Qatar Airways unholy alliance with IranAir

[RoyHudd]

Sanction-dodging on a big scale has been taking place with QR operating IranAir and Mahan Air's domestic routes via Doha. According to BBC reports, the long game of Qatar Airways is to monopolize IR's intenational routes.

This stinks to high heaven, A...h are you listening? And the UK's complicity with Manston Airport providing fuel for IranAir's London flights also reeks.

Should the embargo extend to QR?

[L'aviateur]

Ah yes, lets rule the world shall we? I'm sorry but Iran aren't going to start a war, the USA and Israel are instigating a war!
This is becoming ridiculous, these restrictions on Iran only hinder the innocent peaceful citizens.

[c46r]

L'aviateur
Why don't you tell the mullas

[Hotel Tango]

I'm sorry but Iran aren't going to start a war

Well, apart from their public declaration of intent to annihilate Israel that is.

[Load Toad]

I've got a stated intent to lose weight but it never comes to owt.

[Hotel Tango]

You're obviously not that fanatical about losing weight then.

[parabellum]

I'm sorry but Iran aren't going to start a war,


But telling the US 5th Fleet it cannot come back to it's home base is very provocative, don't you agree L'aviateur?, Iran may not fire the first shot but surely they will start the war, if it happens?

[Finals19]

Well, apart from their public declaration of intent to annihilate Israel that is.

Ah yes, good old Israel...the country who refuse to sign the non proliferation treaty on nuclear arms and indeed even refuse to deny proliferation thereof..whereas the rest of the middle east does?? Israel are itching to attack Iran (or should I say make the US attack them on their behalf). Three words...pot..kettle..black

:ok:

[Antman]

Intresting article, live and let live I say.

Nuclear Iran - Flimsy Pretext for Aggression

January 3, 2012

Far from causing war, nuclear weapons prevent war. Except when the West uses them as an pretext for aggression.

by Andrew Smith
(henrymakow.com)

I view the hysteria in this country over Iran's nuclear energy program with amusement.

Here we are holding the largest stockpile of NUKES on the planet--AND A HISTORY OF USING THEM--telling the rest of the world who can and can't have them.

To say this is hypocrisy at it's height is a gross understatement. It's out there in the stratosphere of hubris and arrogance. People forget that without NUKES, we would have had several more world wars after WWII ended.

If Russia had no nukes to DETER AMERICA, we would have been at war in a WEST against EAST conflagration.

Iran needs nukes beyond the obvious deterrent capability against Israel (which has NUKES) but also more importantly--in my opinion--nuclear power is a technology that cannot be ignored if a nation intends to stay on its evolutionary path of technological progress.

Abdicating that right of knowledge in the field of nuclear technology is condemning that nation to a second class status in the technological world. When Iran says it wants to build nuclear power plants for peaceful purposes and how its research on this technology is aimed towards peaceful pursuits as well, it's funny how the American media people dismiss that notion out of hand. Yet they know it was the study of atoms which opened the door towards advancement in the nuclear biology field and discovery of DNA.

ONLY America has used nukes on another nation. Israel has placed its future on the deterrence capability of it's nuclear arsenal. Pakistan acquiring nukes actually prevented another India/Pak war. They fought three times and once they acquired nukes, it seems deterrence works. They were nose to nose only two decades ago--with over a million troops a stone throw away from each other--and now seem to be talking more and on a political track to resolving their outstanding issues. Absent nukes in this equation, we could have seen war number 4 between those two adversaries.

How can we allow Pakistan, which aids the Taliban, to have nuclear weapons, but not Iran?

Iran has no choice but to pursue nuclear technology. Bush made that clear when he invaded Iraq. It's insane for any country in that region, evermore so for Iran, to have Israel with nukes.

And yet while India, Pakistan, Russia, and China also have these weapons--not to mention countries in Europe--but Iran--THE PROUD PERSIAN PEOPLE-- should be denied this deterrence?

