Obama Seeks to Distance U.S. from Israeli Attack on Iran  January 03, 2012

President Barack Obama and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu are engaged in intense maneuvering over Netanyahu's aim of entangling the United States in an Israeli war against Iran.  Netanyahu is exploiting the extraordinary influence his right-wing Likud Party exercises over the Republican Party and the U.S. Congress on matters related to Israel in order to maximise the likelihood that the United States would participate in an attack on Iran.

Defence Secretary Leon Panetta in a Dec. 2 talk at the Brookings Institution, while discussing the dangers of the regional conflict that would result from such an attack, stated the United States 'would obviously be blamed and we could possibly be the target of retaliation from Iran, sinking our ships, striking our military bases.' 

'Iran most likely would decide not to target U.S. forces in the region in retaliation for an Israeli strike only if the damage from the strike were relatively limited,' Trita Parsi, executive director of the National Iranian American Council (NIAC) said.

An interview with CNN in November 2011, Israel's Defense Minister Ehud Barak, warned the international community that Israel might have to make a decision on war within as little as six months.

Meanwhile, the end of U.S. Air Force control over Iraqi airspace with the final U.S. military withdrawal from Iraq has has provided Israel the oppurtunity of attacking Iran using the shortest flight path possible.

US Threatens Retaliation for EU Carbon Tax on Airlines

The EU and the US are on a confrontation course over the EU carbon tax designed to reduce pollution by airplanes.

12/22/2011

A confrontation between the United States and the EU looms. The U.S. House of Representatives has passed a law prohibiting the airlines from collaborating with the tax and a similar bill is being introduced in the Senate. The U.S. administration as well is adamantly opposed.

What particularly enrages the non-EU countries is that the tax is imposed for the entire length of the journey. Hence if an American airline took off in San Francisco and flew nonstop to London or Paris, it would be taxed also for the flight over US airspace as well as over international airspace.

It would be unfortunate if precisely at a time that the EU and the United States need to cooperate economically, that they should lock horns over this issue.

The EU prides itself as being in the forefront of the fight against global warming, and it needs to prove that the debt crisis has not paralyzed its ability to act in unison in this area.

The issue poses a test for the Obama administration. Although both Clinton and US Transport Secretary Roy Lahood have opposed the measure, the Obama administration is counting on the support of environmentalists in the next election and US environmental groups back the European measure. Should the noncompliance bill pass in the Senate, Obama would be faced with a tricky choice.

 

The Earthquakes are ramping up along Iran's coast,

where Bushehr sits-

 

 

Mid-Point - March 21st 2013

God Bless

gail