Leader’s “No Negotiations” Statement Guarantees Iran’s Success

By: Kayhan Int’l 

"Corruption has appeared on land and at sea because of the doings of the people’s hands, that He may make them taste something of what they have done, so that they may come back (to their senses).” (Holy Qur’an 30:41)

God Almighty has warned in clear words about corruption and its consequences; and in obedience to Divine Commandments the Leader of the Islamic Revolution, appalled at economic turmoil in the Islamic Republic as a result of dishonesty of certain elements trying to cash in on the US threats and sanctions against Iran, said in an explicit tone:

"The source of the current economic problems is internal mismanagement rather than external factors… Sanctions may have played a role in creating the current economic situation, but domestic factors are stronger role players in this matter. If actions are taken more efficiently, more prudently, more swiftly and more firmly, sanctions cannot have much effect and they can be resisted.”

In his memorable address to a huge gathering in Tehran on Monday, Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei said social justice warrants due punishment of the principal offenders – in order to stem the economic rot that saboteurs had either wittingly or unwittingly committed and which Washington wants to exploit for forcing the Islamic Republic to submit to its yoke.

He outlined the American method of so-called negotiations that aim to extract the maximum concessions from the other party without giving anything in return –as is evident in all cases anywhere in the world where the "untrustworthy and unreliable US” is involved – and posed the question: "Now should we negotiate with such a sham government?”

The farsighted Leader’s remarks that "JCPOA was a clear example in this regard; though I was very exigent about it, the red lines were not really respected”, are indicative of the fact that Iranian negotiators were hoodwinked in Geneva into believing the empty commitments of the US and agreeing to the unwarranted clause for reconfirmation of the 7-nation deal every three months by Washington, after having naively scaled down Iran’s right to uranium enrichment from 20 percent to a mere 3.5 percent.

Dismissing the fears of "timid elements”, Ayatollah Khamenei said without mincing words: "There will be no war, nor will we negotiate with the US. This is the gist of the word that all the Iranian people should know.”

He then added: "I ban negotiations with the US just as Imam [Khomeini] did”.

This clear-cut statement nullifies any notion of any ‘chanced’ meeting between Iranian and American officials at the UN General Assembly in September as some had speculated, without realizing the suicidal effects for the Islamic Republic which at Geneva in 2015 had given much more than required.

Thus, with all ambiguities now removed, all three branches of government, along with other vital organs, should coordinate efforts to nullify effects of the American sanctions, as the Islamic Republic of Iran has weathered the storms of the past forty years including the 8-year devastating war Washington had imposed through its agent, Saddam of the repressive Ba’th minority regime of Iraq.

Today, the US, led by the dastardly dotard Donald Trump is clearly isolated and Insha Allah (God Willing) will meet a humiliating end, as predicted by the Leader of the Islamic Revolution who had said Trump will soon become the foods of insects and snakes.

The circumstance warrant the Judiciary to diligently do its duties to bring to justice the economic saboteurs. The Legislature to formulate the necessary laws to stabilize the economy. The defence industry to upgrade the country’s missile and other defensive systems. The security personnel to ensure the people’s peace from terrorist plots at the country’s borders and beyond in coordination with friendly regional forces in order to preempt any devilish design by the US and its proxies.

And the Executive to devote its efforts, with further confidence, for rooting out corruption, developing the infrastructure, improving agriculture, upgrading industries, promoting trade and commerce, reducing inflation, improving the life standard of the citizens, and the diplomatic drive to present to the world the proper image of the Islamic Republic of Iran.

God’s Promise is true, and He will certainly make the believers triumph over the satanic powers, which cannot do a damn thing despite the fierce rhetoric.

Iran’s cyber attack brings down US “stealth” drone

Contrary to early Western media reports designed to de-flect the fallout from a major tactical reversal, this Lockheed RQ-170 drone did not “crash” in eastern Iran. In fact it was reprogrammed by Iranian engineers and counterespionage experts, during its illegal reconnaissance mission into Iranian airspace in violation of multiple international laws, to land safely at an undisclosed location in Iran.


American hubris is predicated primarily on its claim to technological superiority. This is best reflected in the radar-evading stealth technology used in unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) called drones. To be sure, these are deadly weapons. Ask the Pakistanis, Yemenis and the Somalis — principal victims of its lethal wares. American operators sitting thousands of miles away manipulate them to unleash missiles, incinerating people with the push of a button. This video-game type of warfare has exacted a heavy toll in human life.


