US Opposes Sale of Russian Anti-Ballistic Missile System to Iran

MILITARY & INTELLIGENCE

23:42 23.02.2015(updated 00:19 24.02.2015)

US State Department spokesperson said that the United States is opposed to Russia selling the Antey-2500 anti-ballistic missile system to Iran following reports that Russia is considering providing Tehran with the advanced system.

WASHINGTON (Sputnik) — The United States is opposed to Russia selling the Antey-2500 anti-ballistic missile system to Iran following reports that Russia is considering providing Tehran with the advanced system, US State Department spokesperson Jen Psaki said on Monday.

“We’ve seen these reports and once we have more details… we will certainly raise this at the appropriate levels,” Psaki said at a press briefing.

Moscow reportedly previously cancelled a 2010 agreement to sell the S-300 surface-to-air weapons system to Teheran.

“If reports are true that Russia has decided not to sell the S-300 system to Iran we would certainly welcome that, but we would have similar objections to the Antey-2500 system,“ Psaki said.

Iran is considering the purchase of the Antey-2500 system, said Sergei Chemezov, the head of Russian state defense and technology conglomerate Rostec at a weapons expo in the United Arab Emirates on Monday.

The more advanced Antey-2500 anti-ballistic missile system is capable of shooting down short and medium range ballistic missiles, cruise missiles and aircraft.

Chemezov is on the list of persons covered by the US sanctions against Russia.

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Russia offers Iran latest anti-aircraft missile system

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The head of Russian state defense conglomerate Rostec says Moscow has offered Iran its latest Antey-2500 missile defense systems after a deal to supply less powerful S-300 missiles was scrapped under Western pressure.

Tehran is now considering the offer, Russia’s TASS news agency quoted Sergei Chemezov as saying on Monday. 

“As far as Iran is concerned, we offered Antey-2500 instead of S-300. They are thinking. No decision has been made yet,” Chemezov said.

There was no immediate response to Chemezov's comments from Iran.

Under a contract signed in 2007, Russia was obliged to provide Iran with at least five S-300 defense systems.

However, Moscow refused to deliver the system to Iran under the pretext that it is covered by the fourth round of the United Nations Security Council sanctions against Tehran over its nuclear program.

Following Moscow’s failure to deliver the systems, Iran filed a complaint against the Russian arms firm Rosoboronexport with the International Court of Arbitration in Geneva.

The Antey-2500 was developed from the 1980s-generation S-300V system (SA-12A Gladiator and SA-12B Giant). It can engage missiles travelling at 4,500 meters per second, with a range of 2,500 kilometers (1,500 miles), according to the company that makes it, Almaz-Antey.

The S-300 missiles have a 125-mile (200-kilometers) range.

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Wesley Clark: "Our friends and allies funded ISIS to destroy Hezbollah"

Does ISIS really have SEVEN-FOOT tall executioners?

Parts of grisly film showing beheading of 21 Christians were faked, claim experts

• Isis released a video last week showing the murder of 21 Coptic Christians
• The five-minute film showed the men being marched along a beach 
• The victims are then shown lined up and beheaded in sequence
• Experts believe the Egyptian victims were not murdered at the beach
• Instead, they were murdered elsewhere with the background added later
• The shocking scene of the sea turning red is believed to be special effects
• The scene where the sea turns red with blood is also thought to be faked 

Parts of a sickening video released by ISIS terrorists that shows members of the terror group beheading 21 Coptic Christians have been faked, experts have claimed.

The footage, which lasts five minutes, shows the Egyptian Christians dressed in jumpsuits being marched one by one along a lonely beach, each held by a fighter clad in black.

The captives, their faces uncovered, are made to kneel before being forced to lie down. The masked jihadists then behead them simultaneously.

While experts believe the men were killed by the terrorists, questions have been raised over whether some scenes – including one where the militants appear to be 7ft tall – have been manipulated.

There are also doubts as to whether the men were all murdered on the beach and whether they were all killed at the same time.

It is thought sections of the footage might have been shot on a ‘green screen’ in a studio – a technique used in Hollywood blockbusters – and that the beach background was added at a later stage.

Veryan Khan, of the Florida-based Terrorism Research and Analysis Consortium, told Fox News that there are several technical mistakes in the video that show it was manipulated.

She said that in the shot of the terrorists marching their prisoners along the beach, the jihadis appear to be 7ft tall – towering as much as two feet above their victims.

This observation was supported by Hollywood director Mary Lambert who described it as the shot with the ‘really tall Jihadists and the dwarf Christians.’

Ms Khan added that the terrorist who speaks in the clip – dubbed ‘Jihad Joseph’ – appears much bigger than the sea in some shots, while his head looks out of proportion to his body.

Ms Khan explained that this meant it was likely he had been filmed indoors and the sea scene, believed to be in northern Libya, had been placed behind him at a later stage.

Meanwhile, Lambert said that the scene that apparently shows the sea turning red with the blood of the beheaded men ‘was obviously special effects’.

The experts claimed that only a few Jihadis would have been on the beach along with a ‘less talented crew’ than the ones responsible for some of the group’s more high-production videos.

Earlier this week, local media reported that militants from the Islamic State and Ansar Al-Sharia were understood to have rounded up dozens of farm workers in the wake of bombings by Cairo.

