We are of course against the deliberate infliction of physical pain. But the infliction of humiliation, especially on enemies who hold what they call honor as their highest value, seems to us a very good way of punishing them or, used as a threat, of eliciting information from them. Which is why we do not condemn the humiliating treatment some Muslim terrorists famously received at the hands of American soldiers at Abu Ghraib.

Now the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) – and the bien pensant throughout the West –  are claiming to be shocked by a video of some marines pissing on Afghan corpses. Comparisons are being made with Abu Ghraib. A criminal investigation is underway.

Since the Afghans are dead, they are not even being humiliated. The pissing merely relieved the feelings as well as the bladders of American soldiers. But by publicizing the picture, condemning the soldiers, launching criminal enquiries, the ISAF are choosing to feed propaganda fuel to the enemy.

President Karzai, he who wears literally the mantle of power in his hell-hole of a country, purses his mouth and blusters – frankly taking the piss out of the US and its allies:

“The government of Afghanistan is deeply disturbed by a video that shows American soldiers desecrating dead bodies of three Afghans. This act by American soldiers is simply inhuman and condemnable in the strongest possible terms. We expressly ask the U.S. government to urgently investigate the video and apply the most severe punishment to anyone found guilty in this crime.”

The enemy will only see self-castigation by the Western allies as proof of weakness. For them, war has to be ruthless. Muhammad and his followers slaughtered all the men of a tribe and enslaved the women and children, setting the god-authorized pattern for Muslims to follow forever. The desecration of enemy corpses is routine for jihadis.

And what else do they do? What do Afghans themselves do to their own people?

This is from the Telegraph:

“You must become so notorious for bad things that when you come into an area people will tremble in their sandals. Anyone can do beatings and starve people. I want your unit to find new ways of torture so terrible that the screams will frighten even crows from their nests and if the person survives he will never again have a night’s sleep.”

These were the instructions of the commandant of the Afghan secret police to his new recruits. For more than three years one of those recruits, Hafiz Sadiqulla Hassani, ruthlessly carried out his orders. But sickened by the atrocities that he was forced to commit, last week he defected to Pakistan, joining a growing number of Taliban officials who are escaping across the border.

In an exclusive interview with The Telegraph, he reveals for the first time the full horror of what has been happening in the name of religion in Afghanistan. …

He became a Taliban “volunteer”, assigned to the secret police. Many of his friends also joined up as land owners in Kandahar were threatened that they must either ally themselves with the Taliban or lose their property. Others were bribed to join with money given to the Taliban by drug smugglers, as Afghanistan became the world’s largest producer of heroin.

At first, Mr Hassani’s job was to patrol the streets at night looking for thieves and signs of subversion. However, as the Taliban leadership began issuing more and more extreme edicts, his duties changed.

Instead of just searching for criminals, the night patrols were instructed to seek out people watching videos, playing cards or, bizarrely, keeping caged birds. Men without long enough beards were to be arrested, as was any woman who dared venture outside her house. Even owning a kite became a criminal offence.

The state of terror spread by the Taliban was so pervasive that it began to seem as if the whole country was spying on each other. “As we drove around at night with our guns, local people would come to us and say there’s someone watching a video in this house or some men playing cards in that house,” he said.

“Basically any form of pleasure was outlawed,” Mr Hassani said, “and if we found people doing any of these things we would beat them with staves soaked in water – like a knife cutting through meat – until the room ran with their blood or their spines snapped. Then we would leave them with no food or water in rooms filled with insects until they died.

“We always tried to do different things: we would put some of them standing on their heads to sleep, hang others upside down with their legs tied together. We would stretch the arms out of others and nail them to posts like crucifixions.

“Sometimes we would throw bread to them to make them crawl. Then I would write the report to our commanding officer so he could see how innovative we had been.” …

After Kandahar, he was put in charge of secret police cells in the towns of Ghazni and then Herat, a beautiful Persian city in western Afghanistan that had suffered greatly during the Soviet occupation and had been one of the last places to fall to the Taliban.

Herat had always been a relatively liberal place where women would dance at weddings and many girls went to school – but the Taliban were determined to put an end to all that. Mr Hassani and his men were told to be particularly cruel to Heratis.

