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FROM - MIKE RIVERO @ WHATREALLYHAPPENED.COM
Memo to Mitt Romney (who apparently DIDN'T get the memo).
1. Iran is a signatory to the NNPT. As such, it is within its international legal right to develop nuclear energy for peaceful purposes, which, to date, it has been doing with its nuclear energy plant at Busheur.
2. To date, every IAEA inspection has demonstrated that no nuclear material has been diverted from its nuclear energy program to a nuclear weapons program.
3. Israel, which is bristling with nuclear weapons, refuses to become a signatory to the NNPT, and refuses to have its nuclear sites inspected.
4. The above makes every dime in military or financial assistance the US government gives Israel illegal, under the Symington Amendment.
5. Leadership of nuclear-armed China, Russia, and Pakistan has gone on record, stating that if Iran is attacked militarily, they will come to its aid. In fact, China is now developing oil in Iran's southern oil fields, so any attack against Iran will be construed by China as an attack against China's national interests.
6. US involvement in such a military action cannot guarantee its success, because we don't have the troop strength, the manufacturing (because most of that has been offshored to Asia), or the money to insure a successful outcome of such an endeavor.
So what we have here, Mr. Romney, is a potential global thermonuclear war over an alleged Iranian weapons program which, to date, cannot be proven to exist.
The unintended consequences of such a war may well be both horrific, and irreversible: I just imagined you might want to actually think this all the way through before giving Israel a carte blanche to go ahead with such an action, but sadly, I am apparently too late.
Spy versus spy: America wary of Israel as ally
By Adam Goldman and Matt Apuzzo
2012-07-28 23:12:56
WASHINGTON — The CIA station chief opened the locked box containing
the sensitive equipment he used from his home in Tel Aviv, Israel, to
communicate with CIA headquarters in Virginia, only to find that someone
had tampered with it. He sent word to his superiors about the break-in.The incident, described by three former senior US intelligence officials, might have been dismissed as just another cloak-and-dagger incident in the world of international espionage, except that the same thing had happened to the previous station chief in Israel.
It was a not-so-subtle reminder that, even in a country friendly to the United States, the CIA was itself being watched.
In a separate episode, according to another two former US officials, a CIA officer in Israel came home to find the food in the refrigerator had been rearranged. In all the cases, the US government believes Israel's security services were responsible.
Such meddling underscores what is widely known but rarely discussed outside intelligence circles: Despite inarguable ties between the US and its closest ally in the Middle East and despite statements from US politicians trumpeting the friendship, US national security officials consider Israel to be, at times, a frustrating ally and a genuine counterintell gence threat.
In addition to what the former US officials described as intrusions in homes in the past decade, Israel has been implicated in US criminal espionage cases and disciplinary proceedings against CIA officers and blamed in the presumed death of an important spy in Syria for the CIA during the administration of President George W. Bush.
The CIA considers Israel its No. 1 counterintelligence threat in the agency's Near East Division, the group that oversees spying across the Middle East, according to current and former officials. Counterintelligence is the art of protecting national secrets from spies. This means the CIA believes that US national secrets are safer from other Middle Eastern governments than from Israel.
Israel employs highly sophisticated, professional spy services that rival American agencies in technical capability and recruiting human sources. Unlike Iran or Syria, for example, Israel as a steadfast US ally enjoys access to the highest levels of the US government in military and intelligence circles.
The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they weren't authorized to talk publicly about the sensitive intelligence and diplomatic issues between the two countries.
The counterintelligence worries continue even as the US relationship with Israel features close cooperation on intelligence programs that reportedly included the Stuxnet computer virus that attacked computers in Iran's main nuclear enrichment facilities. While the alliance is central to the US approach in the Middle East, there is room for intense disagreement, especially in the diplomatic turmoil over Iran's nuclear ambitions.
"It's a complicated relationship," said Joseph Wippl, a former senior CIA clandestine officer and head of the agency's office of congressional affairs. "They have their interests. We have our interests. For the US, it's a balancing act."
The National Security Agency historically has kept tabs on Israel. The US, for instance, does not want to be caught off guard if Israel launches a surprise attack that could plunge the region into war and jeopardize oil supplies, putting American soldiers at risk.
Matthew Aid, the author of "The Secret Sentry," about the NSA, said the US started spying on Israel even before the state was created in 1948.
Aid said the US had a station on Cyprus dedicated to spying on Israel until 1974. Today, teams of Hebrew linguists are stationed at Fort Meade, Md., at the NSA, listening to intercepts of Israeli communications, he said.
CIA policy generally forbids its officers in Tel Aviv from recruiting Israeli government sources, officials said. To do so would require approval from senior CIA leaders, two former senior officials said. During the Bush administration, the approval had to come from the White House.
Israel is not America's closest ally, at least when it comes to whom Washington trusts with the most sensitive national security information.
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