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Iran Test-Fires Missiles Near Strait of Hormuz

TEHRAN, Iran (AP) — Iran’s navy said Monday it test-fired a range of weapons during ongoing maneuvers near the Strait of Hormuz, the passageway for one-fifth of the world’s oil supply.

IRNA quoted Adm. Amir Rastgari, spokesman for the exercise, as saying the Iranian-made air defense system Raad, or Thunder, was among the weapons tested, along with various torpedoes and underwater and surface-to-surface rockets as well as anti-ship missiles. The Islamic Republic said it also deployed domestically-made hovercraft during the operation.

The Raad system was on show during a military parade in Tehran in September for the first time. Iran says is more advanced than its Russian predecessor and is designed to confront fighter jets, cruise missiles, smart bombs, helicopters and drones. Iran said the system fires missiles with a range of 50 kilometers (30 miles), capable of hitting targets at 22,000 meters (75,000 feet).

Tehran has tried to build a self-sufficient military program since 1992. It frequently announces technological breakthroughs, most of which cannot be confirmed independently.

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Obama’s Orwellian Double-Speak: I’ve Made the US ‘Safer, Stronger and More Respected in the World’

At yesterday’s nomination of Senator John Kerry as the United States’ next Secretary of State, Obama made the ridiculous statement that he’d made the US “safer, stronger and more respected in the world.”

How any American could possibly believe this crazy talk is beyond me.

Anyone who spends more than a minute or two each day reviewing the news can see that Obama’s entire Middle East policy has completely unraveled, leaving the world deeply destabilized.

Obama thinks things are safer? How about Iran’s ever-advancing nuclear program, with its weapons manufacturing now buried so deep underground that it’s immune from our bombs. Iran has been so emboldened by Obama that, according to Hillary Clinton, the Persians are now spreading terrorism to our next door neighbor, Mexico, and creating new alliances with drug cartels.

And respect? Is that how our ambassador in Benghazi was treated?

Things aren’t much better in Iraq. There, fatwas have issued, encouraging the killing of Christians. Much of the vibrant Christian Iraqi community has fled the country. Similarly, in Syria, US-backed rebels are suspected of using the cover of civil war to murder minority Christians. Minority religious groups are literally under the gun in Egypt now, too.

Obama’s fingerprints are all over this growing Egyptian problem, where we exchanged one pro-American dictator for an anti-American, anti-Semitic dictator. According to an Egyptian opposition leader with whom I spoke with this week, the Obama administration actually pressured the Egyptian military to “fix” the vote to ensure that the Muslim Brotherhood presidential candidate, Mohammed Morsi, won.

Now that Obama helped this radical into office, President Morsi has attempted to seize broad, unconstitutional powers. His supporters have used torture, rape and sexual assault to stifle dissent. And the media refuses to provide fair coverage.

The globalist Henry Kissinger seems to recognize where Obama is headed with these pro-Muslim Brotherhood policies, suggesting that Israel will cease to exist in ten years.

It can’t help that Syria has likely gained ballistic missiles as a result of our meddling there.

How about China, thumbing its nose at the US and threatening our Japanese ally over its long held control of several remote islands in the Pacific Ocean? And this is not the only place in the Pacific where the Chinese are flexing their muscle and threatening massive global disorder.

There’s no doubt that Obama’s full-body embrace with the Muslim Brotherhood has been one of the most catastrophic foreign policy blunders of recent history. That, combined with Obama’s coddling of Chavez, refusal to stand up to China, passivity to Russian aggression (submarines off the US coast, bombers near Alaska airspace), social experimentation in the US military, and other apparent missteps, make it clear that Obama has not given us a safer world. His actions have encouraged derision, instability, and a far more insecure future.

Hillary Clinton: Iran ‘Exports Terrorism’ to Mexico

(CNSNews.com) – Speaking at the Brookings Institution in Washington, D.C. on Nov. 30, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said that Iran “exports terrorism” in a global fashion that “stretches from Mexico to Thailand.

“We already know very well that the Iranian regime already exports terrorism, not only to Israel’s doorstep, but across the world,” Clinton said. “If we had a map I could put up there, I could show you what we track and plot on that map.

“The evidence of terrorism, mostly, thankfully, plots foiled or unsuccessful, unfortunately, as in Bulgaria, some that succeeded,” Clinton said. “But those plots, those activities of Iran directly or through their agents, stretches from Mexico to Thailand.”