The US has not only deployed a vast array of UAVs in Afghanistan and Pakistan but also against Islamic Iran. In the latter case, these are used to spy on Iran’s military and nuclear installations by intruding into its airspace in clear violation of international law as well as an agreement signed with Iran in January 1981. But American rulers — military and civilian — have never been constrained by legal niceties. Rules are for others; America does what it likes and people must get used to it.


Americans had become so intoxicated on the prowess of their drone technology that they thought it was impossible to detect much less bring down. This is nothing new; throughout history bullies have relied on superior weapons. Goliath tried to intimidate opponents by his massive size and body amour until David (a) knocked him out with a slingshot. Abraha’s elephant was driven back by pebble-carrying birds before it could destroy the Ka‘bah; Hizbullah knocked out Israel’s Merkava tanks with shoulder-held missiles in 2006 and now Islamic Iran has brought down a US drone by overriding its computer controls.


On December 4, when Iran’s military commanders announced they had brought down the RQ-170 Sentinel, one of the most sophisticated aircraft in the US drone fleet, it generated global excitement. American officials have not denied deploying a fleet of aircraft against Iran to carry out surveillance of its military and nuclear installations. This is an act of war and if any law governed the world, American rulers would be tried as war criminals. But there is only one law operable today: that of the jungle where might makes right. It is revealing that instead of apologizing for violating Iran’s airspace, US President Barack Obama had the gall to demand Tehran return the drone!


In the war against Islamic Iran, going on for more than 30 years now, successive US regimes have used numerous weapons from terror bombing campaigns, assassination of its top leaders, to war unleashed through Iraq. All these have failed to destroy the Islamic system. In recent years, several Iranian scientists have been assassinated in what is clearly a US-Israeli-British-sponsored campaign. Mujahideen-e Khalq and Jundullah (proxy) terrorists may have pulled the trigger but the forces behind these evil acts are unmistakable. American officials have publicly admitted boosting sales of bunker-busting munitions, fighter jets and other military hardware to Persian Gulf states as well as to Zionist Israel, in attempts to undermine Islamic Iran. The US and its European allies have also imposed stiff sanctions against Tehran to bring it to its knees by crippling it economically, so far unsuccessfully.


But we must return to the story of Iran’s downing of the much-vaunted US drone. Initially, American officials said the drone had malfunctioned and its controllers lost contact. If this were so, the drone’s electronic system would have automatically destroyed the aircraft. It was blind faith in the superiority of their technology that the Americans initially dismissed Iranian claims of bringing down the plane through cyber attack. Iranian specialists captured the drone by exploiting what they knew was its weakest point. They hacked into its GPS system and re-configured its coordinates to make it land at a chosen location of their choice. This was made possible when Iranian electronic warfare specialists, using knowledge of the drone’s GPS system acquired from studying previously downed drones — also claimed by Iranian officials and equally strenuously denied by the Americans — developed a technique that allowed them to cut off the drone’s communications links before reprogramming its GPS to make it land. The fact that the drone was recovered in almost perfect condition has confirmed Iranian claims. “The GPS navigation is the weakest point. By putting noise [jamming] on the communications, you force the bird into autopilot. This is where the bird loses its brain,” said an Iranian engineer, a member of the specialists’ team that brought down the drone.


Iran’s electronic specialists then used a “spoofing” technique which took into “account precise landing altitudes as well as latitudinal and longitudinal data” and caused the drone to “…land on its own where we wanted it to, without having to crack the remote-control signals and communications.” Once the “bird loses its brain”, reprogramming it to land at another location is a simple process, according to Iranian specialists.


When the drone was shown on Iranian television in near-perfect condition, it sent the Pentagon and the entire military top brass into panic. How could people living under stiff sanctions and denied any “Western technology” for decades manage to achieve such a feat, they asked themselves. This is where the Muslims’ reliance on Allah (swt) comes into play. When the US imposed sanctions against the Islamic Republic in 1980, Imam Khomeini had said this was a blessing in disguise. This provided an opportunity for the country to break out of the dependency cycle that has stymied the development and growth of other countries in the world. Iran’s development of cyber capabilities is the direct result of the liberation of the mind from dependency on others and the self-confidence that comes with reliance only on Allah (swt).


True, US sanctions have hurt Iran’s economy but its ability to stand on its feet brings immense satisfaction. The US and its allies would do well to realize that Islamic Iran has development capabilities far beyond the West’s wildest imagination. They must learn to live with this reality or be prepared for many more surprises.

