Guardian report.

The military manoeuvres, in a waterway crucial for global oil supplies, coincided with rising tension between Iran and the west, which fears Tehran's nuclear programme is aimed at developing bombs. Iran denies the charge.

Yesterday, the Pentagon said US military action against Iran remained an option even as Washington pursues diplomacy and sanctions to halt Iran's nuclear activities.

AP report.

The U.S. has ruled out a military strike against Iran's nuclear program any time soon, hoping instead negotiations and United Nations sanctions will prevent the Middle East nation from developing nuclear weapons, a top U.S. defense department official said Wednesday.

"Military force is an option of last resort," Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Michele Flournoy said during a press briefing in Singapore. "It's off the table in the near term."

Wall Street Journal article.

The Israeli security establishment is divided over whether it needs Washington's blessing if Israel decides to attack Iran, Israeli officials say, as the U.S. campaign for sanctions drags on and Tehran steadily develops greater nuclear capability.

From Wired's Danger Room.

Does this represent a shift in American policy towards Israel? Some signal that the U.S. would stop an Israeli first strike at the final moment? Probably not. I'd guess this is Mullen trying not to wade further into treacherous waters. But it was interesting to hear America's top military officer decline to knock down the idea that U.S. troops might fire on America's closest ally in the Middle East.

Times report.

According to one report the Pentagon is moving hundreds of bunker-buster bombs to Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean. The latest version of the weapon, known as the Massive Ordnance Penetrator, is said to weigh 15 tonnes and be capable of burrowing through 200ft of reinforced concrete before exploding.

[...]

It was unclear yesterday who was behind the leak of the Gates memo but the vehemence of the White House response suggests that senior Pentagon figures may be responsible. A similar pattern shadowed Mr Obama's decision to deploy 30,000 more troops to Afghanistan last year.

Independent article.

It is one of the few genuine issues of life and death during this general election campaign. It will not dictate how much any British school improves, how many police appear on the streets of a city, or how quickly patients are allowed to leave hospitals around the country. But it will, literally, decide the fate of thousands of British service personnel and, ultimately, how many of them live and die.

Yet nobody wants to talk about Afghanistan.

Times report.

Israel has delivered a secret warning to Syrian President Bashar Assad that it will respond to missile attacks from Hezbollah, the militant Lebanese-based Islamist group, by launching immediate retaliation against Syria itself.

In a message, sent earlier this month, Israel made it clear that it now regards Hezbollah as a division of the Syrian army and that reprisals against Syria will be fast and devastating.

Reuters report.

The nation's top military officer said on Sunday that military options existed to try to prevent Iran from getting a nuclear weapon but that diplomatic efforts were the best way forward now.

"We in the Pentagon, we plan for contingencies all the time and certainly there are options which exist" for dealing with the Iran nuclear threat militarily, Admiral Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told a forum at Columbia University in New York.

New York Times report.

Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates has warned in a secret three-page memorandum to top White House officials that the United States does not have an effective long-range policy for dealing with Iran's steady progress toward nuclear capability, according to government officials familiar with the document.

Several officials said the highly classified analysis, written in January to President Obama's national security adviser, Gen. James L. Jones, came in the midst of an intensifying effort inside the Pentagon, the White House and the intelligence agencies to develop new options for Mr. Obama. They include a set of military alternatives, still under development, to be considered should diplomacy and sanctions fail to force Iran to change course.

Laura Rozen on Politico.

The White House is confirming that President Barack Obama received a letter from Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad last month.

"Yes, President Ahmadinejad sent a letter to the President in March," National Security Council spokesman Michael Hammer told POLITICO Saturday. "We are not going to get into details on the content of the correspondence at this time."

Robert Fisk in the Independent.

A clue to the seriousness with which everyone now takes the possibility of war is contained in a remark made by an anonymous US spokesman who warned that the transfer of Scud missiles to Hizbollah would represent a "serious risk" to Lebanon. Not to Israel, mark you -- but to Lebanon. There is no doubt that this is an allusion to frequent threats from the Israelis themselves that in another war with Hizbollah, the Lebanese government would be held responsible and as a result Lebanon's infrastructure would be destroyed.

From TPM.

Congressman Adam Schiff hosted a "Members Only" meeting of the 'Congressional Friends of Jordan Caucus' in the US House of Representatives this morning in the CVC Congressional Meeting Room with Jordan's King Abdullah II.

According to one attendee in the session, "the King's message was sobering." King Abdullah seemed significantly concerned that conflict was about to break out again between Israel and Hezbollah in Lebanon. One congressional source told me that the word the King used was 'imminent' with regard to the potential outbreak of war.

USA Today report. The document referred to is here (PDF).

The White House has warned state and local governments not to expect a "significant federal response" at the scene of a terrorist nuclear attack for 24 to 72 hours after the blast, according to a planning guide.

President Obama told delegates from 47 nations at the Nuclear Security Summit on Tuesday that it would be a "catastrophe for the world" if al-Qaeda or another terrorist group got a nuclear device, because so many lives would be lost and it would be so hard to mitigate damage from the blast.

The Leveretts (Race for Iran) comment.

We have previously emphasized that the "Iranian exception" in the Nuclear Posture Review, from a purely strategic perspective, actually incentivizes Iran to move toward weaponization of its expanding nuclear capabilities. However, a www.TheRaceForIran.com reader in Iran argued that the real issue regarding the "Iranian exception" in the Nuclear Posture Review is not the prospect of "any change in Iran's policy regarding its nuclear program", but rather

"that the Iranians see Obama and even the U.S. media in a different light than before. To see a U.S. president threaten a nation with mass murder and then see that the U.S. and Western media is not outraged is a clear sign that Iran should never trust the U.S."

Andy Worthington writes.

Those of us who have been studying the recent career of Col. Lawrence Wilkerson were not surprised when, last week, he submitted a declaration (PDF) in a lawsuit seeking compensation from the US government that was filed by former Guantánamo prisoner Adel Hassan Hamad. A Sudanese hospital worker, Hamad was sold to US forces by their unscrupulous Pakistani allies in the summer of 2002, but was only released from Guantánamo in December 2007.

In the declaration, Col. Wilkerson, who served in the US military for 31 years and was Chief of Staff to Secretary of State Colin Powell from August 2002 until January 2005, stated that George W. Bush, Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld all knew -- and didn't care -- that "the vast majority of Guantánamo detainees were innocent."

Last March, Col. Wilkerson wrote a guest column for The Washington Note, "Some Truths About Guantánamo Bay," in which he first laid out some of his major complaints about the failures of the Bush administration's detention policies in the "War on Terror." In his column, Col. Wilkerson decried "the utter incompetence of the battlefield vetting in Afghanistan during the early stages of the US operations there," and explained, "Simply stated, no meaningful attempt at discrimination was made in-country by competent officials, civilian or military, as to who we were transporting to Cuba for detention and interrogation."

Guardian report.

At least 71 civilians were killed by a misdirected air strike in Pakistan's tribal zone against suspected extremists, locals claimed today, as thousands of people flee a western-backed military offensive against Taliban and al-Qaida fighters in the area.