It was his experience of that cruelty that made Mr Hassani determined to let the world know what was happening in Afghanistan. “Maybe the worst thing I saw,” he said, “was a man beaten so much, such a pulp of skin and blood, that it was impossible to tell whether he had clothes on or not. Every time he fell unconscious, we rubbed salt into his wounds to make him scream.

“Nowhere else in the world [is there] such barbarity and cruelty as in Afghanistan. At that time I swore an oath that I will devote myself to the Afghan people and telling the world what is happening.”

Before he could escape, however, because he comes from the same tribe, he spent time as a bodyguard for Mullah Omar, the reclusive spiritual leader of the Taliban.

“He’s medium height, slightly fat, with an artificial green eye which doesn’t move, and he would sit on a bed issuing instructions and giving people dollars from a tin trunk,” said Mr Hassani. “He doesn’t say much, which is just as well as he’s a very stupid man. He knows only how to write his name “Omar” and sign it.

“It is the first time in Afghanistan’s history that the lower classes are governing and by force. There are no educated people in this administration – they are all totally backward and illiterate. … I think many in the Taliban would like to escape. The country is starving and joining is the only way to get food and keep your land.”

This Hafiz Sadiqulla Hassani should not be let off his crimes simply because he piously promised himself to tell the world about them and has done so. Why isn’t he being tried, condemned, executed – and pissed on?

The Washington Post usefully informs us:

U.S. military law and the Geneva Conventions prohibit desecration, mishandling or exploitation of bodies of people killed in war.

Prohibit do they? To our own certain knowledge their prohibition has been about as useful as the Pope’s pudenda. (In Lebanon in 1982-1983, the corpses of men killed by the PLO had their genitals cut off and stuffed into their mouths, and no cry of “Foul!” went up from Geneva or anywhere else – JB.)

The human capacity for indignation is inadequate to react commensurately to the savagery of the murdering, torturing Afghans.

The best thing our soldiers can do is kill them. They should also, if they feel like it, piss on their corpses.

P.S. Seems the four marines didn’t actually piss at all.  (Hat-tip Indigo Red)

A Melbourne Israeli Dancing group was dropped from participating in a Victorian dance festival [ie a festival held in Victoria, Australia] after refusing organisers’ moves to drop all references to Israel.

Find the full report here.

The Machol Israeli Dancing Club was scheduled to appear at Multicultural Folk Dance Festival of High Country in the Victorian country town of Mansfield earlier this month.

The festival was organised under the auspices of the Victorian Multicultural Commission and a grant had been awarded to Marta Balan who according to a submission to the Victorian Equal Opportunity and Human Rights Commission approved the performance of the Machol Group.

When the participants’ names were released, Esther Blumenthal-Skop of Machol was surprised to learn that the name of the Machol Israeli Dancing Club had been truncated to Machol Group and all references to Israel had been removed with the club being described as a Jewish dance group.

But that wouldn’t be an accurate description since not all the members of the Machol dance group are Jewish. (How many are not, and what they are is not reported.)

No change had been made to [the names of] other groups including Chinese, Hungarian, Armenian and Ukrainian Traditional Folk Dances and the Irish Reel and Jigs.

In her submission to VEOHRC, Blumenthal-Skop said she asked for an explanation and was told that the organiser would not be held responsible for consequences if the words “Israel” or “Israeli” were used to describe the group. 

Consequences? What might they be? Whose reaction to the name was to be dreaded? The Chinese? The Hungarians? The Armenians? The Ukrainians? The Irish? The Australian hosts? All of them?

Or was there an invisible presence, a ghostly threat hovering over the Multicultural Event? If so, what could it be? What –  invited or uninvited – “culture”? What is its name? What might it do? And was the organiser quite sure that it wouldn’t find the name “Jewish” just as offensive as the name “Israeli”?

Would Israelis be saved from this unnamed terror, we wonder, if their country were to change its name to – say – Judea?

The politically correct organisers of multicultural events could try putting it out there; dub any old Israeli troupe or team of any art or sport “Judean”, and see how it floats.

