James you need to go into reporting the news. You have done a bang up job pasting other people’s thoughts here and that is all that is required for a journalist in today’s world.
I have actually dreamed about becoming a journalist but unfortunately for me the job market is already saturated with a bunch of them.
Not good ones and not ones that have integrity. Not ones that can analize different reports ,compare them and bring a logical conclusion or opinion. There are none compared to what began in the media. Take a few courses, take alook around start small at an AM station or even start your own TV or radio station. Be a philosopher journalist, the best one, the only one out there. Heck work at several stations. There is more than one way to skin a cat James. if this is a dream , then find ways to make it work and then be the best.
Two US aircraft carriers opposite Iran, 15,000 troops in Kuwait
US President Barack Obama is busy aligning Middle East allies with the next US steps on Iran. Contributing to the mounting sense in Washington of an approaching US-Iranian confrontation, the Pentagon is substantially building up its combat power around Iran, stationing nearly 15,000 troops in Kuwait - two Army infantry brigades and a helicopter unit – and keeping two aircraft carriers the region. The USS Carl Vinson, the USS John Stennis which was to have returned to home base and their strike groups will stay in the Arabian Sea.
Iran is caught up in the same pre-war swirl of activity. Parliament Speaker Ali Larijani spent two days in Ankara this week. But Turkish leaders failed in their bid to sell their good offices as brokers for averting the expected collision between Tehran and the West. Before flying out of Ankara Friday, Jan. 13, Larijani commented: “We have different ways of doing things.”
debkafile’s Iranian sources quote the Iranian official as telling his hosts that his country is prepared to take on any military aggressors. One of the responses weighed in Tehran to meet the rising military pressure might be an open declaration of Iran as a nuclear power. By accepting a visit by IAEA inspectors on Jan. 28 - to investigate charges that Iran is running a clandestine nuclear bomb program - Tehran may be moving toward that irreversible admission - or possibly its first nuclear test.
DEBKA-Net-Weekly 528 disclosed exclusively on Nov. 25, 2011 that Iran may soon publicize its attainment of a nuclear weapon, a step still being debated intensely at the highest levels of the Islamic regime in Tehran. Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who will make the ultimate decision, is very much in favor of facing the world as a nuclear-armed Islamic Republic. He calculates that this fait accompli has a good change of warding off a Western and/or Israeli military attack.Thursday night, Jan. 12, President Obama put in a call to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to discuss coordinating US and Israeli moves for a military operation against Iran, which many US media believe to be imminent.
The New York Times wrote Friday under the caption: Dangerous Tension with Iran, “Many officials, experts and commentators increasingly expect some kind of military confrontation.”Obama had similar conversations with other Middle East leaders this week. The and Saudi and Qatari foreign ministers, Prince Saud al-Faisal and Sheikh Hamad al-Thani, spent two days on Jan. 10-11 in Washington talking to the US president. The contents of their talks were kept under tight wraps. Friday, British premier David Cameron suddenly turned up in Riyadh for talks with Saudi King Abdullah and Crown Prince Nayef.
Discussions on military preparations centering on Iran inevitably concern the need for urgent action to halt the unending carnage in Syria, Iran’s close ally.Thursday, the Russian National Security Adviser Nikolai Patrushev, one of Prime Minister Vladimir Putin’s closest advisers, said ominously: “We are receiving information that NATO members and some Persian Gulf States working under the ‘Libyan scenario’ intend to move from indirect intervention in Syria to direct military intervention.”
Moscow has consistently spoken out against any foreign intervention in the Syrian conflict – or even tough UN sanctions.
Russia’s NATO ambassador Dmitry Rogozin has suggested more than once that the West would use a military adventure in Syria as the jumping-off point for an attack on Iran.
Another sign that Syria is under the military eye of the West came from an indiscreet comment Israel’s Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Benny Gantz made Tuesday, Jan. 10 in a briefing to a Knesset panel. Israel, he said, is preparing to absorb members of Bashar Assad’s Alawite sect after his downfall.
He later detracted his words. debkafile disclose that the context of the general’s comment was Israeli preparations to establish a buffer zone on the Syrian side of the Golan border to shelter Alawites fleeing the vengeance of their compatriots.
Turkey too has gone back to talking about setting up in northern Syria a Turkish buffer zone for refugees and anti-Assad dissidents.