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$1.92B Settlement for ‘Too Big to Fail’ Bank Busted for Laundering Terrorist and Drug Cartel Money

HSBC Holdings Plc (HSBA), Europe’s largest bank, agreed to pay $1.92 billion to settle U.S. probes of money laundering in the largest such accord ever.

The settlement includes a deferred prosecution agreement with the U.S. Department of Justice, the London-based bank said today in a statement. HSBC expects to complete an undertaking with the U.K. Financial Services Authority soon, it said, without providing specifics.

Chief Executive Officer Stuart Gulliver’s attempts to reduce costs and improve profitability have been hurt by the U.S. probes and by compensation claims from U.K. clients. A Senate committee said in July that lax oversight by top HSBC executives gave terrorists and drug cartels access to the U.S. financial system.

“This has removed an uncertainty, though it doesn’t clear the path completely for HSBC,” Lewis Wan, Hong Kong-based chief investment officer at Pride Investments Group Ltd., said by telephone today, adding that his company doesn’t hold HSBC shares. “Regulators have been tightening oversight of banks. Lenders like HSBC will have to continue to strengthen their compliance.”

In a deferred prosecution agreement, the government allows a target to avoid charges by meeting certain conditions — including the payment of fines or penalties — and by committing to specific reforms, either under the guidance of a monitor, or the creation of an internal compliance panel.

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Confirmed: Turkey Trading Gold for Iranian Oil

Over the last six months, Iran has evaded U.S. sanctions by importing Turkish gold to pay for billions of dollars worth of energy sales to Turkey.

Turkey’s deputy prime minister has described what amounts to a gold-for-oil barter system.

“Why did, all of the sudden, Turkey’s gold exports, especially gold bullion, go up?” Ali Babacan asked while speaking before a parliamentary budget commission this month. The official transcript of his statements was published by a Turkish government website Wednesday.

“An important part of that is Iran,” he said. “When Turkey buys Iranian oil, we pay for it in Turkish lira. … However, it is not possible for Iran to take that money as dollars into its own country due to international restrictions, the U.S.A.’s sanctions. Therefore, when Iran cannot take this money back as currency, they withdraw Turkish lira and buy gold from our market. They take the gold back to their own country.”

According to Turkish government statistics, Iran has imported billions of dollars worth of gold from Turkey since it was ejected from the SWIFT international electronic banking system in March.

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Photos: Secret Plant Feeding Iran Nuke Plans: Sources Confirm Facilities ‘Actively Engaged in Weaponization’

Just as the latest International Atomic Energy Agency report increased alarm about Iran’s illicit nuclear program, now comes word that the Islamic regime has created even more secret nuclear sites.

The IAEA report indicated that not only has Iran completed installation of 2,784 centrifuges at Fordow, the previous secret site deep in a mountain believed to be immune to air strikes, but also could within days increase output of highly enriched uranium to the 20-percent level, well on the way to nuclear weapons.

Iran has started to feed uranium hexafluoride gas into four new cascades, increasing the number of centrifuges at Fordow from 700 to 1,400, therefore doubling its output of highly enriched uranium and cutting the time needed for having enough high-enriched material for one nuclear bomb. The regime already has enough low-enriched uranium for six nuclear bombs if further enriched.

However, according to a source within the engineering department of the Revolutionary Guards, the regime is working on its nuclear bomb program from several secret sites unknown to the world.

One such site, the source said, is in the outskirts of the small city of Shahrokhabad in Kerman Province.

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Congressional Report Ties Middle East Terrorists to Mexican Drug Cartels

A new congressional report from the House Homeland Security Committee Subcommittee on Oversight, Investigations and Management ties Middle East terror organizations to Mexican drug cartels.

The report, released Thursday, is titled “A Line in the Sand: Countering Crime, Violence and Terror at the Southwest Border.” It found that the “Southwest border has now become the greatest threat of terrorist infiltration into the United States.” It specifically cites a “growing influence” from Iranian and Hezbollah terror forces in Latin America.

“The presence of Hezbollah in Latin America is partially explained by the large Lebanese diaspora in South America,” the report reads. “In general, Hezbollah enjoys support by many in the Lebanese world community in part because of the numerous social programs it provides in Lebanon that include schools, hospitals, utilities and welfare.”

The congressional report, prepared by the subcommittee’s chairman, Texas Republican Rep. Michael McCaul, argues that the “explanation for Iranian presence in Latin America begins with its symbiotic relationship with Hezbollah.”