Multiculturalists simply have to become more resourceful in dealing with these anonymous forces of evil.

Earlier today there was another explosion in Iran, this one in Isfahan, “said to be the primary location of the Iranian nuclear weapons program” and “the site of Iran’s largest missile assembly and production plant … built with North Korean assistance … Involved in the production of Scud-B and Scud-C surface-to-surface missiles by assembling components bought in North Korea and China …  Development and production … was said to include the Shehab 1 and Nazeat missiles …,  the Chinese M-11 …, HY-2 anti-ship and Chinese M-type missiles …, Nodong/Sahab-3 missiles … ”

According to this report, the Iranians are claiming both that it was an accident and that there was no explosion at all.

The Revolutionary Guard said the accidental explosion occurred while military personnel were transporting munitions.

The deputy governor of Iran’s Isfahan province on Monday said however he had no reports of an explosion in his region. “So far no report of a major explosion has been heard from any government body in Isfahan,” he was quoted as saying by the semi-official Mehr news agency. …

A top Israeli security official said that the recent explosion that rocked an Iranian missile base near Tehran [see our post Ah, mighty Worm, all praise to thee!, November 18, 2011] could delay or stop further Iranian surface-to-surface missile development.

This one should make delaying or stopping it even more likely.

Was it the work of the mighty Stuxnet computer worm again? Or of Duqu, son of Stuxnet?

We may never know. But don’t let not knowing delay or stop the celebrations.

Hah! A setback to Obama’s drive to facilitate Islamization.

Patrick Poole writes at PJ Media:

When Barack Obama signed the continuing resolution this past weekend averting another potential government shutdown, it’s doubtful that he was aware that tucked into the bill, which funds several federal agencies through the fiscal year and extends the continuing resolution for the rest of the government until December 16, is a provision that may dramatically impact what Islamic groups and leaders the FBI and other law enforcement agencies can continue to work with.

Under Division B, Title II of the bill, under the Federal Bureau of Investigation-Salaries and Expenses section, is the following provision:

“Liaison partnerships – The conferees support the FBI’s policy prohibiting any formal non-investigative cooperation with unindicted co-conspirators in terrorism cases. The conferees expect the FBI to insist on full compliance with this policy by FBI field offices and to report to the Committees on Appropriations regarding any violation of the policy.”

The most obvious group that this will impact is the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), which was named unindicted co-conspirator in the Holy Land Foundation case — the largest terrorism-finance trial in American history. During the trial, FBI Dallas Agent Lara Burns testified that CAIR was a front for the terrorist group Hamas. …

Stung by their loss of access to federal law enforcement agencies, some of the Islamic organizations named as unindicted co-conspirators in the case unsuccessfully sued to have their names removed from the list. In a 2009 unsealed decision by federal Judge Jorge Solis, the court found that the government should have submitted the unindicted co-conspirators list under seal, and ordered the list resealed (a hollow victory since the list is readily available), but declined to remove the groups and individuals named.

In fact, in his decision Judge Solis recounted the evidence submitted by the government that justified CAIR’s being named unindicted co-conspirator in the case …

But it wasn’t just CAIR among the unindicted co-conspirators that Solis focused on, but also the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA), which bills itself as the largest Muslim umbrella group in the country, and the North American Islamic Trust (NAIT), which owns the property to more than one-quarter of all mosques in North America. Solis wrote that the government had “produced ample evidence to establish the associations of CAIR, ISNA and NAIT with HLF, the Islamic Association for Palestine (‘IAP’), and with Hamas.” He also wrote: “The Muslim Brotherhood supervised the creation of the ‘Palestine Committee,’ which was put in charge of other organizations, such as HLF, IAP, UASR [the Muslim Brotherhood associated United Association for Studies and Research], and ISNA.” …

What impact this new legislation will have remains to be seen, but it is clearly intended to roll back the Obama administration’s penchant for relying on groups identified by government prosecutors as fronts for designated terrorist organizations as partners for “outreach.” 