Further fueling the war scare, two helmeted bombers on a motorbike assassinated the Iranian nuclear scientist Mostafa Ahmadi-Roshan, deputy director of the Natanz uranium enrichment center, in central Tehran Wednesday. Friday, Ayatollah Khamenei accused the United States and Israel of a CIA-Mossad master plan, which Iranian sources claimed bore the title “Red Windows” and focused on training Iranian dissidents for hit and sabotage operations in Iran.
James L Walker, did you actually read all of the stuff that you posted?
I only read a little bit, then thought no, he didn’t bother to read all that, he’s just posting it for shits and giggles.
James L Walker, did you actually read all of the stuff that you posted?
I only read a little bit, then thought no, he didn’t bother to read all that, he’s just posting it for shits and giggles.
Yes, I have read everything that I have posted in this thread. Why do you ask?
I only read a little bit, then thought no, he didn’t bother to read all that, he’s just posting it for shits and giggles.
You offend me. You under estimate me and my abilities.
So, you read everything I have posted here. What did you think reading it?
Dan~:James L Walker, did you actually read all of the stuff that you posted?
I only read a little bit, then thought no, he didn’t bother to read all that, he’s just posting it for shits and giggles.Yes, I have read everything that I have posted in this thread. Why do you ask?
I only read a little bit, then thought no, he didn’t bother to read all that, he’s just posting it for shits and giggles.
You offend me. You under estimate me and my abilities.
So, you read everything I have posted here. What did you think reading it?
I didn’t want to offend you. I’ll start to read some of your links and quotes, but not all.
James L Walker: Dan~:James L Walker, did you actually read all of the stuff that you posted?
I only read a little bit, then thought no, he didn’t bother to read all that, he’s just posting it for shits and giggles.Yes, I have read everything that I have posted in this thread. Why do you ask?
I only read a little bit, then thought no, he didn’t bother to read all that, he’s just posting it for shits and giggles.
You offend me. You under estimate me and my abilities.
So, you read everything I have posted here. What did you think reading it?
I didn’t want to offend you. I’ll start to read some of your links and quotes, but not all.
Alrighty.
SOPA and PIPA Part of Effort to Domesticate Politically Incorrect Internet
The Megaupload takedown is dominating headlines, but there is something the incident has overshadowed – large internet corporations and government have censored political websites for years as part of a plan to domesticate the internet.
Censorship of the internet is not simply for the Chinese. On Thursday, Paul Joseph Watson pointed out the hypocrisy of Google as the transnational corporation shouldered its way into the limelight by opposing SOPA while enforcing SOPA-like policies of its own, blacklisting legitimate websites from its news aggregator and following government orders to remove material from its search results and You Tube.
Watson notes that Google has delisted both Infowars.com and Prison Planet.com – the flagship websites of nationally syndicated talk show host Alex Jones – from its popular news website and news search engine. Google News is a content aggregator that allows users to search thousands of news sources for relevant stories.
Google has memory holed these two websites from its news portal for political reasons and not because they are insignificant and draw paltry traffic. In fact, Infowars.com is a major news source that gets more traffic than MSNBC.com and many other corporate media news websites.
Google is not alone in attempting to blunt Infowars.com and Prison Planet.com. MySpace, Time Warner, New Zealand’s Asia Netcom, the ISP Tiscali in the UK and even a British aiport – along with a number of libraries and government-owned entities – have shut out Alex Jones’ popular websites.
Infowars.com and Prison Planet.com are not alone. “Public wi-fi systems stationed in airports, train stations, libraries, schools, and workplaces also routinely censor political websites,” writes Watson.
In addition to blocking and censoring Jones’ news websites, Google property YouTube has consistently taken down his videos and fiddled with hit counters and other metrics to make it seem the videos are less popular than they actually are.
A d v e r t i s e m e n t
Google’s effort to censor Alex Jones and other dangerous alternative media sites makes sense when you realize the company has intimate ties with the CIA and the military-industrial complex.
The establishment has worked behind the scenes for years to devise a method to sanitize the internet – in the same way corporate television has been disinfected for decades – and drive the truth-seekers and tellers off the medium. SOPA and PIPA, under the guise of fighting dreaded copyright criminals, is only the latest guise.
In 2010, globalists meeting in Davos, Switzerland, called for internet licensing by the United Nations in order to combat so-called cyber warfare of the sort the shadowy Anonymous hacktivist collective used against the Department of Justice and the FBI following the Megaupload takedown.
For at least three years, the corporate media has trumpeted a vastly exaggerated threat of cyber terrorism and illustrated the warning with dire scenarios of disabled power grids and hobbled civilian infrastructure.