“United in their dedication to the destruction of Israel, Iran has helped Hezbollah grow from a small group of untrained guerrillas into what is arguably the most highly trained, organized and equipped terrorist organization in the world,” the report reads. “In return, Hezbollah has served as an ideal proxy for Iranian military force – particularly against Israel – which affords Iran plausible deniability diplomatically. Hence wherever Hezbollah is entrenched, Iran will be as well and vice-versa.”

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Cyberattacks: Major Iranian Threat

NEW YORK (CNNMoney) — Iran’s quest for a nuclear weapon has been the subject of much debate this election season, but the presidential candidates rarely discuss the most imminent danger Iran poses to the United States: cyberwarfare.

Iran is believed to be behind a slew of massive attacks in September that took down a string of U.S. banks’ websites. The country is also thought to have launched a devastating cyber time bomb on Saudi Oil company Aramco in August and to have coordinated a similar attack on Qatar’s RasGas, an Exxon Mobil (XOM, Fortune 500) subsidiary.

The bank attacks were 10 to 20 times bigger than a typical denial of service attack, and doubled the previous record for traffic maliciously directed at a particular site, according to CrowdStrike, a security firm that investigated the attacks. The Aramco attack, set to go off on an Islamic holy night, unleashed a virus that destroyed about 30,000 corporate computers — three-quarters of the company’s PCs.

It’s a show of muscle the United States and its allies are unaccustomed to seeing from Iran. Cyberespionage and online identity theft are common tactics of Russian mafiosos and Chinese hackers, but Iran is relatively new to this playing field. After a series of painful economic sanctions levied on the country by the United States and Europe, cybersecurity experts say they’re not surprised that Iran is fighting back.

“Iran is trying to demonstrate that it has a capability to disrupt life in the West,” said Roger Cressey, senior vice president at security consultancy Booz Allen Hamilton. “Its argument is: ‘Whatever you in the West may do to us, know that it will not be a pain-free operation.'”

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British Prime Minister Fears Iran Nuclear-Weapons Bid Might Trigger Arms Race

photo credit: James ArnoldU.K. Prime Minister David Cameron warned that an Iranian development of nuclear weapons might “trigger a nuclear arms race” across the Middle East.

Iran obtaining nuclear arms would not only be a “desperately bad development for our world,” it could make the region “a more unstable and more dangerous place,” Cameron told students at Zayed University in Abu Dhabi today at the start of a three-day visit to the Middle East.

Cameron has been discussing future cooperation with the United Arab Emirates on strategic defense issues as contingency plans are examined for any escalation of Iran’s nuclear ambitions — including the possibility of blocking the Strait of Hormuz, a vital oil-supply route.

Three weeks ago, Cameron called on Israel to refrain from a military strike on Iran’s nuclear program, saying time was needed for sanctions to work. The U.S. and European nations say Iran’s program is aimed at developing atomic weapons. Iran says it’s intended for civilian purposes.

Cameron is seeking to boost defense sales in the region and to arrange the sale of more than 100 Typhoon jets in the coming year in a deal that would be worth more than 6 billion pounds ($9.5 billion) to British companies, the premier’s office said in an e-mailed statement. He moves on from the UAE to Saudi Arabia tomorrow.

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Paper: Obama Attempted to Reestablish Full Ties With Iran

Soon after he took office, President Barack Obama began a process ultimately designed to reestablish full US diplomatic relations with Iran, including a reopening of embassies, an Israeli daily reported Sunday. The initiative, part of a wider shift in America’s diplomatic orientation, aimed at reaching understandings with Tehran over suspending its nuclear program, Maariv claimed, citing “two Western diplomats very close to the administration.”

The initiative led to at least two US-Iran meetings, the report said. Israel was made aware of the contacts, and opposed them.

But Iran rebuffed the “diplomatic hand” offered by the White House, Maariv reported. The Islamist regime “opposed any sign of normalization with the US, and refused to grant a ‘prize’ to the Americans,” according to an anonymous Israeli source quoted by the paper.

The information — the lead item on Maariv’s front page, headlined “Obama offered to renew relations with Iran” — comes on the heels of reports earlier this month that the US and Iran held back channel contacts toward establishing direct talks over Tehran’s nuclear program. Both the White House and Iran denied those reports.

According to Maariv, Deputy Secretary of State William Burns met with chief Iranian nuclear negotiator Saeed Jalili for an hour in 2009, and one other meeting between officials from both sides took place as well.

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