South Capitol Street

The silence in the west is deafening.
American Thinker Blog

As I explained here. “Tunisia on the way to Islamic rule,” from Sapa-AFP, January 19:

Tunisians are on the path to establishing Islamic rule in their country after having toppled a Western-backed dictator, Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said on Wednesday.

“It is very clear that the nation of Tunisia rose up against a Western-backed dictator using Islamic, humane, monotheistic and justice-seeking slogans,” he told a cheering crowd in the central city of Yazd.

“In one word, the Tunisians are after establishing Islamic law and rules,” the hardliner said in a speech broadcast live on state television….

Jihad Watch

This post was written by Barry Rubin and is reposted here with permission.

An Interesting Hint About Iran’s Nuclear Weapons’ Program

January 16, 2011

By Barry Rubin

There’s a fascinating, subtle, but very important development. Both the outgoing Israeli intelligence chief and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton-and others, too-have said things indicating that Iran is not going to get nuclear weapons for a while.

The Israeli statement gave the year 2015 as the likely date. In her interview with al-Arabiyya television, Clinton said that the Iranians are having significant problems with their program.

From this evidence, along with other things I’ve seen or heard, I conclude that both the United States and Israel have done intelligence assessments stretching out the amount of time before the Iranian regime has deliverable nuclear weapons.

The causes of this would include scientific and technical mistakes made by the Iranians, sabotage and assassination of scientists, defections, computer viruses, and other factors. The sanctions, while welcome and a positive development, are not the cause of the delay.

I want to stress that the Iranians could do it faster if they made certain decisions, rushed, and had some good luck. They’d also have to build a secret new facility first, which would of course take time.

And of course there are lots of things that can go wrong, ranging from successfully blocking their getting certain equipment, to computer viruses striking, to nasty little accidents like a large piano falling onto a key scientist who just happened to be passing by at that particular moment.

So let’s say that it is not impossible but it is pretty unlikely that they will finish in less than four years

Yes, I know Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu publicly rejected the Mossad chief’s statement, and he is right to do so. From a diplomatic point of view, such information could reduce the pressure on Iran and create a more dangerous situation. Many in the West are looking for an excuse to be complacent and to make money trading with Iran.

On the other hand, it means that any Israeli decision to attack Iranian facilities can also be deferred. Perhaps, too, U.S. policy might change in interesting ways before then, Iran could face significant internal turmoil, Tehran might blunder into an international confrontation, or a piano could just decide to fall on the head of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad or even several pianos on several key politicians.

Tsk, tsk. These things happen you know.

Let’s not forget as well that even without a nuclear weapon, there is still a huge political battle going on. Iran is getting more power in Lebanon; has a client state on the Mediterranean called the Gaza strip; is seeking influence in Iraq as the United States withdraws; and takes advantage of American weakness, among other things. Nukes aren’t everything, especially when you are doing pretty well sponsoring terrorism, intimidation, and revolutionary Islamist movements.

Nevertheless, I think the new assessment on Iran’s nuclear program is true and this delay is a good development for the regional situation. Again, there is no reason to believe at this moment that Tehran won’t get nuclear weapons eventually, but it will take longer than we’ve expected up until now.

Barry Rubin is director of the Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center and editor of the Middle East Review of International Affairs (MERIA) Journal. His latest books are The Israel-Arab Reader (seventh edition), The Long War for Freedom: The Arab Struggle for Democracy in the Middle East (Wiley), and The Truth About Syria (Palgrave-Macmillan). You can read more of Barry Rubin’s posts at Rubin Reports.

Technorati Tag: Iran.

Daled Amos

By Barry Rubin

There’s a fascinating, subtle, but very important development. Both the outgoing Israeli intelligence chief and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton-and others, too-have said things indicating that Iran is not going to get nuclear weapons for a while.

The Israeli statement gave the year 2015 as the likely date. In her interview with al-Arabiyya television, Clinton said that the Iranians are having significant problems with their program.

From this evidence, along with other things I’ve seen or heard, I conclude that both the United States and Israel have done intelligence assessments stretching out the amount of time before the Iranian regime has deliverable nuclear weapons.

The causes of this would include scientific and technical mistakes made by the Iranians, sabotage and assassination of scientists, defections, computer viruses, and other factors. The sanctions, while welcome and a positive development, are not the cause of the delay.

