ISDEI Instituto de Seguridad, Defensa y Estudios Internacionales

Leaked documents describe Tehran working to counter sanctions by using front companies and official channels. Rahul Radhakrishnan , Will Jordan Iran's efforts to use official and unofficial channels in South Africa to beat western-imposed sanctions have raised concerns within South African security services, according to leaked intelligence documents obtained by Al Jazeera. The Spy Cables provide a detailed account of Tehran allegedly using secret front companies, as well as open diplomatic channels, in its efforts to work around trade restrictions in order to obtain materials for both arms manufacture and other industries. A 128-page "Operational Target Analysis," written by South African spies, profiles dozens of alleged Iranian operatives, listing their names, cover stories, families, addresses and phone numbers. Going so far as to name the gardeners and drivers at its embassy, the report pieces together Iran's intricate network of individuals, businesses and...

Spy Cables reveal Mossad concluded that Iran was not producing nuclear weapons, after PM sounded alarm at UN in 2012. Will Jordan, Rahul Radhakrishnan Less than a month after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's 2012 warning to the UN General Assembly that Iran was 70 percent of the way to completing its "plans to build a nuclear weapon", Israel's intelligence service believed that Iran was "not performing the activity necessary to produce weapons". A secret cable obtained by Al Jazeera's Investigative Unit reveals that Mossad sent a top-secret cable to South Africa on October 22, 2012, that laid out a "bottom line" assessment of Iran's nuclear work. It appears to contradict the picture painted by Netanyahu of Tehran racing towards acquisition of a nuclear bomb. Writing that Iran had not begun the work needed to build any kind of nuclear weapon, the Mossad cable said the Islamic Republic's scientists are "working to close gaps in ar...

By WashingtonsBlog The U.S. Has Only Been At Peace For 21 Years Total Since Its Birth In 2011, Danios wrote : Below, I have reproduced a year-by-year timeline of America’s wars, which reveals something quite interesting: since the United States was founded in 1776, she has been at war during 214 out of her 235 calendar years of existence. In other words, there were only 21 calendar years in which the U.S. did not wage any wars. To put this in perspective: * Pick any year since 1776 and there is about a 91% chance that America was involved in some war during that calendar year. * No U.S. president truly qualifies as a peacetime president. Instead, all U.S. presidents can technically be considered “war presidents.” * The U.S. has never gone a decade without war. * The only time the U.S. went five years without war (1935-40) was during the isolationist period of the Great Depression. * * * Here is a graphic depiction of U.S. wars: And here is the year-by-year timeline of America’s ma...

By Ivan Lizan for Odnako U.S. Gen. “Ben” Hodges’ statement that within four or five years Russia could develop the capability to wage war simultaneously on three fronts is not only an acknowledgment of the Russian Federation’s growing military potential but also a promise that Washington will obligingly ensure that all three fronts are right on the borders of the Russian Federation. In the context of China’s inevitable rise and the soon-to-worsen financial crisis, with the concomitant bursting of asset bubbles, the only way for the United States to maintain its global hegemony is to weaken its opponents. And the only way to achieve that goal is to trigger chaos in the republics bordering Russia. That is why Russia will inevitably enter a period of conflicts and crises on its borders. And so the first front in fact already exists in the Ukraine, the second will most likely be between Armenia and Azerbaijan over Nagorno-Karabakh, and the third, of course, will be opened in Central Asia...

Vehicles of the Special Monitoring Mission of the Organization for Security and Cooperation (OSCE) to Ukraine near Debaltsevo, eastern Ukraine, February 20, 2015. (Reuters/Gleb Garanich) The OSCE monitoring mission in eastern Ukraine has finally arrived in the town of Debaltsevo, after a local militia provided guarantees of security. At the same time Kiev and rebels in Lugansk gave independent reports of prisoner swaps. Representatives of the OSCE special monitoring mission (SMM) in eastern Ukraine arrived at the town of Debaltsevo in the Donetsk region, the mission's spokesperson Michael Bociurkiw announced on Saturday. Access to the area, which had reportedly been a sticking point at the Minsk peace talks, and which continued to be a scene of fighting between the anti-government forces and Kiev troops, was possible with the militia's guarantees of security, Bociurkiw told Ukraine's 112 tv channel. The observers arrived at Debaltsevo along with the Internation...

Video of 21 Egyptian Coptic Christians being marched along a Libyan beach before being beheaded by black-clad members of ISIS is hard for any civilized person to watch, but experts who made it through the sickening, five-minute clip told FoxNews.com Friday they came to the same conclusion: The footage was faked. No one holds out hope the victims, mostly poor fishermen who had gone to Libya to scratch out a living, are still alive. But several anomalies in the video, which was posted online Feb. 15, indicated to trained eyes that at least some of the production was done on "green screen" with background added later, perhaps to disguise the real location of the atrocity. A day after the clip went viral, Egyptian warplanes struck hard at an eastern port city near Tripoli, where the video appeared to have been shot. Fox news continues: “The Islamic State’s manipulation of their high-production videos has become commonplace,” said Veryan Khan, editorial director of the Florida-ba...