This new law will also curtail relations with the administration’s favorite “outreach” partner, ISNA, which, despite being named unindicted co-conspirator in the Holy Land trial, was last month included in a top-level meeting with the Department of Justice where Muslim groups demanded a formal declaration by the DOJ that any criticism of Islam constituted religious and racial discrimination. ISNA’s president, Mohamed Magid, is also a regular at White House functions and has been appointed to several government positions, including advising the Department of Homeland Security.

Congressional sources I spoke with on Monday said that this common-sense legislation was necessitated by the continued practice — in open defiance of the stated FBI policy — of dealing with and legitimizing individuals and groups that federal prosecutors had gone into federal court and identified as assisting terrorist groups.

Perhaps the most notorious case was an instance I reported on last year: Kifah Mustapha, who was personally named in the Holy Land case and who prosecutors had on court evidence videotape singing “I am a member of Hamas,” was included last year in the FBI-Chicago Field Office’s six-week Citizens’ Academy training program and given an escorted tour through the FBI Academy at Quantico and the top-secret National Counterterrorism Center. …

Congressional officials expressed skepticism that the new legislation would permanently stop the schizophrenic government policy of engaging groups and individuals that the government itself has said are tied to terrorist groups, but it puts the Obama administration on notice that the days of the “see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil” outreach policies are drawing to a close.

But “let Islam do evil” will go on as long as Obama is in office.

Still, this is one victory, cunningly won, for the freedom side of the war.

But then again, consider how far Islam has advanced in America that we have to count the stopping of law enforcement agencies continuing to co-operate with terrorist-linked criminals as a battle won.

He’s a Lone Wolf. Get that? A LONE WOLF.

Who is?

A man who’s been arrested.

For what? Where?

In New York. On  terrorism charges.

Terrorism charges? In New York? What’s he done?

Nothing. He’s done nothing.

Then why – ?

He’s just a loner who lives with his mother in the Bronx.

What’s his name? Muhammad Something?

Don’t be racist! In fact, his name is Jose Pimentel. Okay, he also calls himself Muhammad Yusuf. But he’s totally a LONE WOLF.

He must have done something to be arrested and charged.

He’s been watched for more than a year by the authorities. The authorities are doing a great job protecting this country, we want you to know.  

Why were they watching him?

He spent a lot of time on the internet.

Any sites in particular?

And lately he’s been buying materials that could be used for making a bomb. They caught him drilling into a pipe. First step in making a bomb. In his mother’s kitchen. In the Bronx. He lived alone with her. A total LONE WOLF.

Do they know what he was planning to bomb?

Returning soldiers. 

Returning from – ?

Iraq and Afghanistan.

Iraq and Afghanistan? What’s his religion?

That has nothing to do with it. But okay, he’s a Muslim. Totally a LONE WOLF who lives with his mother.

I see. You didn’t say what sites he visited on the Internet.

TrueIslam1.

Is that where he learnt how to make a bomb?

No. He learnt that from a magazine called Inspire.

Inspire? Isn’t that the magazine put out by al-Qaeda?

What do you have to bring al-Qaeda into this for? I keep telling you, he’s a …

Lone Wolf.

Right. 

What was his motive in planning to bomb soldiers returning from Iraq and Afghanistan?

Now you’re asking a question we can’t answer. We have no idea. It’s a complete puzzle. We’re stumped. We’re hoping he’ll say what his motive was.  

He hasn’t said anything that gives you a clue?

Nothing. Just a lot of  confused nonsense about America being a legitimate target in time of war. War? What war? And America a target?  None of it makes any sense at all. He’s some kind of nut. And totally a  …

Lone Wolf?

You got it.

According to this report, the Stuxnet worm was the cause of a recent explosion that killed a bunch of nuclear experts and again postpones the nuclear war capability of Iran:

Exhaustive investigations into the deadly explosion last Saturday, Nov. 12 of the Sejil-2 ballistic missile at the Revolutionary Guards (IRGC) Alghadir base point increasingly to a technical fault originating in the computer system controlling the missile and not the missile itself. The head of Iran’s ballistic missile program Maj. Gen. Hassan Moghaddam was among the 36 officers killed in the blast which rocked Tehran 46 kilometers away.

(Tehran reported 17 deaths although 36 funerals took place.)