I want to stress that the Iranians could do it faster if they made certain decisions, rushed, and had some good luck. They’d also have to build a secret new facility first, which would of course take time.

And of course there are lots of things that can go wrong, ranging from successfully blocking their getting certain equipment, to computer viruses striking, to nasty little accidents like a large piano falling onto a key scientist who just happened to be passing by at that particular moment. 

So let’s say that it is not impossible but it is pretty unlikely that they will finish in less than four years

Yes, I know Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu publicly rejected the Mossad chief’s statement, and he is right to do so. From a diplomatic point of view, such information could reduce the pressure on Iran and create a more dangerous situation. Many in the West are looking for an excuse to be complacent and to make money trading with Iran.

On the other hand, it means that any Israeli decision to attack Iranian facilities can also be deferred. Perhaps, too, U.S. policy might change in interesting ways before then, Iran could face significant internal turmoil, Tehran might blunder into an international confrontation, or a piano could just decide to fall on the head of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad or even several pianos on several key politicians.

Tsk, tsk. These things happen you know.

Let’s not forget as well that even without a nuclear weapon, there is still a huge political battle going on. Iran is getting more power in Lebanon; has a client state on the Mediterranean called the Gaza strip; is seeking influence in Iraq as the United States withdraws; and takes advantage of American weakness, among other things. Nukes aren’t everything, especially when you are doing pretty well sponsoring terrorism, intimidation, and revolutionary Islamist movements.

Nevertheless, I think the new assessment on Iran’s nuclear program is true and this delay is a good development for the regional situation. Again, there is no reason to believe at this moment that Tehran won’t get nuclear weapons eventually, but it will take longer than we’ve expected up until now.

Barry Rubin is director of the Global Research in International Affairs (GLORIA) Center Middle East Review of International Affairs (MERIA) Journal. His latest books are Lebanon: Liberation, Conflict, and Crisis (Palgrave Macmillan), Conflict and Insurgency in the Contemporary Middle Eastand editor of the (seventh edition) (Viking-Penguin), The Israel-Arab Reader the paperback edition of The Truth About Syria(Palgrave-Macmillan), A Chronological History of Terrorism (Sharpe), and The Long War for Freedom: The Arab Struggle for Democracy in the Middle East (Wiley).  

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YID With LID

According to a top Computer expert from Germany the Stuxnet virus which as been wreaking havoc on the Iranian nuclear program is just as effective as a military strike. Actually it is more effective,  it has set back Iran’s quest for nuclear capability by at least two years which is the best that can be hoped for with a military strike. And it was done without all the “mess” and human suffering which comes with a military strike

Little by little scientists are beginning to understand Stuxnet a computer worm developed with the sole purpose of doing what sanctions were not able to do, slow down the Iranian march to nuclear weapons. During the past year, Stuxnet the computer worm with a message from the biblical Queen Esther, not only crippled Iran’s nuclear program but has caused  a major rethinking of computer security around the globe (if you want to know how Stuxnet works click here).

According to a report in the Sunday NY Times, Stuxnet was tested in the Dimona facility in Israel’s Negev desert. Dimona is the (officially non-existent)plant where Israel runs its (officially non-existent) nuclear weapons program

Over the past two years, according to intelligence and military experts familiar with its operations, Dimona has taken on a new, equally secret role — as a critical testing ground in a joint American and Israeli effort to undermine Iran’s efforts to make a bomb of its own.

Behind Dimona’s barbed wire, the experts say, Israel has spun nuclear centrifuges virtually identical to Iran’s at Natanz, where Iranian scientists are struggling to enrich uranium. They say Dimona tested the effectiveness of the Stuxnet computer worm, a destructive program that appears to have wiped out roughly a fifth of Iran’s nuclear centrifuges and helped delay, though not destroy, Tehran’s ability to make its first nuclear arms.

“To check out the worm, you have to know the machines,” said an American expert on nuclear intelligence. “The reason the worm has been effective is that the Israelis tried it out.”

Officially US and Israeli officials will not discuss what has been going in the middle of the Negev, but new clues point to the fact that thevirus was designed as an American-Israeli project to sabotage the Iranian program.