Capturing the spy drone foils US war rhetoric on Iran

By Seyfeddin Kara


The prowling Beast of Kandahar that roared but did not scare its clever captors. It appears that the rising level of sophistication of the Islamic resistance is an unexpected but timely development: when a superior adversary is routinely surprised by its inferiors, then parity is not far behind.



One of the most striking events in post-Revolutionary Iranian history unfolded in early December 2011 when Iranian state TV showed a captured RQ-170 Sentinel, the unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) used by the US for spying. It is one of the most sophisticated planes in the US arsenal and had been kept largely hidden from public eye in order to not risk its top secret spy missions. Until now, only a grainy photo taken at Qandahar airbase in 2009 was seen. The photo created a myth around the Sentinel due to its bizarre shape and speculation about its myriad capabilities were widely circulated to project it as something awesome hence its nickname, the “Beast of Kandahar”.
That is why the world was shocked — the Americans even more so as victims of their own propaganda — when they saw images of the very “beast”, tamed and put on display by its new masters in Iran. The display scenery was carefully prepared by the Revolutionary Guards to mark the significance of the occasion and to gain the upperhand in the on-going cold war with the US. A banner hoisted next to the Sentinel depicted a memorable quote in Farsi from the late Imam Khomeini: “The US cannot do a damn thing.” The Imam had made the statement in the face of US threats of a military attack during occupation of the US Embassy in Tehran by revolutionary students. The embassy was little more than a den of spies, as the Iranians quickly dubbed it, from which were captured thousands of secret documents exposing the Americans’ illegal activities and their links with agents in Iran. The Imam’s memorable statement was later turned into a slogan of the Islamic Revolution and repeated on many occasions.


However, words do not have much effect without action and perhaps that is why the quote had never had so much impact until it was proclaimed on a banner next to the captured US spy plane. Capture of the Sentinel in almost perfect condition caused huge embarrassment, not to mention problems, for the US. Not surprisingly, Washington attempted to play down the significance of the capture of its top of the line spy plane by Iran. Initially, US officials only admitted they had lost an unmanned drone but insisted it was over Afghanistan. They denied it was brought down by the Iranians stating instead “malfunction” had caused its loss. In contrast to the US story, Iranian officials announced they had captured the plane on December 4, some 140 miles inside Iranian territory from the Afghan border.


Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi finally announced Iran’s technological victory over the US: “Regardless of whether the US believes it or not, the armed forces of the Islamic Republic of Iran brought down the aircraft largely intact without assistance from any foreign country.” This was perhaps the biggest single blow that directly smashed US war propaganda that has been going on since its occupation of Iraq in 2003. Hitherto, Iran had had only moderate successes against covert US operations to destabilize the Islamic Republic. These included capturing a major CIA operative, Abdolmalek Rigi who had launched deadly attacks against Revolutionary Guards for several years; breaking US spy rings and capturing a number of CIA operatives inside the country both last May as well as more recently when Iranian television on December 18 showed Amir Mirzaei Hekmati, the CIA spy. Hekmati is of Iranian origin and was trained for nearly a decade by the CIA to penetrate Iran. He came under the Iranian intelligence radar when he was sent to the notorious Bagram Airbase in Afghan-istan from where he was sent into Iran. The US government had the gall to ask for his return. Hekmati’s capture dovetailed that of the drone spy plane.


According an article in the Christian Science Monitor quoting from a European intelligence source, Iran shocked Western intelligence agencies, sometime in last two years when it managed to “blind” a CIA spy satellite by “aiming a laser burst quite accurately.” But none of the previous operations, impressive as they were, matched the significance of the capture of the RQ-170 spy plane in near perfect condition. It was a game changer and has made great impact in several aspects.
Rhetoric of War


While the last active duty US troops left Iraq on December 15, a full two weeks before the stipulated deadline of December 31, 2011, many commentators still cannot fathom why the US invaded Iraq in March 2003. There was no imminent threat to US interests from a badly weakened Saddam regime; it was widely known that Iraq did not possess any weapons of mass destruction, duly confirmed by UN Weapons Inspectors, yet the US invaded the country. The US ended up spending nearly one trillion dollars directly on the eight-year war and suffered 4,500 war dead (the actual cost when payments to injured soldiers and other related items are included, it climbs to nearly $4 trillion). Indeed it also caused irreparable damage to US reputation in the world due to the murder of more than 1.5 million Iraqis and the torture inflicted on many in Abu Ghraib Prison.


