Iranian banks cut off from SWIFT system (uh-oh)

[TalkingDog]

http://www.aljazeera.com/news/middleeast/2012/03/201231719399435831.html

Iran has been largely cut off from global commerce after the company that handles most international financial transactions said it was severing ties with 30 Iranian banks.

The action by the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication (SWIFT) aims to enforce EU sanctions discouraging Tehran from developing nuclear weapons.

SWIFT is crucial to the oil sector and other trades and global financial transactions are impossible to conduct without using it.

[MrScorpio]

1. Except they're not developing nuclear weapons

This is all bullshit

[greytdemocrat]

2. You go right on believing that...

I can't wait to see what people will say when a rises into the sky.

[MrScorpio]

3. 'Mossad, CIA agree Iran has yet to decide to build nuclear weapon'

[div class="excerpt"Israel’s intelligence services agree with American intelligence assessments that there is not enough proof to determine whether Iran is building a nuclear bomb, according to a report published Sunday in the New York Times.

Israel’s intelligence services agree with American intelligence assessments that there is not enough proof to determine whether Iran is building a nuclear bomb, according to a report published Sunday in the New York Times.

The newspaper said that senior American officials believe there is little disagreement between the Mossad and U.S. intelligence agencies over Iran’s nuclear program, despite the fact that Israeli political leaders have been pushing for quick action to block Iran from becoming what they describe as an existential threat.

The report further quoted one former senior American intelligence official who states that the Mossad “does not disagree with the U.S. on the weapons program,” adding that there is “not a lot of dispute between the U.S. and Israeli intelligence communities on the facts.”

http://www.haaretz.com/news/diplomacy-defense/mossad-cia-agree-iran-has-yet-to-decide-to-build-nuclear-weapon-1.419300http://www.haaretz.com/news/diplomacy-defense/mossad-cia-agree-iran-has-yet-to-decide-to-build-nuclear-weapon-1.419300

By the way, thanks for channeling Condoleeza Rice.

[greytdemocrat]

5. Yeah...

cause everyone takes the Mossad and CIA at face value.

Truly unbelievable...

[Zalatix]

6. Well, I am not so sure anymore that Iran is building nuclear weapons

remember the WMDs that Saddam had aimed at the US?

Oh wait, he had none.

[MrScorpio]

7. Only a fool would think that the Iranians are developing nuclear weapons

That idea only illustrates that they know nothing about both Iranians AND nuclear weapons.

The Iranian military is built solely around defense against external threat. The Iranians neither want to or have the capacity to launch military offensive operations. They never have.

You don't build nukes to use them on your own territory. If you do decided to build them, you'd have to figure out a way to deliver them to your target in another country. That means either long range bombers (which they don't have) or by missile (which they do).

The mere fact that Iran does have conventional missiles that can be launched at targets beyond, let's say, 1,500 miles on speaks only to the capability of that current system. In order for them to tip them with nukes requires a whole new set of criteria in order to accommodate that new mission.

AND in order to create a nuclear weapons program for their existing missiles, the Iranians would have had to create an infrastructure to build it. Nothing of the sort exists. Assuming that intelligence services did their jobs, they would base their assessment based on the existence of plans, construction, arrangement and procurement of personnel and resources, changes in Iranian military organization to accommodate changes in posture, monitoring signals and codes, satellite surveillance, human resource intelligence gathering, monitoring of internal and external political rhetoric and a lot of other things.

An Iranian bomb program cannot happen total secrecy.

There's no doubt that the Iranians and the Israelis hate each… But it's a fact that one of those two countries has an active nuclear weapons program and the other country is named Iran.

[Bodhi BloodWave]

8. in regards to Israel and Iran and creating a mushroom cloud i'd say there is an 80-20 chance on who

makes it.

And those odds are very generous in Israel's favor with 80% on them making it.(mainly cause they have nukes, Iran dosn't)

[TalkingDog]

4. I am in complete agreement.

They are intent on ratcheting up the tension.

[tech3149]

9. Jeez!! what a pissing contest

Every step we take to isolate Iran just makes it harder to find a solution. Iran is a signatory to the NPT, is Israel?
The US has held a grudge against Iran since 79 when a few dissidents held "diplomatic" staff hostages for more than a year.
Might we not be better off if we treated the rest of the world as equals instead of looking for client states that support our hegemony?
To put it in the vernacular, can't we stop pissing in other peoples sandbox and all play nice? It might be easier to make enemies but it's much better to make friends.

[woo me with science]

10. The MIC will get their war one way or another.

Poke, poke, poke, poke, slap.