Khamenei Warns Iran’s Top Leaders: WAR IN WEEKS

DEBKAfile
 
On July 27, just before Friday prayers, Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei summoned top Iranian military chiefs for what he called “their last war council.”

“We’ll be at war within weeks,” he told the gathering, debkafile’s exclusive Iranian and intelligence sources disclose.

Present were Defense Minister General Ahmad Vahidi, Khamenei’s military adviser General Yahya Rahim-Safavi, Armed Forces Chief Major General Seyed Hassan Firuzabadi, Revolutionary Guards Corps commander General Mohammad Ali Jafari and Al Qods Brigades chief General Qassem Soleimani. The commanders of the air force, the navy and ground forces were also there.

Each of the participants was tapped to report on the readiness of his branch or sector for shouldering its contingency mission.

While retaliation had been exhaustively drilled in regular military exercises in the past year, Khamenei ordered the biggest fortification project in Iran’s history to save its nuclear program from even the mightiest of America’s super-weapons. Rocks are being gathered from afar, piled on key nuclear installations, covered with many tons of poured concrete and finally plated with steel.

That same Friday, the US Air force unveiled its new Massive Ordnance Penetrators. Each bunker buster weighs 30,000 pounds and is able to penetrate 60 feet of reinforced concrete.

Turning to retaliation, the war council endorsed a battery of paybacks for potential US and/or Israeli pre-emptive strikes against its nuclear program. They would start by announcing enhanced uranium enrichment up to 60 percent - that is close to weapons grade.

Oft-tested ballistic missiles, Shehab-3, would be loosed against Israel, Saudi Arabia and American Middle East and Gulf military installations.

Hizballah in Lebanon and Hamas and Jihad Islami in Gaza stand ready to pitch in against Israel with attacks from the north and the southwest.

Saudi oil export terminals would be blown up and mines sown in the Strait of Hormuz to impede the export of one-fifth of the world’s oil.

Khamenei put before his war council a timeline of weeks for the coming conflict – September or October.

WATCH VIDEO HERE

Israeli archaeologists uncover seal lending credence to Biblical Samson’s existence

The image a feline figure fighting with a man with long hair dates to the 11th century, report Shlomo Bunimovitz and Dr. Zvi Lederman of Tel Aviv University

By Charlie Wells

Have they sealed the deal on Samson?

A team of Israeli archaeologists have discovered an ancient artifact which some believe may lend credence to the existence of the Biblical figure Samson.

Excavation directors Prof. Shlomo Bunimovitz and Dr. Zvi Lederman of Tel Aviv University found a small, circular seal just outside Jerusalem in the Beit Shemesh tell in the Judaean Hills which supports Samson’s powerful story.

The seal depicts a feline figure attacking a human, who sports what appears to be long hair.

The piece was excavated in a layer of earth which dates to the 11th century, when the Jews were ruled by Judges, including Samson.

Samson, as the Bible has it, maintained superhuman strength given to him by God in his long tresses. He discovered this power after killing a lion with his bare hands.

Samson also battled the Philistines. Tellingly, this seal was discovered near the ancient border between the territory of the Israelites and the Philistines, according to The Telegraph.

In the Bible, Samson’s strength is captured by the seductive Delilah, who ultimately cuts the man’s long hair and facilitates his imprisonment by the Philistines.

Despite these circumstances, Bunimovitz and Lederman do not claim that the figure on the seal is necessarily “the” Samson.

Rather, they use the object to argue that the people living in the area where it was discovered had a story about a man strong enough to fight a lion. This story, they posit, eventually wound its way into the Bible, and onto the seal, according to Israeli’s daily newspaper, Haaretz .

Scientists create robotic skin so sensitive that it can feel the gentle patter of ladybirds walking across its surface

By Eddie Wrenn

Artificial skin could soon be created which could be sensitive enough to feel the steps of a lady-bird, or for the cruel-hearted, the stretching and tearing of a Chinese burn.

Engineers at Seoul National University are working on a prototype 'flexible electronic sensor', which uses interlocks hairs which can sense objects through static attraction.