Get a grip on your gullibility because the American news services are preparing us to go to war with Iran. You may wonder why? The Iranians are close to producing clean, reliable nuclear energy like the United States, Japan, France, Germany, Brazil, Russia, South Korea, Ukraine, Canada, United Kingdom, Spain, Sweden, Belgium Taiwan, India, Pakistan, and about 25 other nations.

So why can't the Persian people of Iran use Nuclear Energy too? And even if they produced nuclear weapons, they could never test them without immediate detection.

If they produced nuclear weapons, they know they would be "toast" if they used them. Iran did fight back after we armed Iraq and Iran had to fight back, but besides that purely defensive maneuver the Persians have done nothing aggressive in 3000 years. Sadly we can't say the same for the USA, UK or modern Israel.

The genie is out of the bottle.

We need to get over it.

[punkalouver]

I'm sorry but Iran aren't going to start a war, the USA and Israel are instigating a war!


I think Iran already instigated a war...against their own citizens when they peacefully protested after the last elections.

Of course there is that terrible "little satan" of Israel. You know... the one with the best treated Syrians around(Golan Heights). Don't see any of them making a big issue to return to the Assad's homeland.

[THR MCT]

thanks Antman

Very nice article
Let all this mass murder go to hell, everybody knows that the region, i should say the world will not sustain another war.
Americans need to start their Arab spring to get ride of this giant octopus the
"sionist lobby" .

For the happy gigs in this forum
If this actors : USA, ISRAEL and IRAN decide to start a war we all lose our job
We should send all this folks to explore space so we can live in peace overhere
I'm just trying to rise 3 children

Be safe fly high and fast:ok:ok:

[Black Pudding]

IranAir and Mahan Air's domestic routes via Doha

Really ??? I fly for Qatar Airways and not sure about this ? We fly for Qatar Airways and not Iran Air or Mahan Air. What a load of bollocks

[dabrat]

Why Is Britain Ramping Up Sanctions Against Iran?
Posted: 6/1/12 17:35 GMT

'The dog returns to its vomit, and the sow returns to her mire/ And the burnt fool's bandaged finger goes wabbling back to the fire." Kipling was right. Britain is out of Iraq and desperate to get out of Afghanistan. So why gird ourselves for a fight with Iran, a proud country of 75 million people with whom we cannot go to war without taking leave of our senses?

Do any of Britain's leaders really think further economic sanctions will stop Iran's nuclear programme? I cannot believe it. Sanctions did not topple Saddam Hussein, Slobodan Milosevic or Muammar Gaddafi; they led merely to war. Sanctions have been imposed on Iran for 33 years because there was nothing else to do. They have done no good and almost certainly been counterproductive in reinforcing autocracy.

Washington has announced new commercial and financial sanctions on Iran, blacklisting anyone who does business with it. With an election in the offing, President Obama must show America's pro-Israel lobby that he is tough somewhere in the Middle East. The EU must this month decide whether to collude with the US in this dangerous game and ban Iran's oil exports. The threat was enough to get Tehran to test medium-range missiles in the Gulf, and its wilder heads to murmur about closing the Straits of Hormuz, thus blocking a third of the world's sea-borne oil.

This sabre-rattling - in the midst of a recession - is beyond stupid. No one has seriously doubted that Iran's government, surrounded by nuclear-armed or nuclear-allied powers, would one day seek a similar capability. It is the nature of well-resourced and insecure regimes to find comfort in "the ultimate weapon". It seems of no account that no war fought by a nuclear power has seen such a weapon even threatened. It was not a factor in Korea, Vietnam, the Falklands, the Caucasus, Kashmir or numerous Middle East conflicts. The one time such weapons were "on the table" was over Cuba in 1962 - and then they probably helped prevent war.