It raises the chilling prospect of yet another mass execution in what is being seen as ISIS’s bid to announce its presence in a new region where it is gaining influence.

Initial reports said seven men had been seized, but that figure had risen to more than 35 by mid-afternoon yesterday, according to The Libya Herald.

It came as Egypt blitzed ISIS training camps, weapons stockpiles and fighters in two waves of air strikes following the gruesome murder of captured Egyptian workers.

Meanwhile, the Egyptian government called for the US-led coalition to also target ISIS in Libya.

Source: Daily Mail

ISIL is Secret American Army in Middle East – US Historian

US historian Webster Tarpley says that the United States created the Islamic State and uses jihadists as its secret army to destabilize the Middle East.

The Islamic State is a secret army of the United States and Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, a leader of the terrorist group, is a close friend of US Senator John McCain, says US historian Webster Tarpley, according to Iranian News Agency IRNA.

The author, known for his book “9/11 Synthetic Terror: Made in USA”, said that all terrorism around the world is created and facilitated by the US government.

These are not Tarpley’s first comments in which he blames the United States for creating the Islamic State. Earlier, Press TV had an interview with Tarpley during which he explained his rationale why he thinks the United States was behind the creation of the terrorist group

Tarpley began by saying that the money that supports the Islamic State and its operations comes from Saudi Arabia, a key US ally in the Middle East. The main money donor of the Islamic State is allegedly Prince Abdul Rahman al-Faisal, the brother of Saud bin Faisal Al Saud, Saudi Arabia’s Foreign Minister, and Prince Turki bin Faisal Al Saud, the former Saudi Ambassador to the United States. Having said that, Tarpley concludes that if the United States really wanted to get rid of the Islamic State, it would have easily issued an ultimatum to Saudi Arabia and told the Gulf Kingdom to stop sending arms and money to the terrorists in Iraq and Syria.

Second, Turkey, a NATO member with a huge army, is right next to the war-town Syria and Iraq, where the jihadists operate. Tarpley asks the important question: why cannot the Turkish Army come into the lawless Syrian and Iraqi territory and simply wipe the jihadists off the face of the Earth in a matter of weeks, especially if the United States and NATO were so keen to destroy the Islamic State?

If the United States actually thought that the Islamic State was a monstrosity that must be destroyed at all cost, Tarpley asks why wouldn’t the White House join the government of Bashar Assad in Syria, the legally recognized government and the UN member state, in the fight against the jihadists and crush them once and for all? And also, why did the US troops bomb Syrian units loyal to Assad, once the Syrian army started to defeat the jihadists and push them away? Counterproductive and senseless at best, the secret supporter of the militants at worst, Tarpley says.

And lastly, referring to how the jihadist group is using social media and Internet to spread its propaganda and recruit new fighters, Tarpley said there is an interest in not having the Islamic State propaganda shut down online. All major Internet companies are based in the United States and therefore the White House could easily limit, if not close down, the presence of Islamic State on the Internet, if it wanted to.

Although Tarpley’s line of thinking might seem a little too provocative to some, the questions that he asks are nonetheless important. There is certainly a connection between the emergence of al-Qaeda and the American involvement in Afghanistan back in the 1980s. And since al-Qaeda was a forefather of the Islamic State, there might be a possibility of a more intimate relationship between the government of the United States and the jihadists, currently cutting people’s heads off in Iraq and Syria.

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CIA Planted Nuclear ‘Evidence’ In Iran

False evidence planted by the CIA in Iran in an effort to sabotage peace talks 15 years ago has been exposed in a judicial hearing after an ex-CIA agent, Jeffrey Sterling, leaked classified information. 

The leaked documents which expose the CIA planting nuclear evidence in Iran now bring into question the conclusions reached by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) regarding Iran’s atomic program.

The intelligence in question pertains to fake designs of atomic components that were transferred to Iran in February 2000.

Now it turns out the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) could be forced to reassess their earlier conclusions regarding Iran’s atomic program, the publication quoted two anonymous Western diplomats as saying. Part of the IAEA’s suspicions about the alleged Iran’s nuclear weapons program relies on information provided by multiple intelligence agencies.

“This story suggests a possibility that hostile intelligence agencies could decide to plant a ‘smoking gun’ in Iran for the IAEA to find,” Peter Jenkins, the UK’s former envoy to the Vienna-based agency told Bloomberg. “That looks like a big problem.”

In the latest quarterly report, the atomic watchdog said that the team of experts is still concerned about Iran’s nuclear intentions, prompting an immediate reaction from Israel.

“The agency remains concerned about the possible existence in Iran of undisclosed nuclear-related activities involving military-related organizations, including activities related to the development of a nuclear payload for a missile,” it reads.

Whether or not the revealed CIA secret will change this assessment remains to be seen, but Tehran has always insisted that its atomic energy program is peaceful.

“This revelation highlights the dangers of reliance by the IAEA upon evidence concerning Iran provided to it by third party states whose political agendas are antithetical to Iran,” Dan Joyner, a law professor at the University of Alabama told Bloomberg.

In response to the news, the IAEA told the publication that it conducts thorough assessments of the information it receives and uses. The CIA has so far failed to comment.

- See more at: http://yournewswire.com/cia-planted-nuclear-evidence-in-iran/#sthash.xkb7LTjN.dpuf