15:46 19/12/2008
MOSCOW. (RIA Novosti military commentator Ilya Kramnik)

The likelihood of Russia supplying S-300 surface-to-air systems to Iran has always been a headache for the United States and its allies.

For several years the media has reported the conclusion of a contract or even the actual shipment of long-range air defense missiles to Iran. As a rule, these reports came from Iranian sources and were later denied by Russia.

On December 17, 2008, RIA Novosti, quoting confidential sources, reported on its website that Russia is to deliver S-300 surface-to-air systems to Iran. Which, based on previous experience, is most likely true. How will the balance of strength change in this region if Iran really gets the systems? (Russian mobile surface-to-air missile systems – Image gallery)

Before considering an answer, it is necessary to see what weapons Iran’s armed forces will receive and in what quantities.

[Read the article | hat tip]

Cast Lead in the Foundry
31 December 2008
MERIP: From the Editors

Operation Cast Lead is intended as a hammer blow, but one with the comparatively modest ambition (for now) to “shape a different and new security situation” in the Gaza Strip. In the estimation of the aforementioned senior Bush administration official, “the Israeli goal now is to damage Hamas enough so that Hamas will accept a real truce.”

Electioneering, setting the tone in DC, pacifying Hamas…

Why not laying the rubble and psychological framework for an attack on Iran? Airstrikes begin after a PR campaign laments the breakdown of peace talks with [fill in the blank].

Is it true that “change is coming” when Obama enters the White House? We hope so. Yet the conventional pro-Israel tilt of his campaign indicates otherwise, as does the composition of his foreign policy crew. Obama appears poised to content himself with more energetic US engagement in the sort of flawed negotiations of the Clinton years, the sort that put ending the occupation last, as if the developments of the Bush years had not rendered that approach utterly untenable.

Clinton laid the groundwork for Bush and Sharon’s formaldehyde victims. Obama is coming with a shovel.

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Related:
Michael Theodoulou: Israeli Navy rams Gaza-bound aid boat, forcing it to dock in Lebanon

From the Palestinian Center for Rapprochement Between People

So far hundreds of civilians have been killed in Gaza.  Five sisters in one family, four other children in another home, two children on a cart drawn by a donkey. Universities, colleges, police stations, roads, apartment buildings were all targeted. The UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights in the Occupied Palestinian areas issued a statement that “The Israeli airstrikes on the Gaza Strip represent severe and massive violations of international humanitarian law as defined in the Geneva Conventions, both in regard to the obligations of an Occupying Power and in the requirements of the laws of war.”

Twenty-five things to do to bring peace with justice:

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The body of Arafat Khawaja in Ni'ilin. 28/12/2008

Anarchists Against the Wall
30/12/2008

On Sunday, as the number of dead in Gaza climbed closer to 300 on the second day of Israel’s attack, AATW activists joined a demonstration in the village of Ni’ilin against Israel’s war crimes in Gaza. Israeli forces opened fire on stone-throwing youth, killing one protester and leaving another in critical condition. Arafat Rateb Khawaja, 22 years old, was shot in the back with live ammunition, and died at 14:45 in Ramallah Hospital. Mohammed Kasim Khawaja, 20 years old, was shot in the forehead with live ammunition from close range, and remains in a condition of clinical death in Ramallah hospital.

Updated @ 1346 on 31/12/2008
[againstwall updates:]
Mohamad Hawaje,22 , from Nil’in just died.
He was shot on the 28th of December by soldiers who shot live ammunition and shot him in the forehead.
He is the fourth from Nil’in to have been murdered by the army.

and Jonathan Pollack’s testimony of the demo held in Neilin against IDF’s actions in Gaza, a Demo in which 1 Palestinian was shot dead and another is wounded severely.

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