Former president Bill Clinton has called for a government-run internet “Ministry of Truth” to get rid of pesky troublemakers – his wife recently admitted the government is losing the information war – and Obama’s information czar Cass Sunstein has demanded that websites be mandated by law to link to opposing information or that pop ups containing government propaganda be forcibly included on political blogs.
Sunstein had previously called for a COINTELPRO-like effort against politically incorrect activist groups and also called for the government to tax or even ban outright political opinions it finds objectionable.
Finally, the Pentagon has declared the internet a battlefield and recently stated it will respond to so-called cyber attacks militarily. “If you shut down our power grid, maybe we will put a missile down one of your smokestacks,” a military official said last May.
The military response to exaggerated cyber threats was put on the fast track by Obama in 2009 when he instructed the Pentagon to attack “cyberthreats” within the United States. Instead of allowing local police response to suspected cyber crimes, Obama moved to violate Posse Comitatus and turn the United States into a combat zone:
“The Obama administration has adopted new procedures for using the Defense Department’s vast array of cyberwarfare capabilities in case of an attack on vital computer networks inside the United States, delicately navigating historic rules that restrict military action on American soil,” the New York Times reported at the time.
SOPA and PIPA are merely part a larger and more comprehensive effort to control the internet and reduce the threat it poses to the government. Both laws are efforts to codify what has been going on now for several years.
The defeat of SOPA and PIPA are certainly welcome and the large response in opposition to the legislation is a positive development, however we must consider the larger and more ominous threat the government and the transnational corporations it answers to pose to our liberty and the ability to communicate and raise political awareness.
Internet Wars: Anonymous Attacks DOJ After Feds Shut Down Megaupload
Following a wildly successful protest against SOPA and PIPA internet censorship legislation on Wednesday, the Department of Justice “conducted a major action” on Thursday and shuttered MegaUpload, a popular file-sharing site accused of trading in copyrighted movies and television shows.
Following action by a grand jury, the feds arrested four people and executed more than 20 search warrants in the United States and eight foreign countries. They seized 18 domain names and around $10 million in assets, including a number of servers.
The grand jury indictment accuses Megaupload of causing $500 million in damages to copyright owners and of making $175 million through selling ads and premium subscriptions, according to the New York Times.
The conspicuously timed raid “on Megaupload Thursday proved that the feds don’t need SOPA or its sister legislation, PIPA, in order to pose a blow to the Web,” writes the AnonOps Communications blog.
As if to underscore the government’s determination to close down domains with or without legislation, the DOJ and the FBI released a statement Thursday characterizing the charges as “among the largest criminal copyright cases ever brought by the United States and directly targets the misuse of a public content storage and distribution site to commit and facilitate intellectual property crime.”
The technology site Gigaom has posted details of the indictment against Megaupload.
Fifteen minutes after Megaupload disappeared from the internet, the hacker group Anonymous launched denial of service attack on websites run by Universal Music, the Department of Justice, the FBI, the Copyright Office, the Motion Picture Association of America, and the Recording Industry Association of America.
“Megaupload was taken down w/out SOPA being law. Now imagine what will happen if it passes. The Internet as we know it will end. FIGHT BACK,” Anonymous said in a tweet.
The Twitter account under the name @YourAnonNews identifies itself as the hacker collective and states: “We are Anonymous, We are legion, We never forgive, We never forget, Expect us.”
Armed, irritated and vocal majority will react to worsening economic decline
Paul Joseph Watson
Infowars.com
Thursday, January 19, 2012Money insider Charles Ortel has warned that a worsening economic picture across the globe will see civil unrest hit the streets of America, not on behalf of leftist OWS types, but by an armed, “irascible and vocal Majority”.
Ortel, a managing partner with Newport Value Partners, LLC in New York City, predicts that a failure of the so-called financial recovery will precipitate “A painful re-calibration of economic strength and geo-political standing during 2012 in the midst of widespread civil insurrection and cross-border war.”
Noting that Americans’ access to firearms will cause such riots to be bloodier than anything seen in Europe, Ortel predicts that a contented and silent Majority will be turned into “an irascible and vocal Majority,” as a result of numerous macro-economic and geo-political threats facing the country, including the collapse of the euro, the bursting of the financial bubble in China, and the looming debt crisis, all of which will contribute to weak economic growth.
“Some will manage to contain their activities to peaceful protests. However, we believe the far more likely scenario is that violence will result, especially in the United States where the wider population has more ready access to weaponry and where mobs have proven impossible to restrain,” Ortel writes.