Since the disaster, experts have run tests on missiles of the same type as Sejil 2 and on their launching mechanisms. …

Maj. Gen. Moghaddam had gathered Iran’s top missile experts around the Sejil 2 to show them a new type of warhead which could also carry a nuclear payload. No experiment was planned. The experts were shown the new device and asked for their comments.

Moghaddam presented the new warhead through a computer simulation attached to the missile. His presentation was watched on a big screen.

So proud of it. And his pride came before his fall.

The missile exploded upon an order from the computer.

The warhead blew first; the solid fuel in its engines next, so explaining the two consecutive bangs across Tehran and the early impression of two explosions, the first more powerful than the second, occurring at the huge 52 sq. kilometer complex of Alghadir.

Because none of the missile experts survived and all the equipment and structures pulverized within a half-kilometer radius of the explosion, the investigators had no witnesses and hardly any physical evidence to work from.

Iranian intelligence heads entertain two initial theories to account for the sudden calamity: a) that Western intelligence service or the Israeli Mossad managed to plant a technician among the missile program’s personnel and he signaled the computer to order the missile to explode; or b), a theory which they find more plausible, that the computer controlling the missile was infected with the Stuxnet virus which misdirected the missile into blowing without anyone present noticing anything amiss until it was too late.

It is the second theory which has got Iran’s leaders really worried because it means that, in the middle of spiraling tension with the United States and Israel or their nuclear weapons program, their entire Shahab 3 and Sejil 2 ballistic missile arsenal is infected and out of commission …

Good, good, excellently good.

Iran’s supreme armed forces chief Gen. Hassan Firouz-Abadi was playing for time when he announced this week that the explosion had “only delayed by two weeks the manufacturing of an experimental product by the Revolutionary Guards which could be a strong fist in the face of arrogance (the United States) and the occupying regime (Israel).” …

If indeed Stuxnet is back, the cleanup this time would take several months, according to Western experts – certainly longer than the two weeks estimated by Gen. Firouz-Abadi.

And now Son of Worm has been born. Hallelujah!

Those experts also rebut the contention of certain Western and Russian computer pros that Stuxnet and another virus called Duqu are linked.

The head of Iran’s civil defense program Gholamreza Jalali said this week that the fight against Duqu is “in its initial phase” and the final report “which says which organizations the virus has spread to and what its impacts are has not been complete yet. All the organizations and centers that could be susceptible to being contaminated are under control.”

Sure they are. But by whom?

Apparently by Arrogance and the Occupying Regime.

It will be a great saga for historians to tell –

How the West helped Islam to victory in state after state of the Arab world.

How, while Islam stealthily and steadily penetrated and gained power in the Western democracies by exploiting their own mores and law, its power base was vastly extended and strengthened with the help of Western military might in North Africa, Iraq, Yemen, Syria, Pakistan and Afghanistan.

How the jihad advanced at a pace that Muhammad himself could hardly have dreamt of.

A contemporary report the historians may study is this from the Washington Post:

The long-awaited declaration of liberation [was] delivered by the head of the National Transitional Council, Mustafa Abdul-Jalil.

He … laid out a vision for a new Libya with an Islamist tint, saying Islamic Sharia law would be the “basic source” of legislation and existing laws that contradict the teachings of Islam would be nullified. …

Using Sharia as the main source of legislation is stipulated in the constitution of neighboring Egypt. …

In Brussels, neither the EU nor NATO wanted to address the issue of Sharia law. A NATO official said it was for the Libyans to decide on the system in their own country.

“We trust the Libyan authorities to build an inclusive Libya, respectful of human rights and the rule of law,” said an official …

Although “the Libyan authorities” – ie the rebel rag-tag army including al-Qaeda operatives – had given no sign that they could be trusted.

And this from the BBC:

Nearly 70% of voters have turned out to cast their ballot in Tunisia’s election, the first free poll of the Arab Spring, officials say.

Tunisians are electing a 217-seat assembly that will draft a constitution and appoint an interim government. …

Islamist party Ennahda is expected to win the most votes …

Ennahda’s leader, Rachid Ghannouchi, was heckled by a handful of secularist protesters as he left the polling station in Tunis where he voted.

