Iran stages war games, rejects nuclear demand

Iran started war games on Monday and its president rejected a demand by major powers that it stop enriching uranium as “illegitimate,” showing no sign of backing down in a stand-off over Tehran’s nuclear ambitions.

Missile units of the elite Revolutionary Guards’ naval and air forces began war games, Iranian news agencies said, hours after the U.S. Navy said it had begun exercises in the Gulf.

Speculation about an attack on the world’s fourth biggest oil exporter over its nuclear program rose after a report last month said Israel had practiced such a strike. Fears of military confrontation helped send world oil prices to record highs.

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Roadblock for US-Iraq military deal

A crucial agreement between Iraq and the United States over America’s long-term military presence in Iraq may now be delayed.

Just two weeks ago, Baghdad and Washington told Al Jazeera that the Status of Forces Agreement, or Sofa, would be settled by the end of July.

And the US state department’s senior adviser on Iraq still says the agreement is on schedule.

David Satterfield told reporters from the heavily fortified Green Zone in Iraq’s capital, Baghdad, on Tuesday that “we’re confident it can be achieved, and by the end of July deadline”.

“Your question may be, ‘well, what if you aren’t finished by then?’ We believe this is doable by the end of July, so does the Iraqi side.”

Satterfield’s comments came after reports that talks over the agreement on security relations had stalled due to Iraqi opposition.

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Inside story – US-Iran security deal

Government Green Lights Gulf Dollar Abandonment

report from Merrill Lynch & Co has revealed that the government has effectively given Gulf Arab oil producers the go ahead to change their dollar-pegged foreign exchange policies, a move some experts fear will lead to a large scale abandonment of the greenback.

In a report entitled “U.S. Green Light for the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC)”, the U.S. investment bank said the United Arab Emirates and Qatar will probably move to a currency basket in the next few months, with their respective currencies appreciating 5 percent before the end of the year, reports Reuters.

This may spur a similar move by the Saudis some time next year.

Merrill Lynch referred to a report to Congress by the Treasury which states that the government believes the dollar is strong enough to thrive without Gulf support. Gulf countries have suffered record levels of inflation in tandem with the dollar’s decline and soaring energy and food prices.

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US ‘close’ to Iraq military deal

The US government is close to reaching an agreement with the Iraqi government over its long term military role in the country but will not seek permanent bases in the nation.

Bush administration officials told Al Jazeera that they expect to finalise a deal by the end of July over the so-called Status of Forces agreement, or Sofa.

The agreement would replace the current United Nations mandate authorising US troops to remain in the nation, which expires in December 2008.

However, Muqtada al-Sadr, Iraq’s influential Shia cleric, has called for mass protests on Friday unless the Iraqi government abandons the proposed deal.

And last week Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, Iraq’s most revered Shia cleric, also reportedly expressed his anger, saying he would not permit the Iraqi government to sign a deal with “US occupiers” as long as he lived.

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Inside Iraq – Iran’s influence Part 2

Inside Iraq – Iran’s influence Part 1

Oil passes $120, gas prices slip more than a cent

Oil futures surged to a new record over $120 a barrel Monday, raising concerns about higher prices for gasoline and goods and services throughout the economy. Retail gas prices fell more than a cent over the weekend, but oil’s advance increased the likelihood that pump prices would resume their climb.

Supply threats that emerged overseas and a weaker dollar sent light, sweet crude for June delivery to a new trading record of $120.36 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange before futures retreated slightly to settle up $3.65 at a record $119.97.

Oil’s sharp rise this year has driven gas prices to unprecedented levels, prompting consumers to reconsider summer vacation plans and limit daily excursions; they’re also spending less at malls and shopping centers because they’re paying more not just for fuel, but for all kinds of goods and services. Americans are also being pinched by tight credit conditions, a sluggish jobs market and a downturn in the housing market.