In recent days, the retiring chief of Israel’s Mossad intelligence agency, Meir Dagan, and Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton separately announced that they believed Iran’s efforts had been set back by several years.  Clinton cited the “weak” sanctions, which have supposedly damaged Iran’s ability to buy components.  Dagan, told the Israeli Knesset in recent days that Iran had run into technological difficulties (Stuxnet) that could delay a bomb until 2015.

As the virus continues to infect Iranian computers computer experts across the world are trying to figure out where Stuxnet came from. There is nothing but circumstantial evidence and it all points to the US and Israel). For example

In early 2008 the German company Siemens cooperated with one of the United States’ premier national laboratories, in Idaho, to identify the vulnerabilities of computer controllers that the company sells to operate industrial machinery around the world — and that American intelligence agencies have identified as key equipment in Iran’s enrichment facilities. Seimens says that program was part of routine efforts to secure its products against cyberattacks. Nonetheless, it gave the Idaho National Laboratory — which is part of the Energy Department, responsible for America’s nuclear arms — the chance to identify well-hidden holes in the Siemens systems that were exploited the next year by Stuxnet.

There is also the fact that computer scientists who are analyzing the computer worm have found a file name that seemingly refers to the Biblical Queen Esther.  Deep inside the computer worm that some specialists suspect is aimed at slowing Iran’s race for a nuclear weapon lies what could be a fleeting reference to the Book of Esther, the Old Testament narrative in which the Jewish Queen Esther pre-empts a Persian plot to kill all the Jews. One of the key files in Stuxnet was named “Myrtus” (myrtle) by the unknown designer. The biblical Esther’s original name was Hadassah, which is Hebrew for myrtle.

Officially, neither American nor Israeli officials will even utter the name of the malicious computer program, much less describe any role in designing it.

But Israeli officials grin widely when asked about its effects. Mr. Obama’s chief strategist for combating weapons of mass destruction, Gary Samore, sidestepped a Stuxnet question at a recent conference about Iran, but added with a smile: “I’m glad to hear they are having troubles with their centrifuge machines, and the U.S. and its allies are doing everything we can to make it more complicated.”

One interesting part of the program is that it was put in motion by President Bush. Yes liberals, this time you can say it, Bush did it.

The project’s political origins can be found in the last months of the Bush administration. In January 2009, The New York Times reported that Mr. Bush authorized a covert program to undermine the electrical and computer systems around Natanz, Iran’s major enrichment center. President Obama, first briefed on the program even before taking office, sped it up, according to officials familiar with the administration’s Iran strategy. So did the Israelis, other officials said. Israel has long been seeking a way to cripple Iran’s capability without triggering the opprobrium, or the war, that might follow an overt military strike of the kind they conducted against nuclear facilities in Iraq in 1981 and Syria in 2007.

The construction of the worm was so advanced, it was “like the arrival of an F-35 into a World War I battlefield,” says Ralph Langner, the computer expert who was the first to sound the alarm about Stuxnet. Langner, who runs a small computer security company in a suburb of Hamburg, had his five employees focus on picking apart the code and running it on the series of Siemens controllers neatly stacked in racks, their lights blinking.

He quickly discovered that the worm only kicked into gear when it detected the presence of a specific configuration of controllers, running a set of processes that appear to exist only in a centrifuge plant. “The attackers took great care to make sure that only their designated targets were hit,” he said. “It was a marksman’s job.”

For example, one small section of the code appears designed to send commands to 984 machines linked together.

Curiously, when international inspectors visited Natanz in late 2009, they found that the Iranians had taken out of service a total of exactly 984 machines that had been running the previous summer.

Interesting coincidence?

But as Mr. Langner kept peeling back the layers, he found more — what he calls the “dual warhead.” One part of the program is designed to lie dormant for long periods, then speed up the machines so that the spinning rotors in the centrifuges wobble and then destroy themselves. Another part, called a “man in the middle” in the computer world, sends out those false sensor signals to make the system believe everything is running smoothly. That prevents a safety system from kicking in, which would shut down the plant before it could self-destruct.

“Code analysis makes it clear that Stuxnet is not about sending a message or proving a concept,” Mr. Langner later wrote. “It is about destroying its targets with utmost determination in military style.”

This was not the work of hackers, he quickly concluded. It had to be the work of someone who knew his way around the specific quirks of the Siemens controllers and had an intimate understanding of exactly how the Iranians had designed their enrichment operations.