The hecklers called him a terrorist and an assassin and shouted at him to return to London, where he spent 22 years in exile before returning to Tunisia in April.

But Mr Ghannouchi praised the electoral process, saying: “This is an historic day. Tunis was born again today; the Arab spring is born again today – not in a negative way of toppling dictators but in a positive way of building democratic systems, a representative system which represents the people.”

Iraqis have decided, with the blessing of coalition administrators, that Islamic law will rule in Iraq.

They reached this decision at about 4:20 a.m. on March 1, when the Iraqi Governing Council, in the presence of top coalition administrators, agreed on the wording of an interim constitution. This document, officially called the Transitional Administrative Law, is expected to remain the ultimate legal authority until a permanent constitution is agreed on, presumably in 2005. The council members focused on whether the interim constitution should name the Sharia as “a source” or “the source” for laws in Iraq. “A source” suggests laws may contravene the Sharia, while “the source” implies that they may not. In the end, they opted for the Sharia being just “a source” of Iraq’s laws.

This appears to be a successful compromise. It means, as council members explained in more detail, that legislation may not contradict either the “universally agreed-upon tenets of Islam” or the quite liberal rights guaranteed in other articles of the interim constitution, including protections for free speech, free press, religious expression, rights of assembly, and due process, plus an independent judiciary and equal treatment under the law.

But there are two reasons to see the interim constitution as a signal victory for militant Islam.

First, the compromise suggests that while all of the Sharia may not be put into place, every law must conform with it. As one pro-Sharia source put it, “We got what we wanted, which is that there should be no laws that are against Islam.” …

Second, the interim constitution appears to be only a way station. Islamists will surely try to gut its liberal provisions, thereby making Sharia effectively “the source” of Iraqi law. Those who want this change — including Mr. al-Sistani and the Governing Council’s current president — will presumably continue to press for their vision. Iraq’s leading militant Islamic figure, Muqtada al-Sadr, has threatened that his constituency will “attack its enemies” if Sharia is not “the source” and the pro-Tehran political party in Iraq has echoed Sadr’s ultimatum.

When the interim constitution does take force, militant Islam will have blossomed in Iraq.

Here’s some great news from the Washington Post:

Iran’s nuclear program, which stumbled badly after a reported cyberattack last year, appears beset by poorly performing equipment, shortages of parts and other woes as global sanctions exert a mounting toll, Western diplomats and nuclear experts say. …

They complain of these several “woes”:

Analysts say Iran has become increasingly frustrated and erratic as political change sweeps the region and its nuclear program struggles. …

At Iran’s largest nuclear complex, near the city of Natanz, fast-spinning machines called centrifuges churn out enriched uranium. But the average output is steadily declining as the equipment breaks down …

Iran has vowed to replace the older machines with models that are faster and more efficient. Yet new centrifuges recently introduced at Natanz contain parts made from an inferior type of metal that is weaker and more prone to failure …

Western diplomats and nuclear experts say Iranian officials have been frustrated and angered by the program’s numerous setbacks, including deadly attacks on Iranian nuclear scientists. Four Iranian scientists have been killed by unidentified assailants since 2007, and a fifth narrowly escaped death in an attempted car-bombing. …

But that Stuxnet worm is the damnedest thing:

The studies of Iran’s struggling uranium program draw on data collected by U.N. officials … The inspectors’ report documented a sharp drop in output in 2009 and 2010, providing the first confirmation of a major equipment failure linked to a computer virus dubbed Stuxnet. Western diplomats and nuclear experts say Stuxnet’s designer intended to attack and disable thousands of first-generation centrifuges at Natanz, undercutting Iran’s ability to make a nuclear bomb. Many experts suspect Israel created the virus, perhaps with U.S. help, but neither nation has acknowledged any role.

Iranian scientists replaced more than 1,000 crippled machines. Afterward the Natanz plant appeared to quickly recover, and production rates soared to surpass levels seen before the attack. Yet, the gains have not lasted, according to the analysis by the Institute for Science and International Security. …

The world owes a debt beyond price to Stuxnet’s designer. He has saved it – at least for a time – from nuclear war. But he’s not very likely to be awarded a Nobel Peace Prize. That’s reserved for terrorists and community organizers.

