[…] Arab powers, led by Egyptian president Nasser, had been pounding a drumbeat of aggressive rhetoric and military posturing. In April, Nasser had closed the Straits of T iran, Israel’s sole access to the Red Sea, and ordered the UN peacekeeping contingent from its buffer position in the Sinai between Egyptian and Israeli forces. However, […]
[…] of the network to pump know-how and materials back out as assiduously and covertly as they had been pumped in. And it was during the 1980s that Iran was making its greatest efforts to master the technology, with (covert) Pakistani assistance. Despite knowledge of these interactions, Washington decided not to excoriate its erstwhile cold […]
Cock-up, conspiracy, or both? Israel and the Clash of Civilisations Iraq, Iran and the Plan to Remake the Middle East Jonathan Cook London: Pluto Books, 2008, £14.99, p/b Was the invasion of Iraq a disastrous cock-up by the Americans and British, and by the Pentagon in particular? There certainly is a long line of […]
The CIA and Drugs One of the biggest stories in the six months since the last Lobster has been the CIA-deals-crack story. The Web site at has an enormous amount of information, including an important piece by Robert Parry, ‘Lost History: Contras, Dirty Money and the CIA.’ Another important background piece is Jack Blum’s […]
[…] sued by the victims of SAVAK, the Shah of Iran’s evil ‘police’ whom Britain trained, given the ‘benefits’ this achieved for British and American companies operating in Iran . . .) The lawsuit has being filed, coincidentally, simultaneously with one by ‘descendants of slaves in the United States’ against the US government, as well […]
[…] revived Cold War of which developments in the British Labour party and trade union movement were an important part. Documents declassified during the Congressional inquiry into the Iran Contra scandal, for example, describe a White House meeting at which President Reagan, along with senior intelligence officials, met Rupert Murdoch, Sir James Goldsmith, George Gallup […]
[…] of selected documents, most from the White House offices of Nat Security advisers Kissinger and Scowcroft, or from files of Nat Security Council Staff. The CIA in Iran – Overthrow of Mossadeq http://www.nytimes.com/library/world/mideast/041600iran-cia-index.html Secret CIA report ‘Clandestine Service History, Overthrow of Premier Mossadeq of Iran, Nov 1952-August 1953’ (an operation planned and executed by […]
Extracts from what are claimed to be CIA analyses of Israeli intelligence services found when the US embassy in Iran was taken have been published in Imam, October 1983 through to May 1984. 17 pages in all. To this untrained eye they look genuine; ie dull enough to be genuine. There is nothing that […]
[…] the human aspects of our intelligence services’ due to the lack of agents in the field. The US, he claimed, had been largely unprepared for events in Iran, Nicaragua, Lebanon and Grenada. (Times 16th December 1983) It is reported that DCIA William Casey assigned the ISA a number of covert missions (Newsweek 10th October […]
[…] the party massacre, ‘no one dared to question anything. This meant that the regime of Saddam Hussein acquired infallibility through fear and silence.’ (p. 50) War with Iran was Saddam Hussein’s second mistake. Egged on by the West, both sides prodigiously expended blood and treasure. Peace in 1988 was closely followed by widespread circulation […]
