Citing sources in the Russian secret services, the report revealed: "Under an effective contract Israel's Ropadia company, registered in Cyprus, plans to supply through Bulgaria's Arsenal firm 50,000 AKS-74 automatic rifles, about 1,000 grenade launchers RPG-7 and nearly 20,000 40-millimeter shells for them, as well as about 15,000 5.56-millimeter assault rifles....The hardware and ammunition was ready for shipment back several days ago." [30]
In line with recent announcements that Washington is building up both land-based and sea-based interceptor missile capabilities in the Persian Gulf, the same combination as will be deployed along Russia's western frontier from the Baltic Sea to the Black Sea and from the latter into the South Caucasus, Georgia and neighboring Azerbaijan are key components in the strategy to prevent Iranian retaliation in the event of U.S. and Israeli attacks. American and NATO bases in Bulgaria and Romania were used for the 2003 war against Iraq and are for the war in Afghanistan to the current day.
Azerbaijan, which has consolidated military ties with the U.S., NATO and Israel, is on Iran's northwest border. [31]
Recently an official with the Azerbaijan president's Academy of Public Administration spoke at a conference titled Azerbaijan's Integration into Europe: Problems and Prospects, organized by the NATO International School in Azerbaijan. He advocated NATO intervening in the Nagorno Karabakh conflict with Armenia as the military bloc had "in the early 1990s in the Balkans, Bosnia," when NATO deployed 400 warplanes in a bombing campaign against Bosnian Serb positions.
According to the official, Elman Nasirov, "the main aim of Azerbaijan in integrating into NATO and European structures is to provide security and restore its territorial integrity," [32] meaning the military conquest of Karabakh.
Azerbaijan can be a major base for operations against Iran, where ethnic Azeris comprise as much as a quarter of the population. The Bosnia model has been alluded to above on two occasions.
On February 16 NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen hosted Major General Yaylym Berdiyev, the defense minister of Turkmenistan, Iran's northeastern neighbor, at the Alliance's headquarters in Brussels. As the French Voltaire Network wrote five days before, "NATO has encircled Iran almost entirely: it has a foothold in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Abu Dhabi, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Iraq, Turkey, Armenia and Azerbaijan. It just needs one in Turkmenistan for the siege to be complete." [33]
To Iran's west, Turkey's Zaman newspaper wrote on February 17 that U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton spoke in the Persian Gulf state of Qatar and while identifying Iran as a "long-term threat" because of its "nuclear weapons," said that the U.S. interceptor missile system being steadily expanded from Eastern Europe to locations east and south "would protect into the Caucasus and down to Turkey, would provide some additional guarantee against threatening behavior." (NATO Deputy Secretary General Claudio Bisogniero was in Qatar on February 8 and 9 to consolidate military partnerships with members of the Istanbul Cooperation Initiative and the Mediterranean Dialogue: Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Algeria, Egypt, Israel, Jordan, Mauritania, Morocco and Tunisia. [34])
The same Turkish source quoted U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates: "The dialogue on what Turkey could do within NATO to counter the proliferation of ballistic missiles via a missile defense system continues. We have discussed the possibility of erecting two radar systems in Turkey." [35]
The Pentagon is simultaneously deploying land-based and ship-based interceptor missiles throughout the Persian Gulf to render Iran incapable of retaliation against massive missile attacks and bombing runs from the U.S. and its allies. [36]
After a five-day tour to Afghanistan and Pakistan to oversee the escalation of the wars in both nations, U.S. National Security Adviser James Jones - former Marine Commandant and NATO Supreme Allied Commander - said that Washington was pursuing tighter sanctions against Iran and revealed what the true purpose of such economic warfare is: "We are about to add to that regime's difficulties by engineering, participating in very tough sanctions," which "could trigger regime change." [37]
On February 14 Chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Michael Mullen arrived in Israel to meet with Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak and military Chief of the General Staff Lieutenant-General Gabi Ashkenazi, and stated that the option of war against Iran "is still on the table." [38]
During his trip it was reported that "Mullen's visit follows a visit last month by U.S. National Security Adviser James Jones and a leaked secret visit two weeks ago by Central Intelligence Agency director Leon Panetta." [39]
In a masterful analysis of the current crisis in Yemen, American professor Robert Prince examined that nation's role in American plans for armed hostilities against Iran.
In addition to "countering Chinese access to Middle East and African oil and gas moves, in the long run Yemen offers the United States strategic access to the Horn of Africa Somalia, Sudan, Kenya all of which are in varying degrees of turmoil and opens the door for expanding the roles of either AFRICOM or NATO not only in the Middle East, but in Africa.
"There is another possible strategic consequence to US bases in Yemen, hypothetical but not out of the range of possibility: a US air base in Yemen could be used as a launching pad for an air attack on Iran, not only for US planes but for the Israelis as well." [40]
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