Yesterday the Attorney General announced that an Iranian plot to assassinate the Saudi Ambassador to the United States, Adel Al-Jubeir, in Washington, D.C. has been foiled.

The Saudi Ambassador was to be killed by a bombing of a restaurant he frequents in the capital, so many others would have been killed and wounded.

The plot also involved attacks on the Saudi and Israeli embassies in Argentina.

Barry Rubin writes at PajamasMedia:

The case is still being developed, and it isn’t clear whether the origin of this plot goes back to Tehran.

By which he means: Did the government of Iran order the attacks?

That does not need to be asked. In a despotism there are no free agents who decide for private reasons to attack another country. Although there is division among the internal powers of Iran – between the supreme “spiritual leader”, the Ayatollah Khamenei, and the president, Ahmadinejad; between either or both of them and the Revolutionary Guards; and probably between factions in every section of government and the military – it had to be one or some or most or all of them who approved such a plan as this.

According to ABC’s sources, Manssor Arbabsiar — an Iranian American living in Texas — approached an informant for the Drug Enforcement Administration, thinking he was speaking with a member of a Mexican drug gang for help in the proposed attacks. He said he was acting on behalf of a cousin, Gholam Shakuri, who might be a Revolutionary Guard official involved in terrorist operations.

He offered $1.5 million for the killing, with a $100,000 down payment in two installments being paid by Arbabsiar while on a visit to Iran.

These two men have been charged with conspiracy to kill, among other charges. Arbabsiar, who is now cooperating with the prosecution, also offered to provide opium in large quantities for the Mexican drug cartels. Apparently, the FBI has a lot of evidence, including recordings of meetings and telephone calls with Arbabsiar.

Reuters reports more details:

U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder said one of two men charged in the plot, both originally from Iran, had been arrested and confessed. The other, who was still at large, was described in the criminal complaint as being a member of the elite Quds Force, which is part of the Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. …

U.S. authorities arrested the other man, Manssor Arbabsiar, 56, who is a naturalized U.S. citizen and holds an Iranian passport, at John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York on September 29. …

The assassination plot began to unfold in May 2011 when Arbabsiar approached an individual in Mexico to help, but that individual turned out to be an informant for the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration.

The confidential source, who was not identified, immediately tipped law enforcement agents, according to the criminal complaint. Arbabsiar paid $100,000 to the informant in July and August for the plot, a down payment on the $1.5 million requested.

Shakuri approved the plan to kill the ambassador during telephone conversations with Arbabsiar …

Rubin comments:

Let’s assume that this story is accurate. What’s most important here is not the innate sensationalism of this dramatic story, but its political implications. An Iranian official — perhaps two according to the indictment — is directly linked with a plan to stage terrorist attacks on American soil in which Americans would certainly have been killed or injured. This amounts to an act of war. 

Indeed, it is the first time in modern history that a foreign government has been caught planning a major terrorist attack on American soil.

President Barack Obama, Homeland Security, and other top agencies and officials have the evidence and full briefings into this matter if they choose to access them. What effect would this have on U.S. foreign policy?

What effect should it have?

Already, they have had high-quality intelligence. We know this from the congressional testimony of Defense and State Department officials:

– Iran is the world’s leading sponsor of terrorism.

– Iran is harboring al-Qaeda leaders on its soil and letting them plan attacks on America from that safe haven.

– Iran is training and supplying the Taliban with weapons and training to attack and kill Americans.

– Iran is deeply involved in attacking and killing U.S. personnel and citizens in Iraq.

And that’s not all. Is this sufficient evidence to persuade Obama that Iran regards itself as being at war with the United States? That the top priority of U.S. Middle East policy — and very possibly the number-one priority of U.S. foreign policy generally — should be to counter Iran and revolutionary Islamism? And I don’t mean by supporting the Muslim Brotherhood, Hamas, and Hezballah as moderates!