The breakthrough - which was based on research into natural hairs on a beetle's back - could mean artificial limbs could be made to be more sensitive.

The artificial hairs are created from polymer fibres - tiny sheets of material is just 100 nanometres in diametre and a micrometre (one millionth of a metre) in length.

While invisible to the human hair, their tiny size and shape, and their metallic covering which makes them conductive to electricity, all combine to allow highly-sensitive readings.

Some of the potential uses for the skin includes using it as a heart monitor, which can be strapped to the wrist to detect your pulse.

Indeed the artificial skin can pick up brief touches which would not be detectable to humans - touches with a force of just five pascals can be 'felt' by the hairs.

The hairs can detect 'pressure', for instance a weight landing on the on the sheet, 'shear', such as an object sliding across the surface, and the twisting motion, like you might associate with that cruel and childish Chinese burn.

These final two movements are traditionally hard for mechanical objects to detect, but thanks to the electrical, microscopic hairs, the different signals can now be decoded.

The team has tested the pads by bouncing water droplets on the surface and testing out pule detection.
And in perhaps the cutest experiment in the history of science, they got a pair of ladybirds to walk across its surface.

VIDEO: Watch parts of the experiment, including the water droplet test!... 

China to attempt first moon landing

China will next year attempt to land an exploratory craft on the moon for the first time, state media reported, in the latest project in the country's ambitious space programme.

China's third lunar probe will blast off in the second half of 2013, the state Xinhua news agency reported late on Monday. Other reports said it would land and transmit back a survey of the moon's surface.

If successful, the landing would be China's first on the lunar surface and mark a new milestone in its space development. It is part of a project to orbit, land on and return from the moon, Xinhua said.

China said in its last white paper on space it was working towards landing a man on the moon, although it has not given a time frame.

Beijing sees its multi-billion-dollar space programme as a symbol of its rising global stature, growing technical expertise, and the Communist Party's success in turning around the fortunes of the once poverty-stricken nation.

It kicked off in 1999 with the launch of the unmanned Shenzhou-1.

Two years later, Shenzhou-2 lifted off carrying small animals, and in 2003, China sent its first man into space. Since then, it has completed a spacewalk in 2008 and an unmanned docking between a module and rocket last year.

Most recently, a 13-day voyage of the Shenzhou-9 spacecraft became China's longest-ever space mission and was notable for including the nation's first woman astronaut among its three-member crew.

The crew also achieved China's first manual docking with an orbital module, the Tiangong-1, a highly complex manoeuvre first conducted by the Americans in the 1960s and essential to building a permanent manned space station.

Next year's planned lunar probe launch will follow the Chang'e 1 in 2007 and Chang'e 2 in 2010, both named for the Chinese goddess of the moon.

Xinhua quoted the State Administration of Science, Technology and Industry for National Defence as saying the project was proceeding smoothly.

Iran will stand by Syria under any condition: Majlis speaker

TEHRAN – Iranian nation and government, as before, will stand by the Syrian nation and government under any circumstances, Majlis Speaker Ali Larijani told Syrian Foreign Minister Walid Muallem during a meeting in Tehran late on Sunday.

Larijani said that a great regional and international conspiracy has been hatched against Syria because of its tough stance against the Zionist regime, and the West is angry about this.

Commenting on foreign intervention in Syria, Larijani said that the Syrian government, through resistance against terrorist groups, has proved that it has “a strong base” and is able to resolve difficult crises.

During the meeting, Muallem appreciated the Islamic Republic’s stance toward Syria and said that the Syrian nation will never forget the Iranian nation’s brotherly support.

Arrogant powers only seeking to save Zionist regime

In a separate meeting with Muallem on Sunday, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said that NATO and the governments that have no respect for justice and freedom undoubtedly cannot give these values to nations as a gift.

He added that the governments are only seeking to save the Zionist regime and establish their domination in the region.

He also expressed hope that security and stability would be promoted in Syria as soon as possible through the vigilance of the Syrian nation and government.