TEHRAN POLICE SHOOT INTO PROTESTERS, KILL 4

"Iranian police opened fire on protesters in Tehran... killing at least four people... crowds marched down a central avenue ... They refused to retreat even as police fired tear gas, charged them with batons and discharged warning shots. The police then opened fire directly into the crowd... One of the dead was Ali Moussavi... a nephew of the opposition leader Mir Hussein Moussavi... He was shot near the heart..."
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/28/world/middleeast/28iran.html?_r=1&hp

ISRAELI ATTACK WOULD RESULT IN RETALIATION AGAINST U.S. SPONSOR

"... it must be a distinct possibility that Israel will indeed launch a massive air assault, feasibly backed up by cruise missiles launched from submarines in the Arabian Sea sometime next year... A very significant proportion of the munitions... would be "Made in the USA".... Iran may... be far more vengeful against those who made the weapons, trained the pilots, built the aircraft and who Tehran ultimately blames for sponsoring and protecting its attacker... Iran's response may therefore be to blindly strike back at any and all available targets, whether Israeli or Western, and by any means left to it, including missile strikes and attacks by its worldwide network of supporters, including Hezbollah and Hamas... "
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/KL22Ak04.html

AHMADINEJAD SAYS U.S. SPURNED NUCLEAR DEAL

"Ahmadinejad... said his country's cooperation on its nuclear programme had been spurned... He once again dismissed a year-end deadline on a U.N.-drafted fuel deal, saying it was "meaningless"... The deal requires Iran to ship most of its low-enriched uranium (LEU) abroad in exchange for fuel for a Tehran research reactor... Ahmadinejad said Iran had made the proposal, and according to the regulations the offer of fuel was unconditional but "they are insisting that to have conditions for giving us the fuel -- political conditions"...

"Iran says its uranium enrichment programme is solely aimed at generating electricity so it can export more gas and oil.The West believes Iran wants to make atomic bombs..."

here
http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSLDE5BM1IY

NUCLEAR MEMO A FABRICATION

December 22
"Ahmadinejad, rejected the notion that a memo published last week by a British newspaper shows that Iran has been working on a trigger for a nuclear weapon... said that the document was one of “a fabricated bunch of papers continuously being forged and disseminated by the American government”...
"Intelligence officials say they have yet to authenticate” the two-page Persian-language document... which describes research Iran would need to conduct on an advanced technology to detonate a nuclear weapon, if it was to develop one... (and that) This information’s been sloshing around for well over a year..."
http://thelede.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/12/22/ahmadinejad-calls-nuclear-claims-a-joke/?sudsredirect=true

December 28
"U.S. intelligence has concluded that the document... which purportedly describes an Iranian plan to do experiments on what the newspaper described as a "neutron initiator" for an atomic weapon, is a fabrication... intelligence sources say that the United States had nothing to do with forging the document, and that Israel is the primary suspect... The Rupert Murdoch chain has been used extensively to publish false intelligence from the Israelis... (the) Murdoch publishing empire... includes the Sunday Times, Fox News and the New York Post. All Murdoch-owned news media report on Iran with an aggressively pro-Israeli slant..."
http://ipsnorthamerica.net/news.php?idnews=2758

OBAMA SAYS U.S. UNABLE TO PREVENT ISRAELI ATTACK

"President Barack Obama has warned... that the United States would not be able to keep Israel from attacking Iranian nuclear installations for much longer... ... if it does not accept Western proposals for its nuclear program... The Iranian government, its military and intelligence services go out of their way to needle the West in a manner that suggests that they still harbor the illusion of surviving such a military confrontation..."
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/KL22Ak04.html

LIMBAUGH CALLS FOR MASSIVE BOMBING, WAR


"On his show Friday, Rush Limbaugh warned his listeners that "if we don't pound Iran into submission at some point they are going to get the bomb." Unhappy with Obama's "appeasement mentality," Limbaugh insisted that the only choice was to go to war:
'Let's be blunt here: the only way to stop them is to destroy the Iranian regime, the mullahs, and that can only be accomplished through war. And by war I don't mean ground troops; I mean massive bombing raids intended to destroy every one of the key targets..."
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/12/18/limbaugh-calls-for-massiv_n_397715.html

CAMPUS PROTESTS ACROSS IRAN

"Campuses across Iran erupted in protests Monday as defiant college students chanting anti-government slogans clashed with security forces armed with clubs in a forceful new round of confrontations over the nation's disputed June presidential election... amateur videotape posted on the Internet showed thousands of anti-government students chanting slogans and gathering on various campuses around the country... in the central Iranian cities of Esfahan, Shiraz and Kerman, in the eastern city of Mashhad and in the western cities of Tabriz, Kermanshah, Hamedan and Ilam as well as in Rasht on the Caspian Sea... Fewer of the slogans were aimed at Ahmadinejad and more at Iran's theocracy-based political system, a shift that could... destabilize the Islamic Republic..."
http://www.latimes.com/news/nation-and-world/la-fg-iran-protests8-2009dec08,0,7136715.story

IRAN DEBATES LEAVING NUCLEAR TREATY

"... Parliament speaker Ali Larijani said there was little point in Iran staying in the treaty if it was liable to be reprimanded by the International Atomic Energy Agency for exercising its right to develop peaceful nuclear energy... However, Ali Akbar Salehi, head of Iran's atomic energy agency... (said) Tehran had no wish to leave the NPT... (saying) "Our spiritual leader says that to obtain nuclear weapons is a sin -- if we wanted to obtain nuclear weapons we would leave the Non-Proliferation Treaty. We are naturally enduring a lot of pressure but we will remain in the treaty..."
http://www.reuters.com/article/topNews/idUSHAF93199320091130