Any fool may say, you cannot be too careful. It is the motto of the arms race. Israel has a nuclear capability for that reason, and that is why Iran wants one. A pre-emptive Israeli strike on Iran's nuclear plants might postpone their work, but make eventual war more likely. I would prefer it if Iran had no such missiles, but that is hardly for Britain to say when it demands "the right" to its own. In this case, what matters is the avoidance of escalation, of the megaphone belligerence that makes some western leaders vulnerable to the "inevitability" of war.

The only question for the west over the last three decades has been how to respond to Iran's fundamentalist leadership and, more recently, its craving for nuclear status. The answer has been of startling ineptitude. The attempt to set up pro-west regimes in Iraq and Afghanistan led the west to upset the balance of power established by the Iran-Iraq war and the Taliban-Pakistan regime in Kabul. Now the Iraq occupation has secured for Tehran unprecedented influence in Baghdad. Its influence also penetrates deep into western Afghanistan, and its support for resistance movements in the Gulf sheikhdoms is said to be growing by the year. Where now the Foreign Office's famed Arabists?

The long experience of sanctions indicates that they suck the sanctioning powers into confrontation. Their imposition is a prelude either to inert hostility or to war. They embattle the victim regime, driving power and money to its ruling cadres. In Tehran, as in Tripoli and Baghdad in the 1990s, sanctions toppled nobody but made rulers and generals rich. They impoverish not just the poor but the mercantile and professional classes, denying them contact with the outside world. They hasten middle-class emigration and thus reduce the scope for political pluralism and opposition.

Government sources at the weekend rejected all this experience. They claimed tougher sanctions would "hasten Iran's economic collapse and deepen rifts within the regime, in the hope that saner voices will deem the price of pursuing nuclear weapons too high". This commits the democratic fallacy that totalitarian states react to economic pressure as democracies might. Sanctions do not initiate such a process. They just build walls. Meanwhile we are enraging Iran's scientific community by apparently condoning secret assassination as a way of impeding its nuclear programme.

The idea that any nation becomes more malleable when threatened from outside is absurd. A reasonable observer could assume that every utterance from Washington and London at present is scripted to bolster the Iranian leader, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, on his insecure throne. The west's threats must exhilarate the young bloods of the Revolutionary Guard and depress the opposition. They may be supported by Iran's émigrés, but the diaspora is seldom a reliable guide to politics in the home country.

Economic sanctions are coward's diplomacy. They purport to high moral stance but are merely a low-risk way of bullying the world. The danger is that they encourage militarist lobbies to escalate the steps that lead to open conflict.

Those who argue against unnecessary war are routinely asked the father's knee question, "So what would you do?" Taught since 1939 that Britain must be seen to do something, the British are programmed to meddle. There have been occasions in the last 50 years when it has been right to declare hostilities against other nations - the Falklands, Kosovo and the first Iraq war. But usually the answer to "what to do" about foreign regimes of which we disapprove is, quite simply, to do nothing.

For the most part, other nations' business is not ours. In the last 25 years Britain has mostly been useless at putting the world to rights - it has struggled to wrap itself in the tattered flag of empire, at vast expense but to little effect. It would have been better, far better, to maintain good relations with other states in the hope of assisting causes we profess to hold dear. As for rattling a sabre whenever Washington says so, that is the most humiliating idiocy.

This post originally appeared at The Guardian.

[L'aviateur]

I personally suspect the situation with the US 5th Fleet wasn't a case of them sailing straight past, but very very closely observing the exercises. The threat has also been taken out of context, and in some cases poorly translated.

I do not condone Iran, and think there are serious problems. But I don't see Iran to be a country that will fire off a nuke to start a war, even if they are nuclear capable. The reality is that Iran could be destroyed instantly by Israel or the USA, they are a very feeble threat.

When I last visited Iran a few years back, I found the general population to be some of the nicest i've people i've met in my life.

Iran has problems, but somehow I feel that the USA and Israel are provoking them and trying to encourage a war, rather then making every possible effort to create an amicable resolve.

I for one very much hope that a war doesn't start nearby.

