Third carrier group on the way to Iran

Does SPR Increase Foretell Iran Strike?
by Ashraf Laidi
January 24, 2007

Sharp swings ensued in today's FX trading, as the dollar fell sharply during the Asian session following a spike in oil prices after President Bush announcement to double the Strategic Petroleum Reserve to 1.5 billion barrels over the next 20 yrs.

<snip>

Does aggressive SPR build-up foretell Iran strike?

Light sweet crude is down 20 cents at $54.80 per barrel, after Tuesday's $2.48 jump to $55.04 on reports that the US Dept of Energy will purchase 100K barrels of oil per day starting next spring. While the decision is part of the Bush Administration's latest commitment to reduce US dependency on imported oil, the aggressive approach on beefing up SPR may reflect heightened possibility of a US military strike against Iran as early as March or April, at a time when US navy ships are piling up in the Persian Gulf. Yesterday, markets were filled with chatter of a Kuwait-based newspaper article reporting that the US will launch a military strike on Iran before April 2007, citing "reliable sources".

<my bolding -- original page has this section underlined>

According to the article, the strikes will be launched from US ships with Patriot missiles guarding all oil-producing countries in the region. The attacks would be planned in April, the last month of British PM Blair in office. The immediate result of such an attack is a protracted run up in oil prices, which could reach the $70 per barrel mark in less than a week.

"'The president knows that because the troops are in harm's way, that we won't cut off the resources. That's why he's moving so quickly to put them in harm's way,' Pelosi said on ABC's 'Good Morning America.'

When asked whether she thought the president manipulated the deployments to avoid congressional action, Pelosi said she hoped he did not but thought 'he could have told us about it sooner. ... We found out about it as the troops were going in.'"

Alleged MEK activity in Iran

In 2006 news reports linked the PMOI with US threats to attack Iran, specifically use of the PMOI to "prepare the battlefield" for US military action against Iran.<26>

According to the news organisation Rawstory, an intelligence official said that following the 2003 Invasion of Iraq, “We disarmed of major weapons, but not small arms. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld was pushing to use them as a military special ops team, but there was infighting between Rumsfeld's camp and then National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice, but she was able to fight them off for a while”.

According to another intelligence source, the policy infighting ended last year when Rumsfeld, under pressure from Vice President Dick Cheney, came up with a plan to “convert” the MEK by having them simply quit their organization." “These guys are nuts,” the intelligence source said. "Stephen Cambone and those guys made MEK members swear an oath to Democracy and resign from the MEK and then our guys incorporated them into their unit and trained them” for action in Iran. A UN source close to the United Nations Security Council, again according to Rawstory, said in April 2006 that "the clandestine war had been going on for roughly a year".

According to a former Iranian ambassador and UPI, "The Iranian accusations are true, but it is being done on such a small scale - a series of pinpricks - it would seem to have no strategic value at all."

Has Washington Found its Iranian Chalabi?

By Laura Rozen
October 6, 2006

"This past summer, an op-ed appeared in the Washington Post under the byline of Richard Perle, the influential former Pentagon adviser who was a chief booster of Ahmed Chalabi in the run-up to the war in Iraq. As he had prior to the invasion of Iraq, Perle urged the Bush administration to shun appeasement and take an uncompromising stand toward Tehran; as with Iraq, he argued that a hard line was critical to help the population overthrow a brutal regime. And once again, Perle had an exile leader he wanted America to know about: Amir Abbas Fakhravar, “an Iranian dissident student leader who escaped first from Tehran’s notorious Evin prison, then, after months in hiding, from Iran.”"

snip...

Enter Fakhravar, who is more inclined to say exactly what the hawks want to hear. He told me that Iran’s president wants to wipe Israel off the map, and that “any movement or any action whatsoever” by the United States would “help or enhance the people to rise up.” All the student movement in Iran needed to overthrow the regime, he said, was “a little bit of coordination, organization, and training.”

A virtual unknown both inside and outside Iran when he arrived in the United States in May, Fakhravar has in the months since then ascended to prominence at a dizzying clip. By midsummer he was rushing from testifying on Capitol Hill one moment to an Iran opposition gathering at the White House the next, meeting regularly with policymakers and influential advisers, chatting with the former Shah’s son on his cell phone, and generally being touted as the young, idealistic face of the movement to overthrow the mullahs.

(picture of Fakhravar with Richard Perle)

But Fakhravar may be a false messiah. In interviews with more than a dozen Iranian opposition figures, some of them former political prisoners, a different picture emerged—one of an opportunist being pushed to the fore by Iran hawks, a reputed jailhouse snitch who was locked up for nonpolitical offenses but reinvented himself as a student activist and political prisoner once behind bars. Fakhravar and his supporters vehemently deny such allegations, saying that the attacks are motivated by petty jealousy and a vendetta by Fakhravar’s enemies on the Iranian left.

more.... http://www.motherjones.com/news/feature/2006/11/fakhravar.html

"Carrier Strike Group 7 Holds Change of Command"

Release Date: 1/26/2007 4:06:00 PM

From USS Ronald Reagan Public Affairs

SAN DIEGO (NNS) -- Rear Adm. Charles W. Martoglio relieved Rear Adm. Michael H. Miller as commander, Carrier Strike Group (CCSG) 7 in a change of command ceremony Jan. 25 aboard USS Ronald Reagan (CVN 76).

“I am honored to take command of Carrier Strike Group 7 and the Ronald Reagan Strike Group (CSG)," said Martoglio. "I am impressed with the readiness of this strike group and with the tremendous Sailors and their families who so measurably contribute to the security of our great nation.”

http://www.news.navy.mil/search/display.asp?story_id=27478