Yet the US did not benefit from lucrative contracts to exploit the vast oil resources of Iraq, as was anticipated prior to the invasion. The occupation of Afghanistan should also be taken into account. It has also cost the US dearly, in terms of manpower and economic loss. It was not initially clear why the US had embarked on such a disastrous course but subsequent events have shown that the US had its eyes on the bigger prize: Iran, the sole obstacle to US-Israeli domination of the Muslim East. During the US’s 10-year occupation of Afghanistan, which is ongoing, an unprecedented political, military and intelligence effort was launched to destabilize Iran and pave the way for regime change through supporting their agents inside Iran. This was augmented by threats of air strikes on the Islamic Republic’s power sources as well as nuclear installation. The US used every opportunity to try and weaken Iran.



However, thanks to the support of the Iranian masses, robust deterrence of the armed forces and the handy work of Iranian intelligence, all such US attempts have failed. Realizing that regime change is not an option in Iran anymore, Washington is now going for the second best option: containment of Iran’s influence in the region. The US has shifted its war policy to increasing economic and political isolation of Iran, which would be reinforced through heightened rhetoric of war to exert psychological pressure on Iran. According to this thinking an anxious Iran will be forced to focus on its own security unable to exert influence in the face of regional developments, especially during the post-US occupation era.





Capturing the “beast” turns the tables


The drone is a perfect tool for spying on countries that have a credible air defence system. The drone uses stealth technology to evade radar detection, can fly at extremely high altitudes and can stay in the air for prolonged periods of time to gather intelligence. The Sentinel has multiple state of the art sensors; it can intercept communications in the area as well take air samples to keep a close eye on Iran’s nuclear program. More importantly it has a psychological effect on the targeted countries since the aircraft can violate their airspace at will and capture images of their most heavily guarded secret installations without facing any resistance.


But the Revolutionary Guards have been preparing themselves for capturing the “beast”. They mastered their knowledge of the drone collected from previously downed US drones, and bought some equipment from the Russians. Moscow had delivered the Avtobaza ground-based electronic intelligence and jamming system to Iran three months ago. It is designed to jam side-looking and fire control radars on aircraft and manipulate the guidance and control systems of incoming enemy missiles. Combining their knowledge, skills and creativity with Russian equipment they set up an ambush to catch the prize.


When the Sentinel trespassed into Iranian air space, Iranian specialists first jammed the aircraft communications and forced it to switch to autopilot. On autopilot, the Sentinel is programmed to follow GPS signals to navigate to its home base. It is well known by the Pentagon that the GPS navigations were the weakest point of the UAVs as they are prone to manipulation. Iranians were also aware of this and exploited the simple weakness without having to crack the remote-control signals and communications from the US control centre. Once the plane was on autopilot, the Iranian experts sent their signals from the ground and manipulated the drone’s GPS coordinates to make it land at a nearby Iranian airbase that has similar coordinates to the drone’s home airbase in Afghanistan. This way the drone’s computer assumed it was actually landing at its home base in Afghanistan. This is why the self-destruct mechanism of the drone did not work.


The Russians provided the Avtobaza system to Saddam Husain before the US invasion but they could not make good use of it. Even the Russians themselves could not use the system effectively during the war with Georgia in 2008 as they were helpless against Israeli-supplied Georgian drones and suffered casualties due to information provided by these drones. With their achievement, the Iranian electronic warfare units have gained great respect in the world. But more importantly, Iran has foiled the US war rhetoric by showing that Iranian airspace is not a park for US or Israeli planes. They have advanced technology to detect stealth aircraft, and capability to disable them through jamming.


The US air warfare doctrine has been built upon using satellite guided missiles for attacking enemy targets. By bringing down the drone, which had a more sophisticated satellite navigation system, the Iranians have shown they have the capability to control advanced US missiles in midair and perhaps re-direct them against US targets. Further, once Iranian specialists decipher the drone’s codes they will be able read the data stored in its computer on possible targets marked out by the US. Hence they will know the mind of the enemy. Marking out these targets was a result of a long and arduous process for the CIA; the Iranians can either replace the position of these targets now or reinforce the defence around these areas. This of course would make a US airstrike too risky if not impossible.


By capturing the drone Iran has turned the tables in its psychological war with the US. The US might still continue its belligerent war mongering but everyone and most importantly the Iranians know that US threats of war are a lot of hot air.