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The Folly of Attacking Iran: Lessons from History

Oil prices up on word US ship fired on boats in Persian Gulf

Oil prices rose sharply Friday on news that a ship under contract to the U.S. Defense Department fired warning shots at two boats in the Persian Gulf. Retail gas prices as expected rose further into record territory, nearing $3.60 a gallon.

Crude prices rose on initial reports that a U.S. ship had fired on two Iranian boats; the news raised concerns that a conflict between U.S. and Iranian forces could cut oil supplies from the region. A Navy spokeswoman said the origin of the boats was unclear.

The news was enough to send light, sweet crude for June delivery up to $119.55 before the contract retreated to settle up $2.46 at $118.52 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange.

The incident worried investors because at first it appeared to be the latest in a series of encounters between U.S. forces and Iranian boats in the Gulf. Early this month, the USS Typhoon fired a flare at an Iranian boat that came within about 200 yards of the ship. In January, several Iranian boats made what the Navy described as provocative moves near a U.S. ship in the Strait of Hormuz. And in December the USS Whidbey Island fired warning shots at a small Iranian boat officials said was rapidly approaching the ship.

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Al-Sadr may restart full-scale fight against US in Iraq

Muqtada al-Sadr is considering setting aside his political ambitions and restarting a full-scale fight against U.S.-led forces — a worrisome shift that may reflect Iranian influence on the young cleric and could open the way for a shadow state protected by his powerful Mahdi Army.

A possible breakaway path — described to The Associated Press by Shiite lawmakers and politicians — would represent the ultimate backlash to the Iraqi government’s pressure on al-Sadr to renounce and disband his Shiite militia.

By snubbing the give-and-take of politics, al-Sadr would have a freer hand to carve out a kind of parallel state with its own militia and social services along the lines of Hezbollah in Lebanon, a Shiite group founded with Iran’s help in the 1980s.

It also would carry potentially disastrous security implications as the Pentagon trims its troops strength and Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki finally shows progress on national reconciliation.

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Iraq and Afghanistan War Veterans Struggle with War Stress

A study finds a high rate of depression and stress disorders, and many are not getting proper treatment. Taken together, the study shows that 31% of those who have served in combat have suffered from brain injury, stress disorder, or both. “The VA is completely unprepared for the tidal wave,” Sullivan said. “Unless the VA gets a massive amount of money [and] a set of new strong pro-veteran leaders, the situation will collapse.”

April 19, 2008, Washington, DC – The latest and most comprehensive study of veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars has concluded that nearly 1 in every 5 veterans is suffering from depression or stress disorders and that many are not getting adequate care.

The study shows that mental disorders are more prevalent and lasting than previously known, surfacing belatedly and lingering after troops have been discharged.

An estimated 300,000 veterans among the nearly 1.7 million who have served in Iraq and Afghanistan are battling depression or post-traumatic stress disorder. More than half of these people, according to the study conducted by the Rand Corp., are slipping through the cracks in the bureaucratic system, going without necessary treatment.

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Washington ‘speechless’ after Ahmadinejad 9/11 comment

The United States said Wednesday it was “speechless” after Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad voiced doubts about the accepted version of the September 11, 2001 attacks on New York and Washington.

“I am not sure what you say about a statement like that. It leaves one speechless,” said State Department spokesman Sean McCormack.

“It is just misguided, misinformed rhetoric,” McCormack said.

“I cannot tell whether or not it is something that he truly believes or if this is just an attempt to try to shake up public opinion in Iran or elsewhere,” McCormack said.

Earlier Wednesday, Ahmadinejad called the 9/11 attacks a “suspect event” in a speech at a public rally in the holy city of Qom.

“Four or five years ago a suspect event took place in New York,” Ahmadinejad said, in an address carried live on state television.

“A building collapsed and they said that 3,000 people had been killed, whose names were never published.”

“Under this pretext they (the United States) attacked Afghanistan and Iraq and since then a million people have been killed,” said the Iranian president.