Yes, it should have been the top priority years ago, but Obama has continued to hold out his hand in friendship to the monstrous regime.

Will there be a change now, Rubin asks.

Is this case going to be the smoking gun — or, perhaps, the smoking bomb — that gets U.S. policy on the right course? It should be, though I suspect it isn’t. …

Does Obama even understand the significance of it?

He has known about the plot since June, so the question is, “Why break it now?”

Jihad Watch asks that question and suggests an answer with another question:

 To divert attention from his spiraling scandals and plummeting fortunes?

But there is another – or additional – possible reason for the timing.

The announcement of the plot was made by Attorney General Eric Holder, who has been issued with a subpoena to appear before the the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee in connection with the  “Fast and Furious” gun-trafficking scandal. Was it timed to make him seem extremely competent at his job and even perhaps indispensable?

If so, it’s a miscalculation. To have the Attorney-General make the announcement is to indicate that the administration sees the plot as a problem for law-enforcement, when in fact it is a grave act of aggression by a foreign power against the United States, and as such should be understood as a cause of war.

It has long been apparent that Obama hates to make decisions. And he hates to attack an Islamic country unless other Islamic countries give him the nod. This time, of course, Saudi Arabia will be pleased to have Americans risk their lives in an assault on Iran to punish the regime and prevent it developing into a nuclear-armed power. Obama would rather the Israelis bombed Iranian nuclear installations (especially – we suspect – as their doing so would then allow him to condemn Israel for an act of  aggression).

So will he or won’t he strike back at Iran? Our guess is that he won’t. He’ll go to the UN and ask “the international community” – a wraith lodged permanently in the mind of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton – to consider setting a date for a meeting of the Security Council to discuss what warnings of what actions might be sent to the Iranian government without provoking it too severely.

It is not only the probability if a nuclear bomb that is to be feared from Iran’s persistent development of nuclear power.

According to this article, Iran’s Bushehr nuclear reactor is likely to repeat the disaster of Chernobyl:

The first Iranian nuclear power station is inherently unsafe and will probably cause a “tragic disaster for humankind,” according to a document apparently written by an Iranian whistleblower.

There is a “great likelihood” that the Bushehr reactor could generate the next nuclear catastrophe after Chernobyl or Fukushima, says the document …

It claims that Bushehr, which began operating last month after 35 years of intermittent construction, was built by “second-class engineers” who bolted together Russian and German technologies from different eras; that it sits in one of the world’s most seismically active areas but could not withstand a major earthquake; and that it has “no serious training program” for staff or a contingency plan for accidents. …

Bushehr was started in 1975 when the Shah of Iran awarded the contract to Kraftwerk Union of Germany. When the Germans pulled out after the 1979 Islamic revolution the reactors were far from finished. They sustained serious damage in the Iran-Iraq war of 1980-88. The document claims airstrikes left the steel containment vessel with 1,700 holes, letting in hundreds of tons of rainwater.

The regime revived the project in the 1990s, but with one reactor only. It wanted a prestige project to show the Islamic Republic could match the scientific achievements of the West.

It may also have wanted a cover for developing its nuclear weapons program — and the opportunities for personal enrichment that the project gave Iran’s elite. This time Iran employed Russian engineers, who had not built a foreign nuclear reactor since the Soviet Union started to collapse in 1989.

Russia’s experts wanted to start from scratch. The Iranians, having already spent more than $1 billion, insisted they built on the German foundations.

This involved adapting a structure built for a vertical German reactor to take a horizontal Russian reactor — an unprecedented operation. Of the 80,000 pieces of German equipment, many had become corroded, obsolete or lacked manuals and paperwork.

“The Russian parts are designed to standards that are less stringent than the Germans’ and they are being used out of context in a design where they are exposed to inappropriate stresses,” the document says. It goes on to claim that “much of the necessary work for Bushehr is outside the competence of the Russian consulting engineers,” who consider the project a “holiday.”

The first victims of a Chernobyl-like disaster in Iran would be the Iranian people. We wonder how many of them are aware of the danger. Even if many of them are, there is nothing effective they can do about it.

It would be a boon for them and the rest of the world if Bushehr were bombed.