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Tuesday, December 6, 2011

Are We Already at War with Iran?



Last weekend, Iran declared that they had shot down a U.S. RQ-170 surveillance drone in the eastern part of the country.  Repudiating this charge, U.S. officials claim that the drone had crash-landed after mechanical difficulties caused its operators to lose control of it.  In any event, its now in the hands of the Iranians, who now have at their disposal some the United States top secrets.  "Its bad," said one official, "they'll have everything."

Of course, it is no secret that the United States regularly conducts covert operations on, around, and in territories considered a threat to its interests.  In fact, it's the very reason the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) was even established.  Of course, back in 1947, the threat was the Soviet Union, but through the years, the CIA has been used for all sorts of covert operations designed to monitor, subvert, and sometimes even eliminate what the Federal government considers threats to the country's national security.  Though highly secretive, there is little doubt now that the Agency is being utilized to monitor activities in Iran, and since the Feds have made no secret of their opposition to Iran's reported efforts to advance their nuclear weapons capabilities, it wouldn't be surprising if such monitoring were attempts to gather intelligence that would assist in neutralizing such capability.

The downed-drone incident also follows on the heels of a series of explosive mishaps at Iranian nuclear facilities that some officials claim, on the condition of anonymity, are evidence of covert sabotage.  Such claims are substantiated by the continuing "accidents" at Iranian nuclear facilities, reportedly brought about by a computer worm (a sort of virus) called Stuxnet, which affects roughly 58 percent of all the computers in Iran, many of which are utilized in their nuclear refining operations.

Needless to say, this series of events has raised Iran's ire to such a point as to lead its General Mohammed Al Jaafari to raise the operational readiness of the country's military forces.  Now, as we already reported two weeks ago, Israel has not ruled out possible military force against Iran; and just today, Saudi Arabia's former intelligence chief has called for Saudi leadership to consider nuclear armament in order to counter threats from both Iran as well as Isreal.  Add to that the United States' continued covert operations, and one can't help but wonder if we're not already at war with Iran.