The reason why Stuxnet had knowledge of the workings of the Iranian centrifuges may have to do with the fact that those same type of centrifuges showed up in Dimona.

The account starts in the Netherlands. In the 1970s, the Dutch designed a tall, thin machine for enriching uranium. As is well known, A. Q. Khan, a Pakistani metallurgist working for the Dutch, stole the design and in 1976 fled to Pakistan.

The resulting machine, known as the P-1, for Pakistan’s first-generation centrifuge, helped the country get the bomb. And when Dr. Khan later founded an atomic black market, he illegally sold P-1’s to Iran, Libya, and North Korea.

The P-1 is more than six feet tall. Inside, a rotor of aluminum spins uranium gas to blinding speeds, slowly concentrating the rare part of the uranium that can fuel reactors and bombs.

How and when Israel obtained this kind of first-generation centrifuge remains unclear, whether from Europe, or the Khan network, or by other means. But nuclear experts agree that Dimona came to hold row upon row of spinning centrifuges.

“They’ve long been an important part of the complex,” said Avner Cohen, author of “The Worst-Kept Secret” (2010), a book about the Israeli bomb program, and a senior fellow at the Monterey Institute of International Studies. He added that Israeli intelligence had asked retired senior Dimona personnel to help on the Iranian issue, and that some apparently came from the enrichment program.

“I have no specific knowledge,” Dr. Cohen said of Israel and the Stuxnet worm. “But I see a strong Israeli signature and think that the centrifuge knowledge was critical.”

…Dr. Cohen said his sources told him that Israel succeeded — with great difficulty — in mastering the centrifuge technology. And the American expert in nuclear intelligence, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said the Israelis used machines of the P-1 style to test the effectiveness of Stuxnet.

The expert added that Israel worked in collaboration with the United States in targeting Iran, but that Washington was eager for “plausible deniability.”

One thing can’t be denied, the Stuxnet worm has been a major obstacle to Iran’s desire to obtain nuclear weapons, saving Israel from having to attack Iran at least for a while.  Who ever developed the virus lets hope they are working on a follow-up because 2015 is not that far away.

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YID With LID

From Reuters:

Iran has enforced a stricter Islamic dress code at a number of universities including a ban on female students wearing long nails, bright clothes and tattoos, a local news agency reported on Monday.

The semi-official Fars news agency published a list of universities around Iran that were given a note outlining the code but did not say on what basis they were selected.

The new rules ban women from “wearing caps or hats without scarves, tight and short jeans, and body piercing”, except earrings, Fars said.

It said tattoos, long nails, tooth gems, tight overcoats, and bright clothes were also banned.

The new code also bans male students from dying their hair, plucking eyebrows, wearing tight clothes, shirts with “very short sleeves” and jewellery, Fars said.

I couldn’t find the link in the Fars website, but last month the news agency was clearly telegraphing that these rules were coming. It published a series of articles about the dress codes at Western universities in its Persian edition, and used that as proof that there was nothing extremist about enforcing Islamic dress codes in Iran.

For example, it published the dress code at St. Louis University, claiming that it was for students – but it was for employees.

Missouri State University’s code says “brief shorts, trank tops, tube tops, torn jeans, bare feet are not acceptable. Wearing of pierced jewelry should be confined to ears only. Tattoos should be covered.”

They also are happy to see that Brigham Young University has a strict dress code, without mentioning that it is a Mormon school.

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Elder of Ziyon

I mentioned that Islamic Jihad blamed “Zionists’ for the deadly Egyptian church bombing.

Now Iran’s official media is doing the same.

From PressTV:

Although, at first glance, the finger is pointed at extremist Wahabi or Salafi groups, it goes without saying that no Muslim, whatever their political leanings may be, will ever commit such an inhumane act.

Attacks on churches in Egypt, Lebanon, Iraq and Tunisia can be analyzed in the context of a Zionist scenario aimed at driving a wedge between Muslims and Arab Christians.

Since the emergence of Islam, Muslims and Christians in the East have always coexisted peacefully as Islam pays due respect to the freedom of divine faiths — especially Christianity.

In Egypt, too, Muslims and Christians are living in peace and harmony. Never, ever have the Christians in Egypt complained of any problems keeping them from carrying out their religious duties.

The fresh plot by terrorists to target churches is an organized Zionist scenario aimed at creating a rift between Muslims and Christians.

