalists are pushed to meet deadlines for stories about topics for which they have little familiarity, and technical experts sometimes jump to conclusions on the basis of little evidence.
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."
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Review of Basra uprising against the British in 2005:
(Sept. 2005) – Unbelievable! Just listened to BBC World radio on breaking news story, about jail break by UK forces in Basra. MoD spokesman tries to downplay effects with local authority. Mentions the possibility these two UK men were part of Special Ops unit, investigating the use by Al Sadr’s men of sophisticated devices used for bombs. These devices were provided through Iran.
Unbelievable spin on undercover operations by UK forces – illegal activities?
Negroponte hit squad – see REUTERS warning not to use the photos of these UK men.
BASRA (Dec. 2007) – Sweets instead of flowers and Iraqi forces instead of Bush’s Grand Coalition forces.
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."
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But the increasing reliance by the United States military on “Awakening” forces in their military operations against groups who have not joined “the Awakening” (read: “Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia”) means that the US is essentially setting up two sides against each other – first by forming, arming, and training Iraqi Army and police forces hopelessly infiltrated by sectarian Shiite militia members, and then by creating “Awakening” forces overwhelming dominated by members of Sunni armed groups opposed to the current government’s dominance by sectarian Shiite political groups.
What, we have to ask, will happen when newly re-armed and increasingly powerful “Awakening Councils” continue to operate essentially independently of the central Iraqi government? This is the gift that the US has given to Awakening forces — essential total control in the areas in which they are based, with the support of US forces against any challengers. They will, it seems likely, emerge from this phase of US policy in Iraq heavily armed, having solidified control over their areas of operation, and without strong needs to be associated with a discredited and largely irrelevant (in their eyes) central government.
Another set of lines in the next stage of Iraq’s civil conflict are drawn ( see here for analysis of comments on this over at Informed Comment), and groups on either side continue to find support from some actors in countries in the region with something to gain from an ongoing proxy war in Iraq (read: Saudi Arabia and Iran). And the US just announced plans to engage in one of the largest arms deals in history, effectively dumping $60 billion dollars of weapons into the hands of regimes opposing Iran in the region (including, notably for our purposes, Saudi Arabia).
Iran stealing Iraq’s oil on border
Where did we hear this argument before?
≈ Cross-posted from Steven D’s diary — The Surge is Working? ≈
"But I will not let myself be reduced to silence."