This was the third time in just over a week that Ahmadinejad has publicly raised doubts about the September 11 airborne attacks on New York and Washington carried out by Al-Qaeda militants which killed nearly 3,000 people.

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Report: Netanyahu says 9/11 terror attacks good for Israel

The Israeli newspaper Ma’ariv on Wednesday reported that Likud leader Benjamin Netanyahu told an audience at Bar Ilan university that the September 11, 2001 terror attacks had been beneficial for Israel.

“We are benefiting from one thing, and that is the attack on the Twin Towers and Pentagon, and the American struggle in Iraq,” Ma’ariv quoted the former prime minister as saying. He reportedly added that these events “swung American public opinion in our favor.”

Netanyahu reportedly made the comments during a conference at Bar-Ilan University on the division of Jerusalem as part of a peace deal with the Palestinians.

Meanwhile, Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad cast doubt over the veracity of the September 11 attacks Thursday, calling it a pretext to invade Afghanistan and Iraq.

“Four or five years ago, a suspicious event occurred in New York. A building collapsed and they said that 3,000 people had been killed but never published their names,” Ahmadinejad told Iranians in the holy city of Qom.

“Under this pretext, they [the U.S.] attacked Afghanistan and Iraq and since then, a million people have been killed only in Iraq.”

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Oil hits new record as investors flee the falling dollar

Oil prices are surging to record highs as the weakening U.S. dollar drives investors to dump money into commodities.

Light, sweet crude for May delivery rose 67 cents Wednesday to $114.46 a barrel in electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange by midday in Europe. On Tuesday, the contract had risen to $114.08.

In London, Brent crude contracts are up 69 cents to $112.27 a barrel on the ICE Futures exchange.

The oil increases are being influenced by severe weakness in the dollar. The dollar hit a new record low of $1.5966 versus the euro in early Wednesday trading.

The dollar is plumbing new depths as wholesale inflation came in triple what was expected and ahead of new consumer data to be released Wednesday.

Analysts said growing investor demand for commodities — which have performed better than other financial instruments — also helped prop up prices.

“This is really driven by investors purchasing oil because returns have simply outpaced those of stocks and bonds,” said Victor Shum, an energy analyst with Purvin & Gertz in Singapore. Shum said he didn’t think supply and demand fundamentals were that strong, but added that “oil’s price rise seems unstoppable.”

Traders were awaiting the release of U.S. government data later Wednesday on the state of America’s petroleum supplies. Last week’s EIA report showed an unexpected drop in crude inventories, which started oil on its way to several records.

The U.S. Energy Information Administration was expected to report later in the day that crude inventories grew 1.5 million barrels last week, according to a survey of analysts by Platts, the energy research arm of McGraw-Hill Cos.

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Gas prices could pass $3.50 in weeks

Gas prices fluctuated over the weekend but appear poised to resume their relentless trek toward a record high milestone of $3.50 a gallon. Forecasts call for gas to peak as high as $3.65 within a month.

Oil prices, meanwhile, rose to within a dollar of last week’s record of $112.21 a barrel as the dollar fell and oil supplies were disrupted in the U.S. and overseas.

At the pump, the national average price of a gallon of gas edged lower overnight to $3.373 a gallon, 0.1 cent shy of a new record set Sunday, according to a survey of stations by AAA and the Oil Price Information Service. Still, prices are 0.8 cent higher than Friday, and almost 53 cents higher than a year ago.

The Energy Department recently predicted gas prices could average as much as $3.60 a month this summer, and said the daily national average could rise as high as $4 a times. Prices are already over $4 in some parts of the country.

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Iraq, with U.S. air support, said to attack Sadr City

Iraqi tanks, with U.S. air support, are “attacking Sadr City,” the office of Muqtada al-Sadr said Friday, just hours after the Shiite cleric called for calm in the wake of the assassination of one of his top aides in the southern city of Najaf.

