Published On: Tue, Dec 27th, 2011

New Year Prediction: Israel and U.S. Will Attack Iran

New Year Prediction: Israel and U.S. Will Attack Iran amirbarati20111226130438123CBS News predicts Israel will attack Iran this year and the U.S. will participate. National Security Correspondent David Martin:

“If Iran doesn’t blink Israel will strike… Go after its nuclear facilities, if Iran doesn’t blink… [The U.S. will] have no choice but to support Israel. And depending on what the evidence is at that time they might even want to take part in that raid, it depends on what kind of intelligence they have about that decision that Iran has to make about whether to really build a bomb and go beyond putting all the pieces in place, which is what it’s doing now.”

On Saturday, Iran began a 10-day drill in international waters near the strategic oil route that passes through the Strait of Hormuz. The exercise is dubbed “Velayat 90″ and will likely be conducted in proximity to U.S. naval ships.

“To show off its might, the navy needs to be present in international waters. It’s necessary to demonstrate the navy’s defense capabilities,” Iranian Navy Commander Rear Admiral Habibollah Sayyari said at a press conference last week.

Prior to the announcement of the drill, Iran’s Foreign Ministry spokesman Ramin Mehmanparast said that “if the region faced a war-like situation, then everything would then become war-like.”

On Saturday, Iran reported that helicopter had been warned to stay away from the exercise. “Yesterday, a chopper which belonged to the trans-regional countries tried to approach the region of Velayat 90 exercises, but it left the area when it received a serious warning after it ignored two other warning signals of our units,” Lieutenant Commander of the Iranian Navy Admiral Seyed Mahmoud Moussavi told the Fars News Agency.

In addition to flexing its military muscle, Iran is bragging about its warfare technology. “Iran is in a unique position in all areas, including manufacture of unmanned reconnaissance aircraft, as well as defense and assault airplanes. Iran has also made great progress in electronic warfare technology, aviation industries and missile technology,” Defense Minister Ahmad Vahidi told IRNA, the Iranian state news agency.

Vahidi also praised the capture of the RQ-170 Sentinel, a sophisticated U.S. surveillance drone.

The capture of the spy aircraft, the imposition of new sanctions, and the withdrawal of British diplomats following a protest and storming of the British embassy in Tehran have resulted in escalated tensions in Iran and the Persian Gulf.

In late November, Israel appeared to be readying military hardware for an invasion and Iran’s promised response.

Earlier in the month, Britain’s armed forces stepped up their contingency planning for potential military action. British military planners examined where best to deploy Royal Navy ships and submarines equipped with Tomahawk cruise missiles over the coming months as part of what would be an air- and sea-launched campaign, The Guardian reported.

Last week the Chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff Martin Dempsey said that the United States can successfully attack Iran, if necessary. His biggest worry is that Iran will “miscalculate our resolve,” according to Israel National News.


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There have been no elections in Somalia since 1967 and there won’t be any this year either. But the country has a new parliament (appointed on the advice of clan elders) who have elected a new president, and the new government actually now controls a significant part of the country. The world’s only fully “failed state” may finally be starting to return to normality.A failed state is a horrendous thing: no government, no army, no police, no courts, no law, just bands of armed men taking what they want. Somalia has been like that for more than 20 years, but now there is hope. So much hope that last month the United Nations Security Council partially lifted its embargo on arms sales to Somalia in order to let the new Somali government buy arms, and last week the U.S. government followed suit.The new government replaces the “Transitional Federal Government”, another unelected body that had enjoyed the support of the UN and the African Union for eight pointless years. Then last year a World Bank report demonstrated the sheer scale of its corruption: seven out of every ten dollars of foreign aid vanished into the pockets of TFG officials before reaching the state’s coffers.Fully a quarter of the “national budget” was being absorbed by the offices of the president, the vice-president and the speaker of parliament. The fact that after all that the TFG still only controlled about one square kilometre (less than one square mile) of Mogadishu, the capital, while the rest of the shattered city was run by the Islamist al-Shabaab militia, an affiliate of al-Qaeda, also contributed to the international disillusionment.That tiny patch of ground, moreover, was being defended not by Somali troops but by thousands of Ugandan and Burundian soldiers of the African Union Mission in Somalia (Unisom). More than 500 of them had lost their lives defending the useless TFG, and the foreign donors were losing faith in the mission. But the Unisom soldiers did achieve one major thing: they fought al-Shabaab to a standstill in Mogadishu.In August 2011 the Islamist militia pulled its troops out of the capital. That created an opening, and the international community seized it. It ruthlessly initiated a process designed to push the TFG aside: Somali clan elders were asked to nominate members for a new 250-seat parliament, which was then asked to vote for a new president and government.It was obviously impossible to hold a free election in a country much of which was still under al-Shabaab’s control, but this process also had the advantage that it allowed the foreigners to shape the result. The corrupt officials who had run the old TFG all re-applied for their old jobs, but none of them succeeded.The new president who emerged from this process, Hassan Sheikh Mohamud, is a former academic and human rights worker who only entered politics in 2011. No whiff of corruption clings to him, and he has worked tirelessly to bring about national reconciliation. And he has the wind at his back: just after he was chosen last September, a Kenyan force evicted al-Shebaab from Somalia’s second city, Kismayo.That still leaves about 95 percent of the country’s territory and three-quarters of its population beyond the government’s direct control. Al-Shabaab still rules in most rural parts of the country, and Ethiopian troops and their militia allies control much of the western border areas. Pirates with a lot of guns and money effectively dominate much of the north.One whole chunk of the country, calling itself Somaliland, has declared its independence (and runs its affairs much more peacefully and efficiently than any other part of Somalia). No other country recognizes its independence at the moment, but it used to be a British colony, quite separate from Italian-ruled Somalia, and in principle it can make exactly the same case for independence as Eritrea did when it broke away from Ethiopia.The worst problem facing President Mohamud is the venal and cunning politicians who have exploited the clan loyalties that pervade every aspect of Somali life to carve out their own little empires. Some are frankly and unashamedly warlords; others, including all the senior officials in the defunct TFG, masquerade as national politicians but work for their own interests.They have not gone away, nor have the clan rivalries that kept the fighting going for 21 years. Drawing up the rules and sharing out the power for a new federal Somalia (none of which has yet been decided) will give them plenty of opportunities to make trouble for the new president and regain their former power. Mohamud definitely has his work cut out for him.Nevertheless, he has strong UN and African Union support, and he now has a chance to create a spreading zone of peace in the country and start rebuilding national institutions. So last week the United States declared that it was now willing to provide military aid, including arms exports, to Somalia. Weirdly, that actually means that thing are looking up in the world’s only failed state.Gwynne Dyer is an independent journalist whose articles are published in 45 countries.