MidnightWatcher – Prophecy in Motion

“China is circumventing international sanctions against Iran by enlisting North Korea’s help in providing the Islamic state with its most advanced intercontinental ballistic missiles and the technical expertise to make those nuclear warhead-capable missiles operational. And now the Communist giant is threatening to come to Iran’s defense should the missile or nuclear sites be attacked.

Referring this critical problem to the United Nations won’t work because China has veto power in the Security Council.

The United States and the West must therefore bring all the pressure to bear against China they can – and do it immediately.

Time literally is running out.

The Revolutionary Guards, under orders from the Iranian supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, have long been preparing for war, knowing that their nuclear bomb program could invite a preemptive strike by Israel or America.

Media outlets quote Chinese Maj. Gen. Zhang Zhaozhong as warning that in case of attack, China should not hesitate to protect Iran, even if it means launching World War III.

The Iranian-owned state media ran big headlines recently quoting Chinese President Hu Jintao as saying that he has ordered the Chinese Navy to prepare for war and that, in case of an attack on Iran, China will defend Iran.” Read more.

Flashback: Iran, North Korea to Discuss ‘Expansion of Cooperation’ in Talks – “A top Iranian official is scheduled to make an official visit to North Korea, the Islamic Republic announced on Tuesday, in order to discuss ‘expansion of cooperation’ with Pyongyang. The trip underlines the close ties between the two nations. Israel and the West suspect Iran is trying to use its nuclear program to develop atomic weapons, and that North Korea had been aiding Iran by providing Iran with advanced missiles capable of targeting European capitals. An announcement released on the Iranian parliament’s website on Tuesday indicated that parliamentary speaker, Ali Larijani, will arrive in Pyongyang for a three-day visit beginning Sunday.” Read more.

Flashback: China suspected of allowing transport of Korean missile technology to Iran through its borders – “China has tried to suppress a report at the United Nations suggesting that North Korea and Iran have been routinely sharing ballistic missile technology… The report, by a United Nations panel of experts, said prohibited ‘ballistic missile-related items’ were suspected of being transferred between North Korea and Iran in breach of United Nations sanctions against North Korea… The panel’s findings, first reported by Reuters, said that the technology transfers had ‘trans-shipment through a neighboring third country.’ The report did not specify which, but several United Nations diplomats identified that country as China, North Korea’s neighbor and most important ally.” Read more.

This is what we know has been stopped.  But did any get by the Russian authorities that we don’t know about?  Through China or North Korea? And if so, how much? …

“Russian authorities aborted an attempt to smuggle radioactive materials to Iran, the Interfax news agency reported on Friday.

According to preliminary reports, the radioactive sodium were apprehended by Russia’s Federal Customs Service at Moscow’s Sheremetyevo airport from luggage bound for Iran.

The reporty indicated that the luggage pieces contained Sodium-22, a radioactive isotope of sodium that could only be produced at a nuclear reactor.

Sodium-22 is a positron-emitting isotope with a remarkably long half-life.

Last month, the German newspaper Die Welt reported that North Korea has supplied Syria and Iran with a special kind of steel used to upgrading missiles and building centrifuges for uranium enrichment.

The material, called maraging steel, appears on the monitoring list of the Nuclear Suppliers Group and the Missile Technology Control Regime, and its export is prohibited to countries under sanctions such as Iran.

It has been known for years that Iran is trying to obtain the steel through its clandestine purchasing networks around the world. The steel would enable Tehran to construct modified centrifuges, which would in turn allow it to enrich higher quality Uranium at a faster speed.” Read more.

Flashback: Hundreds of North Korean Nuclear and Missile Experts Working in More Than 10 Locations Across Iran – “Hundreds of North Korean nuclear and missile experts have been collaborating with their Iranian counterparts in more than 10 locations across the Islamic state, a diplomatic source said Sunday. The revelation lends credence to long-held suspicions that North Korea was helping Iran with a secret nuclear and missile program. It also represents a new security challenge to the international community as it seeks to curb the nuclear ambitions of Pyongyang and Tehran, and thwart trading of nuclear and missile technology. North Korea has long been suspected of being behind nuclear and missile proliferation in Iran, Syria, Myanmar and Pakistan.” Read more.

By Rowan Scarborough – “The U.S. military’s fast-approaching Dec. 31 exit from Iraq, which has no way to defend its airspace, puts Israel in a better place strategically to strike Iran’s nuclear facilities.

Iraq has yet to assemble a force of jet fighters, and since the shortest route for Israeli strike fighters to Iran is through Iraqi airspace, observers conclude that the U.S. exit makes the Jewish state’s mission planning a lot easier.

Army Maj. Gen. Jeffrey Buchanan, the top U.S. military spokesman in Iraq, said the Iraqi military will maintain radars to monitor the country’s airspace, but it has not taken possession of American F-16s to guard that space.

‘The country has a capable and improving capability to see the airspace, a viable system to provide command and control, but no system to defeat incoming air threats until it gets either the F-16s or ground-based systems or, optimally, some of both,’ Gen. Buchanan told The Washington Times.

Iraq made the first payment in September for 18 F-16s that will not arrive until next fall at the earliest. This means Israel would have a theoretical window of about 12 months if it wants to fly over Iraq unimpeded by the Iraqi air force.

Retired Air ForceGen. Thomas McInerney, who advocates a U.S. strategic bombing raid to destroy Iran’s nuclear sites, agreed that Iraq’s open airspace would make it easier for an Israeli mission.