How’s that for an airtight argument? But it gets better:

Suicide attacks on churches in Egypt and the killing of Christians are part of the psychological warfare launched by the US, the UK and Israel to divide Christians and Muslims.

…All the existing evidence proves that the Alexandria church explosion, though appearing to have been carried out by extremist groups, is the handiwork of the Israeli intelligence service Mossad.

Needless to say, the author does not mention a single shred of this evidence.

A wonderful example of Islamic logic.

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Elder of Ziyon

This theme is becoming more common: we have seen it recently from a Saudi Sheikh and the Melkite Greek Catholic Patriarch. Perhaps this is part of a Big Lie strategy — if they repeat it often enough, their marks among the Western Left will believe it. “Mossad behind Egypt church blast,” from Iran’s PressTV, January 2:

The explosion at a church in the Egyptian city of Alexandria, which left 21 people killed and another 80 Muslims and Christians wounded, raises one question: Who was behind the blast?

Although, at first glance, the finger is pointed at extremist Wahabi or Salafi groups, it goes without saying that no Muslim, whatever their political leanings may be, will ever commit such an inhumane act.

Attacks on churches in Egypt, Lebanon, Iraq and Tunisia can be analyzed in the context of a Zionist scenario aimed at driving a wedge between Muslims and Arab Christians.

Since the emergence of Islam, Muslims and Christians in the East have always coexisted peacefully as Islam pays due respect to the freedom of divine faiths — especially Christianity.

In Egypt, too, Muslims and Christians are living in peace and harmony. Never, ever have the Christians in Egypt complained of any problems keeping them from carrying out their religious duties.

The fresh plot by terrorists to target churches is an organized Zionist scenario aimed at creating a rift between Muslims and Christians.

Following its intelligence and security failures in Egypt and the apprehension of a number of Mossad agents by Egyptian intelligence apparatus, the Zionist regime of Israel is set to exact vengeance on the Egyptian nation.

For years, Israel and the United States have resorted to radical groups with no affiliation to divine faiths to carry out acts of terror against Christians in Islamic countries.

Based on this scenario, the Israeli regime urges deviant anti-religion groups to conduct terrorist operations against Christians….

Jihad Watch

This man thinks it would be great if the U.S. were like Iran

Imam Musa wants to establish an Islamic State of America by 2050. And apparently, it will look a good deal like the Islamic Republic of Iran, with its stonings, oppression of non-Muslims and women, and ruthless suppression of political dissent.

“Top American Muslim Leader: ‘Ayatollah Khamenei, the best leader in the world,’” from the Ahlul Bayt News Agency, January 1:

(Ahlul Bayt News Agency) – Prominent American Muslim hails the measures taken by Ayatollah Khamenie as the best in unifying world Muslims.

Famous American Muslim leader hails the measures taken by Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenie as the best in unifying world Muslims.

Sheykh Abdul alim Musa, a Muslim American activist and the prayer leader of Al-Islam mosque in Washington DC hailed the measures by the Supreme Leader of the Islamic Republic of Iran, Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei and said,” Ideas and fatwas issued by Ayatollah Khamenei play a major role in proximity of the Islamic Schools of Thought”.

The prominent American figure said,” Resistance of grand Ayatollah Khamenei and the Iranian nation against the arrogant and bullying powers of the world brings hope for the Muslims around the world.”

He sounds just like Iranian spokesmen.

He referred to the role of Iranian nation in introducing the Islamic Revolution to the world and said,” Islamic Republic of Iran is a role model for many countries and the Iranian nation has played a major role in introducing the Islamic Revolution and the ideas of late Ayatollah Rouhollah Khomeini, former leader of the Islamic Revolution to the world.”

“Supreme Leader of the Islamic Republic of Iran is a wise leader who has always acted timely in the issues related to the Muslim nation,” said Imam Abdul alim Musa and reiterated,” Without doubt resistance of the Iranian nation in the path of right is due to the wise and clever role of the leader of the country.”

Abdul alim Musa is a member of the Institute of Contemporary Islamic Thought (ICIT) and also the director of Masjid Al-Islam in Washington DC.

Jihad Watch

Foreign Policy

From Reuters:

The United States and its allies have up to three years to curb Iran’s nuclear programme, which has been set back by technical difficulties and sanctions, a senior Israeli official said on Wednesday.