[RoyHudd]

world-middle-east-15702685_files

[crewmeal]

And the Iranian authorities haven't even thanked the US for rescuing their sailors. Guess they have egg on their faces now.

OK I was wrong!! According to the UK's Daily Mail it was all theatrical. The Iranians certainly know how to put spin on something,

Iran accuses U.S. of staging pirate rescue like a 'Hollywood drama' as military drills escalate in the Gulf | Mail Online (http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2083645/Iran-accuses-U-S-staging-pirate-rescue-like-Hollywood-drama-military-drills-escalate-Gulf.html)

[L'aviateur]

Fars News Agency who made that statement are an independant News Agency. Seems like Fars is the Iranian equivilent of the Daily Mail.

The Iranian Authorities expressed gratitude.

[jibba_jabba]

Yes Iran may be a little wild, BUT it does not sing to the tune of Wall st and the bankrupt USA.

In terms of provacation: BOTH are as bad as each other, HOWEVER the USA is CLEARLY trying to provoke Iran into an action to justify another arab war! DONT forget the Drone aircraft invading soverign airspace, oh and dont forget the mysterious ikilling of nuclear scientists and mysterious explosions at the Iranian facilities! Gee, how convienient..... Dont make the mistake that the west has good intentions, they just want to control everything, unfortunately that gives more power to a few bankers and governments that will most likely harm civil rights more so than just keeping our western noses out of others affairs.:ugh:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OgfzqulvhlQ

Ps - look at Egypt now....... seems more like the same dictatorship just a different puppet in power?

my 20C worth.... over and out.

[Iver]

Will Iran denounce terrorism, admit to arming militants/terrorists and accept Israel's soverignty? Until then, Iran will be viewed as a rogue state and treated as such.

Too bad the Iranian people have to put up with "I'M A NUT JOB" - he clearly enjoys stirring the pot to the detriment of the people.

[ENFP]

And the Iranian authorities haven't even thanked the US for rescuing their sailors. Guess they have egg on their faces now.

??????

NY Daily News reported as follows;
In a rare display of gratitude, Iran thanked the U.S. Saturday for its role in rescuing 13 fisherman held captive by Somali pirates.
"The rescue of Iranian sailors by American forces is considered a humanitarian gesture and we welcome this behavior," Foreign Ministry spokesman.

Hotel Tango

Well, apart from their public declaration of intent to annihilate Israel that is.
That has never been said, and I bet you know it.


All sanctions will do is hurt the innocent civilians and ultimately push the leadership into a corner where actions will result in the excuse for war. I imagine this poor person is the next political victim in the game of chess in which the US and Israel will always play the final move.

Iran sentences alleged U.S. spy to death - CBS News (http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-202_162-57354909/iran-sentences-alleged-u.s-spy-to-death/)

And while the politicians, the traitors in suits whom we elect to do our bidding play their games more innocent people die.

[capt.magoo]

I THOUGHT THIS WAS PPRUNE ,NOT A POLITICAL WEBSITE????????:mad::ugh:

[slowjet]

Well, it is Capt. A Professional Pilots RUMOUR and NEWS network where political developments will be open to aggresive debate. In particular, where it impacts the lives and aspirations of the pilot community. Keep it going. Some very worthwhile opinions expressed here, with some, clearly, well informed. Of course there is the rubbish posts too, but that is all the fun of lively debate. Freedom to express. Keep it coming Pprune !

[Flytdeck]

Never argue with an idiot. S/he will drag you down to his/her level then beat you with experience. ;)

[capt.magoo]

FAIR ENOUGH SLOWJET,YOU HAVE A POINT THERE :ok:

[Arooba]

Great Post Jibba! It gives some relief to see that the propaganda (lies) perpetrated by our western governments is not swallowed by everyone.

[Mr R Sole]

It was announced by QR some time ago that they were looking at the feasibility of operating domestic routes within Iran, so it is not new news. I suspect the lack of progress is directly linked to the political instability.