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Saudis Turn to Russia in Move to Re-Balance Mideast

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Photo Credit: WND Saudi Arabia is proposing a sweeping deal to Russia that solidifies Moscow’s position in the Middle East and Persian Gulf largely at the expense of the United States, according to informed Egyptian security officials.

The deal incorporates increased Russian involvement in Egypt, Syria and the Persian Gulf, and even involves a Saudi guarantee to aid against terror plots targeting the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia.

The Egyptian officials said the deal seeks to replace the U.S. with Russia as the major weapons dealer to Egypt.

However, the weapons sales to Cairo are only the tip of the potential re-balancing iceberg that follows a major fallout with the Saudis after President Obama’s outreach efforts to Iran.

The Saudis asked for the removal of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad while Riyadh would help establish a permanent central Russian role in the future of Syria, with a military presence in the country, the officials said.

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Navy Deploying New Attack Laser to Persian Gulf (+video)

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Photo Credit: NY Times

The Navy is going to sea for the first time with a laser attack weapon that has been shown in tests to disable patrol boats and blind or destroy surveillance drones.

A prototype shipboard laser will be deployed on a converted amphibious transport and docking ship in the Persian Gulf, where Iranian fast-attack boats have harassed American warships and where the government in Tehran is building remotely piloted aircraft carrying surveillance pods and, someday potentially, rockets.

The laser will not be operational until next year, but the announcement on Monday by Adm. Jonathan W. Greenert, the chief of naval operations, seemed meant as a warning to Iran not to step up activity in the gulf in the next few months if tensions increase because of sanctions and the impasse in negotiations over the Iranian nuclear program. The Navy released video and still images of the laser weapon burning through a drone during a test firing.

The laser is designed to carry out a graduated scale of missions, from burning through a fast-attack boat or a drone to producing a nonlethal burst to “dazzle” an adversary’s sensors and render them useless without causing any other physical damage. The Pentagon has a long history of grossly inflating claims for its experimental weapons, but a nonpartisan study for Congress said the weapon offered the Navy historic opportunities.

Watch video here:

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Video: Woodward Says Obama’s Decision Not To Deploy Carrier ‘A Kind Of Madness,’ White House Threatens

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Bob Woodward said this evening on CNN that a “very senior person” at the White House warned him in an email that he would “regret doing this,” the same day he has continued to slam President Barack Obama over the looming forced cuts known as the sequester.

CNN host Wolf Blitzer said that the network invited a White House official to debate Woodward on-air, but the White House declined.

“It makes me very uncomfortable to have the White House telling reporters, ‘You’re going to regret doing something that you believe in,'” Woodward said.

“I think they’re confused,” Woodward said of the White House’s pushback on his reporting.

Earlier today on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe,” Woodward ripped into Obama in what has become an ongoing feud between the veteran Washington Post journalist and the White House. Woodward said Obama was showing a “kind of madness I haven’t seen in a long time” for a decision not to deploy an aircraft carrier to the Persian Gulf because of budget concerns.

See video on White House threat:

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Iran prepping for final confrontation with West, arrival of Islamic messiah, 12th imam

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The Quds Forces, a special Iranian unit of thousands of operatives tasked with exporting Iran’s Islamic revolution, are being told to step up preparations for terrorism for the coming of the last Islamic messiah and the destruction of the West.

Ali Saeedi, the Iranian supreme leader’s representative to the Revolutionary Guards, emphasized during a Friday sermon in Tehran that the Islamic republic must directly confront America so that the necessary environment is created for the reappearance of Mahdi, the Shiite’s 12th imam, who will kill all infidels and raise the flag of Islam in all corners of the world.

“In three points of history, God directly confronts the will of unruly humans in which, of course, the Right will overcome the False,” Saeedi said, according to the Sepah News, the Guards’ official publication. “The first point in history was during the era of pharaoh, the second era was Bani Abbas, and the third is our current era in which it seems that God has willed us to enlighten the world with the coming of Imam Mahdi.”

Saeedi, “Many of the signs [necessary] for the coming have taken place during the previous years; however, the main sign will take place right before the coming.”

There are five levels of readiness that have to be prepared for the coming, he said: “Individual readiness, the readiness for creating the environment, systematic readiness, the readiness in the region and the international readiness. This means Occupy Wall Street must take place, the Americans must lose hope with the Democratic Party and others, and lose faith in the U.N., while at the same time the unraveling in the Middle East, which was not ripe before, must have taken place before the coming.”

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Ambassador Bolton’s Blunder

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Photo credit: Gage Skidmore

I received a form letter from the Honorable Ambassador John R. Bolton, U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations (2005-2006) and member of the Board of Directors of The American Conservative Union (ACU). A FOX-news contributor, he has been a tenacious and outspoken advocate of US efforts to prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons.

Below the bold red lettering at the top, “Stop Iran’s Nuclear 9-11,” Bolton confirmed his belief that the future of our American cities are in imminent danger from an Iranian atomic-bomb threat. He described Iran as the rogue, terror-sponsoring regime that calls America “the Great Satan” and vows to wipe our ally, Israel, off the face of the Earth. He reminded me, the reader, of his testimony before the House Foreign Affairs Committee, when he expressed his concern about “the Obama Administration’s inept and dangerous policy failure in the Middle East.”

But it was the petition that disturbed me. The heading included the U.S. Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, naming the Honorable John F. Kerry, chairman, and Honorable Richard C. Lugar, ranking member. The petition’s conclusion was, “Therefore, I believe we ought to give Israel our full support for a preemptive strike against Iran’s nuclear weapons program if we don’t do it ourselves.”

I never quite grasped the phrase, “I have your back,” but now it was clear. It means “You go in front to meet the enemy head-on, and I’ll bring up the rear. And if you don’t survive the first full surge of the battle, I’ll be in a good position to make a hasty retreat.”

It seems to me that Bolton can’t promise much from his position as past ambassador, and that the once-great United States of America has been brought down several pegs so as to no longer warrant the title of Leader of the Free World. Therefore, in an effort to thwart Iran’s objectives, Bolton will send the tiny Jewish nation, which is no bigger than one of our smallest states, to lead an attack on Iran, to which he hopes — but can’t promise — to provide some undetermined support.

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US rushing dozens of submersible killer drones to Persian Gulf

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The Navy is rushing dozens of unmanned underwater craft to the Persian Gulf to help detect and destroy mines in a major military buildup aimed at preventing Iran from closing the strategic Strait of Hormuz in the event of a crisis, U.S. officials said.

The tiny SeaFox submersibles each carry an underwater television camera, homing sonar and an explosive charge. The Navy bought them in May after an urgent request by Marine Gen. James Mattis, the top U.S. commander in the Middle East.

Each submersible is about 4 feet long and weighs less than 100 pounds. The craft are intended to boost U.S. military capabilities as negotiations with Iran over its nuclear program appear to have stalled. Three rounds of talks since April between Iran and the five countries in the United Nations Security Council plus Germany have made little progress.

Some U.S. officials are wary that Iran may respond to tightening sanctions on its banking and energy sectors, including a European Union oil embargo, by launching or sponsoring attacks on oil tankers or platforms in the Persian Gulf. Some officials in Tehran have threatened to close the narrow waterway, a choke point for a fifth of the oil traded worldwide.

The first of the SeaFox submersibles arrived in the Gulf in recent weeks, officials said, along with four MH-53 Sea Dragon helicopters and four minesweeping ships, part of a larger buildup of U.S. naval, air and ground forces in the region aimed at Iran.

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Photo credit: Official U.S. Navy Imagery