Armada of international naval power massing in the Gulf....

[revdode]

The story is not new in itself but I was quite surprised to see it making it into the news so directly. Especially the tone of the ending paragraphs which as well as indicating Iran as mad, bad and dangerous paints Israel as the party most likely to initiate the opening acts in what would be a messy and hellish war.

Armada of international naval power massing in the Gulf as Israel prepares an Iran strike

[Little John]

The story is not new in itself but I was quite surprised to see it making it into the news so directly. Especially the tone of the ending paragraphs which as well as indicating Iran as mad, bad and dangerous paints Israel as the party most likely to initiate the opening acts in what would be a messy and hellish war.

Armada of international naval power massing in the Gulf as Israel prepares an Iran strike

Here we bloody go

[SleeperService]

If you wrote a book about this it wouldn't be published as it would be unbelievable.

If I were in No 10 I'd be getting our presence out of there ASAP.

[adam2]

It is all a bit worrying, but let us remember that large scale naval exercises are held every few years and do not normally preceed a war.

Likwise Israel and Iran hate each other, have hated each other for years, threaten each other regularly, engage in low level skirmishes from time to time, but do not often engage in all out war.

A serious confrontation is certainly possible, but not perhaps as inevitable as some believe.

Allways a good idea though to reduce ones reliance on "the system" and to keep stocks, just in case.

Edit to add, any serious conflict would be expected to restrict oil supplies and thus to increase prices.
The market is obviously not forecasting war in the near term as oil prices have fallen, not increased.

[featherstick]

It is all a bit worrying, but let us remember that large scale naval exercises are held every few years and do not normally preceed a war.

Likwise Israel and Iran hate each other, have hated each other for years, threaten each other regularly, engage in low level skirmishes from time to time, but do not often engage in all out war.

A serious confrontation is certainly possible, but not perhaps as inevitable as some believe.

Allways a good idea though to reduce ones reliance on "the system" and to keep stocks, just in case.

Edit to add, any serious conflict would be expected to restrict oil supplies and thus to increase prices.
The market is obviously not forecasting war in the near term as oil prices have fallen, not increased.

Taleb states in Black Swan that the market is not the predictor of conflict it is sometimes taken to be. Not saying you´re wrong, just that the picture isn#t clear.

[PS_RalphW]

The recent fall in oil prices has been pinned down to a single large sell order of Brent on the London exchange. This triggered large scale selling on by high speed automatic trading systems. There is an investigation, but the orginal sale order will be hard to track down.

A large rise in US stocks caused a further fall yesterday, but prices have rebounded a dollar today.

I guess we are seeing the limits of speculation on the price of oil - about 5- 7%.

[biffvernon]

We never said the future wasn't gong to be bumpy

[biffvernon]

Crazier and dafter:

http://stopwar.org.uk/index.php/iran/18 ... ck-on-iran

A LIBERAL DEMOCRAT Defence Minister has claimed he was sacked to avoid a damaging Coalition split over a pre-emptive strike on Iran.
Former Armed Forces Minister Sir Nick Harvey told friends that he was fired in the reshuffle to allow Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg to sign Britain up to an Israeli-US preventive strike to take out Iran’s nuclear installations.
Friends of Sir Nick – who was handed a knighthood just days later – say that he could have embarrassed the Lib Dem leader by being too critical of Israel’s actions if he had still been in the key Ministry of Defence (MoD) post.

[DominicJ]

Except the UK has zero capability to support or deny a US/Israeli attack on Iran.

We couldnt help or hinder if our lives depended on it.
Beyond providing a completely irrelevant vote at tyrants r us.

[JavaScriptDonkey]

I can't help but wonder about what is really going on here.

The IAEA has stated that Iran's nuclear program (that has been ongoing since initially started by the Yanks in the 50s) is completely peaceful. IIRC they have stated that Iran has the technology to enrich Uranium to 5% which is about right for power generation. Weapons grade goes to around 90%.

I can't believe that the IAEA don't know what's going on in Iraq and I can't believe that the US & Israel wouldn't be screaming from the roof tops if they had any actual evidence.

[Little John]

I can't help but wonder about what is really going on here.

The IAEA has stated that Iran's nuclear program (that has been ongoing since initially started by the Yanks in the 50s) is completely peaceful. IIRC they have stated that Iran has the technology to enrich Uranium to 5% which is about right for power generation. Weapons grade goes to around 90%.

I can't believe that the IAEA don't know what's going on in Iraq and I can't believe that the US & Israel wouldn't be screaming from the roof tops if they had any actual evidence.

I'm not sure what you mean here JSD. Are you saying you can't believe that the USA and Israel would tell lies as a pretext to a war, or are you saying the opposite?

[JavaScriptDonkey]

I'm not sure what you mean here JSD. Are you saying you can't believe that the USA and Israel would tell lies as a pretext to a war, or are you saying the opposite?

They haven't offered any evidence of their claims and I believe that if they had that evidence they would take every opportunity to shout about it.

They know Iran doesn't have the capability to produce nuclear weapons and isn't likely to any time soon so why attack the nuclear facilities?

[Little John]

I'm not sure what you mean here JSD. Are you saying you can't believe that the USA and Israel would tell lies as a pretext to a war, or are you saying the opposite?

They haven't offered any evidence of their claims and I believe that if they had that evidence they would take every opportunity to shout about it.

They know Iran doesn't have the capability to produce nuclear weapons and isn't likely to any time soon so why attack the nuclear facilities?

Well, exactly.

In which case, what else does Iran possess or have influence over that the USA would wish otherwise? Could it be, perhaps that Iran has the fourth largest proven reserves of crude oil in the world?

[Kentucky Fried Panda]

WWIII