The crisis will also be exacerbated by a shift in “the governing pole of political discourse,” which will see the usual right-left paradigm replaced by a clash between young and old, with the youth of developed nations increasingly irate at seeing the elderly enjoy the security of retirement benefits while their own economic futures look increasingly bleak.
Despite widespread protests and civil unrest sweeping almost all corners of the globe aside from America over the past two years, the prospect of disorder unfolding in the United States in a broader context than the Occupy Wall Street demonstrations is widely expected.
A d v e r t i s e m e n t
Indeed, with trust in both the executive and legislative branches of government at an all time low, pollster Pat Caddell warns that Americans’ lack of confidence in their leadership is so fervent that they are now “pre-revolutionary.”
Fully aware that Americans’ disenfranchisement with the political system, allied with falling living standards, is provoking people to become more radical in their outlook, U.S. authorities have been preparing for civil dislocation.
Halliburton subsidiary KBR is seeking sub-contractors to staff and outfit “emergency environment” camps located in five regions of the United States follows preparations over the last three years to deal with riots inside the United States that have already spread throughout Europe, North Africa and the Middle East.
Major police departments like the NYPD staging “mobilization exercises” to train police to prepare for civil disorder in the United States.
A report produced by the U.S. Army War College’s Strategic Institute warns that the United States may experience massive civil unrest in the wake of a series of crises which it termed “strategic shock.”
“Widespread civil violence inside the United States would force the defense establishment to reorient priorities in extremis to defend basic domestic order and human security,” stated the report, authored by [Ret.] Lt. Col. Nathan Freir, adding that the military may be needed to quell “purposeful domestic resistance”.
Weren’t We Facing A Systemic Collapse a Few Months Ago… What’s Changed Since Then?
Investors are getting strangely bullish.
If you’ll recall, the entire European banking system nearly imploded just 8 weeks ago. Things were so dire that we even had a coordinated Central Bank intervention among other measures to try and prop things up over there.
The Powers That Be have since launched the Long-Term Refinancing Operation or LTRO: essentially a program through which European banks can borrow from the ECB at just 1% for up to a year. The whole thing is essentially just another liquidity handout and it’s telling that those firms which do borrow from the LTRO are parking almost all the borrowed cash at the ECB soon after.
And while the LTRO has been beneficial in terms of some liquidity concerns, it’s done nothing to address Europe’s solvency issues. Case in point, European banks in general are leveraged at 26 to 1. At that level even a 4% drop in asset prices wipes out all equity.
In this environment, the ability to borrow more money doesn’t accomplish anything from a balance sheet perspective. It’s simply a matter of common sense: you cannot solve a debt problem with more debt.
But since the ECB cannot directly monetize EU bonds without Germany pulling out of the EU, and since the German rules Euro-bonds as illegal, the LTRO is about the best the ECB can do in these circumstances.
What’s truly concerning however, is the fact that investors have piled into risk assets based on the LTRO (and misguided hopes of more QE) as though none of these issues exist.
Folks, just a few months ago, no less than the IMF, Bank of England, and others warned that we were facing a global meltdown and the worst financial crisis in history. Do you really think a few liquidity programs have solved all of this?
Moreover, if a huge round of QE or other stimulus money were coming, shouldn’t commodities be exploding higher just as they did before QE 2 in 2010?
Gold is still in a downward channel well under resistance.
Agricultural commodities, which were the first asset class to predict QE 2 are struggling too.
These charts don’t scream, “more easing is coming” to me. Which makes the extreme bullishness of investors all the more disconcerting. Any time a trade grows too lopsided, there’s the opportunity for a sharp reversal. Right now, investors are piling into risk assets in anticipation of more QE from the Fed. But none of the fundamental issues that nearly took Europe down have been resolved. And the Fed has made it clear that it’s finding QE less and less “attractive” since as far back as May 2011.
The reality is that the EU in its current form is finished. There is simply no way we can muddle through the debt deleveraging that will take place. And when the smoke clears the EU in its current form will be broken and we will have passed through a Crisis far worse than 2008.
IBM Accounts For The Entire Upward Move In Dow Jones Index Today
Wondering why with the S&P and Nasdaq both down, the DJIA is up 60 points? Wonder no more: courtesy of a few strategic index-weighing calculations, IBM is responsible for 59.4 DJIA points, or virtually the entire up move in the most popular stock index. One company, the one which Warren Buffett so strategically picked last year to invest in, now biases the entire market to make it seem that “all is fine.”