Eyewitnesses and media in the heavily Shiite Baghdad neighborhood of Sadr City, home to the cleric’s power base in the capital, reported heavy fighting between U.S.-backed Iraqi troops and al-Sadr’s Mehdi Army militia.

The witnesses said U.S. aircraft had been bombarding the area for hours, and media reported rockets slamming into houses and many casualties.

Witnesses and al-Sadr’s office said mosques were making loudspeaker announcements about Mehdi Army attacks on U.S. military armored vehicles.

U.S. Army Maj. Mark Cheadle said the fighting began when a U.S. Army patrol, supporting Iraqi soldiers who were working to establish a checkpoint in the northwest of Sadr City, was hit by 10 roadside bombs followed immediately by small-arms, machine gun and rocket-propelled grenade fire from nearby buildings.

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Curfew marks fall of Baghdad

Officials in Baghdad have imposed a curfew as Iraq marks the fifth anniversary of Baghdad’s capture by US forces, but fighting continues to plague the city.

There were at least three mortar attacks reported on Wednesday morning, with at least one rocket or mortar shell fired into the Green Zone, home to the US embassy, eyewitnesses said.

Baghdad’s streets were empty of cars and trucks after the authorities declared a 5am to midnight (0200 GMT to 2100 GMT) vehicle curfew to prevent car bomb attacks.

Al Jazeera’s James Bays, reporting from Baghdad, said the curfew was in place but that sporadic fighting continued.

“The streets are absolutely deserted,” Bays reported. “The current Iraqi government is taking no chances at all – the curfew is in place, but it hasn’t stopped the violence.”

Clashes were reported between Shia fighters and US and Iraqi forces in Baghdad’s Sadr City district, a poverty stricken district with strong support for the al-Mahdi Army, on Wednesday.

At least six people were killed, the AFP news agency reported an unnamed medical worker as saying.

In Tikrit, the hometown of Saddam Hussein, the former Iraqi president who was ousted in the US invasion, a day-long curfew was also in place, according to reports from the AFP news agency.

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Iraqi PM serves Sadr ultimatum

Nuri al-Maliki, the Iraqi prime minister, has said that Muqtada al-Sadr, the populist Shia leader, will be barred from taking part in the “political process” unless he disbands his Mahdi Army militia.

Al-Maliki on Monday said in an interview with the CNN network that he was determined to pursue militias across the country, including those in Sadr City – a stronghold of the Mahdi Army.

However, according to an al-Sadr aide, if religious leaders obey Maliki’s demands, al-Sadr himself will order the disbanding of the Mahdi Army.

Maliki said: “A decision was taken… that they no longer have a right to participate in the political process or take part in the upcoming elections unless they end the Mahdi Army

“We will not stop until we have full control of these areas. The operation has started and will not stop until a decisive victory is achieved … a victory that will not allow these people to attack the Green Zone or other areas.”

The Green Zone, a highly defended area of Baghdad where the Iraqi government and the US embassy are situated, has come under sustained attack by rockets and mortar rounds fired for the past two weeks, allegedly from Sadr City.

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PBS on Iraq: A Compilation of Deceit

There have been five agonizing years of this war in Iraq. Five terrible
years of bewilderment and rage.

Commemorating that anniversary, Frontline, the PBS investigative series,
allotted four-and-one-half hours over two nights to an in-depth analysis
of the war in Iraq and how it came about.

What the broadcast revealed was nothing new. Others have engaged the subject as thoroughly as did Frontline. What we did see in this broadcast, however, was a compilation of the deceit, pettiness, treachery, arrogance, ignorance and stunning callousness by those who took us into this vile war.

The key figures who promoted the war were Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Perle, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld and Lewis Libby. Those names were not new, but a new motive for the war was revealed: the recognition of Israel by a new democratic Iraq.

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http://www.middle-east-online.com/English/?id=25122