‘Yes, it will be,’ he said. ‘However, it will be much easier for Iranian forces to get to Israel through Iraq via land and air.’

Gen. McInerney said he thinks there is a good chance that Iran, stretched economically by Western sanctions and fearing threats from Israel, will launch a war against the Jewish state through Iraq.

‘Our departing Iraq will be a huge strategic mistake,’ he said of the Dec. 31 deadline for all U.S. forces to leave.” Read more.

And this is being said while Assad is listening. What Syria does next is anybody’s guess …

By Joel Greenberg – “JERUSALEM — In a shift, Israeli officials are welcoming the prospect that Syria’s president, Bashar al-Assad, will be overthrown, an event Defense Minister Ehud Barak says could be weeks away.

As Assad has come under mounting pressure from a revolt at home and moves to isolate him abroad, initial wariness of speaking out publicly about the fate of his regime has given way to open speculation by officials and analysts about how long he can hold on to power, who might replace him and the possible risks of a chaotic disintegration of his rule.

‘Basically, it’s inevitable,’ Barak said in a telephone interview before flying Wednesday to Washington for meetings with Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and other administration officials. ‘The Assad family, through their own behavior, have lost their last drop of legitimacy and put themselves beyond the point of no return with their brutal slaughter of their own people. He has ceased to be something relevant.’

‘It might take many weeks,’ Barak added, ‘but it’s not a matter of months or years.’

In a separate interview, Moshe Ya’alon, the minister of Strategic Affairs, said: ‘It’s a matter of time and bloodshed before we will witness Assad’s departure. That is our assessment.’

Barak predicted that an eventual removal of Assad would undermine an alliance of Israel’s enemies, including militant Islamist groups backed by Iran and Syria that have fought Israel across its northern and southern borders.” Read more.

Expert: A Threatened Assad May Attack Israel – “Middle East expert Professor Eyal Zisser warned on Monday against a possible Syrian attack on Israel, if President Bashar Assad feels threatened by the anti-regime protesters. In an interview with Arutz Sheva, Zisser said that in the short term there is no reason for particular concern, because a situation which is bad for Assad is good for Israel as this means that the Syrian president is preoccupied with his internal affairs and not with attacking Israel.” Read more.

Report: Syria Arms Medium-Range Missile Arsenal with Chemical Warheads – “The Syrian regime, which has endured nine months of civil unrest spurred by the Arab Spring as it swept across the Middle East, has armed its medium-range missile arsenal with chemical warheads … Damascus armed 600 one-ton chemical warheads to use in the event of a foreign military intervention. Furthermore, President Bashar al-Assad ordered the deployment of 21 missile launchers along its border with Turkey. Syria’s medium-range missiles that can be equipped with chemical warheads have a range of up to 1,300 kilometers…” Read more.

“A senior Israeli cabinet minister on Monday said Iran must be forced to face an existential question over its nuclear drive: choose between getting an atomic bomb, or survival.

‘We believe that in order to stop the Iranian military nuclear project, the regime in Tehran should face a dilemma — whether to have a bomb or to survive,’ Strategic Affairs Minister Moshe Yaalon told reporters in Jerusalem.

Yaalon said however it was for the international community, rather than Israel, to apply what he called an ‘achievable’ policy.

‘We prefer that the international community led by the United States will bring about this dilemma in order to convince the regime to give up its military nuclear programme,’ he said, stressing the need for political isolation and economic sanctions aimed at the banking and oil sectors.

Israel and much of the international community fear that Iran’s nuclear programme masks a drive for a weapons capability.

Tehran denies any such ambition and says the programme is for peaceful civilian energy and medical purposes only.

‘Our policy is very clear — by one way or another, the military nuclear project in Iran should be stopped,’ Yaalon said, indicating it “might be 12 months, might be 24 months” until Iran was able to reach a military nuclear capability.

Israel has pushed Washington and the European Union for tough sanctions against Tehran, but has repeatedly warned it would not allow Iran to obtain nuclear weapons.

Yaalon, a member of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s inner circle of eight ministers, also reiterated the line that while a military option was still on the table, as ‘the last resort.'” Read more.

(Reuters) – “TEHRAN (Reuters) – A member of the Iranian parliament’s National Security Committee said on Monday that the military was set to practice its ability to close the Gulf to shipping at the narrow Strait of Hormuz, the most important oil transit channel in the world, but there was no official confirmation.

The legislator, Parviz Sarvari, told the student news agency ISNA: ‘Soon we will hold a military maneuver on how to close the Strait of Hormuz. If the world wants to make the region insecure, we will make the world insecure.’

Contacted by Reuters, a spokesman for the Iranian military declined to comment.

Iran’s energy minister told Al Jazeera television last month that Tehran could use oil as a political tool in the event of any future conflict over its nuclear program.

Tension over the program has increased since the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) reported on November 8 that Tehran appears to have worked on designing a nuclear bomb and may still be pursuing research to that end. Iran strongly denies this and says it is developing nuclear energy for peaceful purposes.

Iran has warned it will respond to any attack by hitting Israel and U.S. interests in the Gulf and analysts say one way to retaliate would be to close the Strait of Hormuz.

About a third of all sea-borne shipped oil passed through the Strait in 2009, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA), and U.S. warships patrol the area to ensure safe passage.” Read more.