India Joins Asian Dollar Exclusion Zone, Will Transact With Iran In Rupees
Two weeks ago we wrote a post that should have made it all too clear that while the US and Europe continue to pretend that all is well, and they are, somehow, solvent, Asia has been smelling the coffee. To wit: “For anyone wondering how the abandonment of the dollar reserve status would look like we have a Hollow Men reference: not with a bang, but a whimper… Or in this case a whole series of bilateral agreements that quietly seeks to remove the US currency as an intermediate. Such as these: “World’s Second (China) And Third Largest (Japan) Economies To Bypass Dollar, Engage In Direct Currency Trade”, “China, Russia Drop Dollar In Bilateral Trade”, “China And Iran To Bypass Dollar, Plan Oil Barter System”, “India and Japan sign new $15bn currency swap agreement”, and now this: “Iran, Russia Replace Dollar With Rial, Ruble in Trade, Fars Says.”” Today we add the latest country to join the Asian dollar exclusion zone: “India and Iran have agreed to settle some of their $12 billion annual oil trade in rupees, a government source said on Friday, resorting to the restricted currency after more than a year of payment problems in the face of fresh, tougher U.S. sanctions.” To summarize: Japan, China, Russia, India and Iran: the countries which together account for the bulk of the world’s productivity and combined are among the biggest explorers and producers of energy. And now they all have partial bilateral arrangements, and all of which will very likely expand their bilateral arrangements to multilateral, courtesy of Obama’s foreign relations stance which by pushing the countries into a corner has forced them to find alternative, USD-exclusive, arrangements. But yes, aside from all of the above, the dollar still is the reserve currency… if only in which to make calculations of how many imaginary money one pays in exchange for imaginary ‘developed world’ collateral.
On India’s induction into the dollar unluck club, from Reuters.
An Indian delegation has been in Tehran this week discussing options for payment and the source said the decision to pay in rupees was made after a meeting there.
“The Central Bank of Iran will open an account with an Indian bank for receiving payment and settling its import,” the source, who has direct knowledge of the matter, said, adding the new system will start “soon”.
The source did not specify the name of the Indian bank. But other sources have said that Iran could open an account with India’s UCO Bank as it does not have any interests in the United States.
Who’s this India country anyway?
India, the world’s fourth-largest oil consumer, relies on Iran for about 12 percent of its imports or 350,000-400,000 barrels per day (bpd) and is Tehran’s second-biggest oil client after China. But Washington has snapped tighter financial sanctions on Iran and wants Asia, Tehran’s biggest oil market, to cut imports in a bid to pressure the Islamic nation to rein in its nuclear ambitions, which it suspects are aimed at making weapons.
And, oh yes, we forgot Turkey -the (lately very pissed off) gateway to Europe.
Turkey and Iran said on Thursday they want to increase financial transfers and that work is underway to strengthen banking ties.
When the dollar fails, and currency are devalued, barter begins:
India Trade Secretary Rahul Khullar said this week that the Indian delegation to Iran would work around the U.S. sanctions to protect oil supplies and promote Indian exports.
The government source said Iran has agreed to step up imports from India which added up to some $2.7 billion in 2010/11 and including oilmeal, rice and tea.
“This will cushion them (Iran) to some extent from exchange rate volatility,” the source said.
Ironically, and as has been stated here many times before, by enacting the proposed sanctions and embargo, the US, but mostly Europe is doing nothing but shooting itself in the foot, as it opens up a brand new pathway of not only outright defiance, and thus political brownie points domestically for the likes of China, of the US, but it will allow the “Asian dollar exclusion zone” to buy even more crude, at cheaper prices, while in the process it is forced to build closer monetary relations with its neighboring countries, relations that rely less and less on the world’s increasingly less relevant reserve currency.
Asian support for U.S. sanctions is vital since the region buys more than half of Iran’s daily crude exports. The European Union has agreed in principle to halting Iranian crude imports and could finalise the ban on Jan. 23.
China, Iran’s biggest crude customer, has rejected the U.S. sanctions as overstepping the mark and defended its extensive imports from the second-biggest oil producer in OPEC.
Necessity may be the mother of all dollar-exclusive invention, but Obama is surely the father of necessity.
Syria sanctions: EU extends asset freeze, travel ban
EU foreign ministers have adopted fresh sanctions against Syria, targeting a new list of people and firms to be hit by a travel ban and asset freeze. This is the 11th consecutive round of sanctions to be imposed on the violence-torn country.
Under the new sanctions, agreed on Monday, so-called “restrictive measures” will be enforced against eight more Syrian companies and 22 senior officials, who will be added to an existing blacklist. The companies’ European assets will be frozen, and individuals will be barred from entering the EU.