Saying Iran remained his government’s biggest worry, Deputy Prime Minister Moshe Yaalon did not mention possible unilateral military strikes by Israel, saying he hoped U.S.-led action against Tehran would be successful.

“I believe that this effort will grow, and will include areas beyond sanctions, to convince the Iranian regime that, effectively, it must choose between continuing to seek nuclear capability and surviving,” Yaalon told Israel Radio.

“I don’t know if it will happen in 2011 or in 2012, but we are talking in terms of the next three years.”

Yaalon, a former armed forces chief, noted Iran’s uranium enrichment plan had suffered setbacks. Some analysts have seen signs of foreign sabotage in incidents such as the corruption of Iranian computer networks by a virus.

“These difficulties postpone the timeline, of course. Thus we cannot talk about a ‘point of no return’. Iran does not currently have the ability to make a nuclear bomb on its own,” Yaalon said.

“I hope it won’t succeed at all and that the Western world’s effort will ultimately deny Iran a nuclear capability.”

This is a bigger delay than anything I had heard before from Stuxnet, at least (there might have been other successful operations that delayed the program further.)

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Elder of Ziyon

The Karzai government in Afghanistan is supposed to be pro-American, although Karzai himself has threatened to join the Taliban. And now one of the chief enemies of the United States says that he “fully supports” the Karzai government, and the Afghan ambassador responds, “Afghanistan is seeking to utilize all potential to further increase relations with Iran.”

This is the fruit of the U.S. Government’s unshakable resolve to ignore the jihad doctrine and political Islam in general.

What Are We Fighting For Update: “Ahmadinejad receives new Afghan ambassador’s credentials,” from the Tehran Times, December 23:

TEHRAN — President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad received on Wednesday credentials of Afghanistan’s new ambassador to Tehran.

Ahmadinejad told the ambassador that the Islamic Republic of Iran fully supports the Afghan government.

“The Iranian and Afghan nations share deep-rooted cultural and religious affinities and have common friends and enemies. Therefore, promoting the level of bilateral and regional cooperation will benefit both nations as well as the region,” Ahmadinejad stated.

He added that the enemies do not wish that the prudent people of Afghanistan bring prosperity to their country through reliance on their own capabilities.

However, the Afghan people are strong and history has proven that they are able to defeat their enemies, the president stated.

“Tehran sees no limitation for the development of economic, cultural, and trade cooperation with Kabul and is ready to transfer its experiences to the resistant people of Afghanistan in the spheres of industry, construction, investment, and health.”

The ambassador, for his part, said, “Afghanistan is seeking to utilize all potential to further increase relations with Iran.”

Jihad Watch

The Speaker of Iran’s Parliament blamed the Zionists and the Americans. Khamenei apparently didn’t mention the Zionists; I guess that makes him a moderate. “Iran supreme leader blames West for bombing,” from the Associated Press, December 17 (thanks to JCB): TEHRAN, Iran – Iran’s supreme leader on Friday blamed the…
Jihad Watch

There is no surprise in this, except for those Westerners who buy the politically correct line that mosques are benign houses of worship that are never used for any nefarious purposes. In reality, mosques have been used to preach hatred; to spread exhortations to terrorist activity; to house a bomb…
Jihad Watch

Oct 29, 2005: “the Zionist regime will eventually rot from within and collapse”

October 20, 2006: “This regime (Israel) will be gone, definitely… this regime internally, and regionally from the outside, is cracking and is falling apart.”

June 3, 2007: “The countdown for the Zionist regime’s (Israel’s) collapse has started – inshallah (God willing), we will soon witness the collapse of this regime.”

February 21, 2008: “Countdown has begun for collapse of the Zionist regime, Haddad Adel said.”

June 3, 2008: “The criminal and terrorist Zionist regime (Israel) which has a record of 60 years of killing and violation has reached its final phase and will soon be wiped out from the geographic scene.”

December 29, 2008: “The final count down has started for the collapse of the Zionist regime.”

So when is the Zionist regime going to collapse already? I mean, it’s been five years since these predictions started.

Today, we receive the answer: it has already happened!

December 14, 2010: “Today we witness that the predictions made by the leaders of the fake Israeli regime have materialized and the failure of the regime has, in fact, led to its collapse.”

See? Israel has collapsed, Iran’s nuclear program is peaceful, and up is down.

Elder of Ziyon