“We call again for the violence to stop, for the (Arab League) monitors to be able to do their job unheeded,” said European Union foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton as she went into talks with the EU’s 27 foreign ministers. “We’re deeply concerned with the situation in Syria,” she added. “There needs to be a peaceful transition in that country.”
An official announcement on the sanctions is expected later today. No details were immediately available on the identities of the new targets.
The EU has already agreed 10 rounds of sanctions against the regime of President Bashar al-Assad, with some 120 people and companies targeted so far by an EU assets freeze and travel ban. It is also enforcing an arms embargo and a ban on imports of Syrian crude oil.
In December, it expanded its sanctions list to include Syria’s finance and economy ministers, state-owned oil companies and two media organizations.While the EU is pressing for President Assad’s resignation, only Russia and China can ensure this will be done properly, says Paolo Raffone, the head of the CIPI Foundation, a political think-tank.
“The sanctions are to pressure President Assad and his government to move out and negotiate their stepping down. The way ahead is probably the same as what happened in Yemen. Both China and Russia would like to see an orderly ousting of the current government,” Raffone told RT.
The Fall Out Of The European Union And The Euro
The banking system simply can’t handle a default of a country the size of Spain or Italy. In other words, a Spain or Italy default would cause worldwide currency collapse. The banks own the debt of the sovereigns and the banks own other banks and countries buy other country’s debt, so all of the banks and all of the countries are intertwined. The managing IMF director, Christine Lagarde, put it succinctly by saying, “It is not about saving any one country or any one region. It is about saving the world from a downward economic spiral.” What she really means is that the world’s monetary system is one giant fiat ponzi of which the malinvestments must be kept from being exposed or else the fiat ponzi collapses.
In one form or another, Europe will have to print many more Euros in order to backstop Italian and Spanish debt. Whether it’s through a vehicle called Eurobonds, or through something else (perhaps a multitude of vehicles), the result will be the same…printing money to buy European debt. Surprisingly, when the EU fully commits to backstopping debt and a ton of Euros are printed, the Euro will likely rise. The reason being that the main scare for the Euro is a breakup of the currency bloc, not the amount of Euros being printed. A committed backstop of Italy and Spain will take the spotlight off of Europe and shine it fully on the US, which is in much worse shape the Europe.
Iran Summons Danish Envoy, Renews Threat to Close Hormuz
Iran’s foreign minister Ali Asghar Khaji summoned the Danish ambassador in Tehran to protest the European Union’s decision to go forward with an oil embargo on the country. Denmark currently holds the rotating EU presidency.
Iranian politicians also renewed a previous threat to close down the Straight of Hormuz if the embargo is implemented. “Closing the Strait of Hormuz is one of the country’s strategies against the West’s threats, especially an oil embargo,” said Emad Hosseini, spokesman for parliament’s energy committee. “Europe should be responsible for the consequences of these reckless decisions.”
On January 20, Iran’s ambassador to the United Nations said closing the Strait of Hormuz is an option in the event his country is harmed by sanctions or an embargo.
“There is no decision to block and close the Strait of Hormuz unless Iran is threatened seriously and somebody wants to tighten the noose,” Ambassador Mohammad Khazaee said on the Charlie Rose show, according to Bloomberg. “All the options are or would be on the table.”
“We believe that the Strait of Hormuz should be the strait of peace and stability,” Khazaee said. “But if foreign powers want to create trouble in the Persian Gulf, of course it would be the right of Iran as well as the rest of the countries in the region to try to defend themselves.”
The United States and the EU believe Iran has the capability to close Hormuz, although not indefinitely.
On January 9, General Martin Dempsey, chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, said that Iran has the capacity to block the strait “for a period of time,” and that the U.S. would take action to reopen it. “We’ve invested in capabilities to ensure that if that happens, we can defeat that,” Dempsey said.
Iran also said the sanctions set to go into effect in July will fail. “The West’s ineffective sanctions against the Islamic state are not a threat to us. They are opportunities and have already brought lots of benefits to the country,” Intelligence Minister Heydar Moslehi told the official IRNA news agency.”The global economic situation is not one in which a country can be destroyed by imposing sanctions.”
Iran has pledged to find alternative markets for 18-percent of its oil that is currently sold to the 27-nation European bloc. “This market will harm them because oil is getting more expensive and when oil gets more expensive it will harm the people of Europe,” Moslehi added. “We hope that in these six months they will choose the right path.”