around the clock around the world this is r.t. live in moscow tensions between iran and the west to soaring ever higher with fresh calls on to iran to stop all nuclear enrichment they've come after an urgent un security council session was called by france in response to reports of a new atomic facility in the islamic state meanwhile u.s. secretive state hillary clinton has dubbed iran's recent threat to close off a vital oil trade route a provocation the u.k. is also reportedly sent its best equipped warship to the persian gulf saying it's ready to send more if iran moves to block the strait of hormuz artie's got its current looks at the latest in a deep in dispute. the cold run of tension between iran and the west is simmering. it seems the slightest increase of heat could make it boil over into an all out confrontation. but where will be that boiling point the point of no return

we're getting closer and closer to war with iran the iranians are playing with fire problems in a crisis if you get where any small thing can really set it off and it doesn't quell washington that the international nuclear watchdog is on site closely monitoring iran's nuclear activities are they trying to develop a nuclear weapon no but we know that they're trying to develop a nuclear capability and that's what concerns us and our red line to iran is do not develop a nuclear weapon iran's main source of livelihood is oil export is in danger the u.s. is imposing fresh sanctions that will dramatically complicate transactions through he ran central bank iran is also close to losing europe as a customer the reason that this is happening is that this is the logical conclusion of our current strategy against iran we have sanctions in place with no diplomacy the only way that that and is through confrontation cornered by crippling sanctions

iran threatens to glock the strait of hormuz a vital oil artery through which a sixth of the world's oil is shipped the u.s. replied by moving its hopefully to the region and saying if iran goes for it they will attack experts say the policy of isolating iran may lead to other threats from tehran and the possibility that one day they will go through with their threats but washington signals that it's ready or it wants everybody to believe that it's ready could way if we had to without using nuclear weapons ourselves take out their their nuclear capability well i certainly want them to believe that that's the case well is that i absolutely want them to believe that that secretary would you add anything to that some believe. it's just a war of words and neither side will go for an all out conflict considering what it is that it will be for the whole region frankly speaking this tension is artificial

it doesn't have to happen it doesn't need to exist the iranians would do themselves an enormous favor by saying less. and we would do ourselves a favor by ignoring most of it all of this i sadly i think is connected to israel and the israeli fear of iran for rhetorical reasons more than military ones it may be a war of words but actions are already showing thousands of u.s. troops are being deployed to israel an american citizen has been sentenced to death in the rand convicted of espionage iran might feel cornered and therefore make drastic moves right now it's in a war of words but one bullet shot and the powder keg can blow up the question is what's going to provide that deadly spark i'm going to check our reporting from washington r.t. and in the latest developments the u.s. is sending another escorted aircraft carrier into the persian gulf saying it's a routine mission iran meanwhile is blaming america and israel for the

assassination of a nuclear scientist in tehran on wednesday and the german from the stop the war coalition says that conflict could be just around the corner. if you look at the recent report from the atomic energy authority it said quite categorically there is not evidence of iran developing a nuclear weapon it seems to me the forces in america and britain and elsewhere are ignoring this report and they are definitely stepping up the pressure the assassination of the latest scientist the nuclear scientist who worked in the tiles will be seen quite rightly as a provocation it will be seen as the work of the israelis but backed by the americans and the troop movements the ships in the gulf all of this points to more and more pressure on iran and even when people say. nobody will be

mad enough to start this war on fridays people said this before and there have been these wars i think it's much more than rhetoric the troops are going to. fall for maneuvers the the ships are in the gulf i think we reserve very very real danger of war and we have to prepare now to oppose any threat of war on iran. we would like to know what you think of the stories we cover including this one and on our website we're asking what you think will come next in the standoff between iran and the west this is how the opinions are lining up at the moment as we can see there on screen almost half of the vote say the u.s. will attempt to provoke iran into an all out war just under a third think that washington will simply strike of worry about the consequences later the rest are split fairly equally eleven percent say that iran will try to scare off its a bursaries by claiming it does have nuclear capability and ten percent believe it to rumble for an alliance against the u.s. with countries in south america a lot of what you don't come now to vote to cast your vote.

with the iranian standoff gaining momentum its bitter rival israel is coming in for stinging criticism at home ahead on the program for you this hour part of the wave of anger over a plan that new laws which people there say threaten their freedom of speech and human rights. and also worldwide protests mark one time a bay is the tenth anniversary with activists and human rights agencies condemning president obama's broken valve to shut it down. those stories still to come but first yet another scandal has hit u.s. forces in afghanistan this time as a video apparently showing american marines urinating on afghan corpses the video went viral in just hours causing outrage revulsion the u.s. department of defense has launched an investigation with reports that two of the marines have been identified david swanson author and campaigner at roots action dot org has told me that he thinks this latest scandal is a byproduct of a force being made to fight

a war it doesn't believe in. the fact that these soldiers have apparently referred these people and the the scandal is that they are urinating on their prey i mean the hate sure is that is necessary to get people to do such a thing is necessary to motivate soldiers to fight in a war that has no other credible rationale for the war itself is an atrocity and so we pick out these particular atrocities and we get outraged but we don't look at the underlying fact and we end up with this incredibly bizarre phenomenon of being upset that someone is peanut on a body that he has killed. john glaser from antiwar dot com told r.t. that the real issues of being sidelined as the u.s. military brass attempts to cover for its failure in afghanistan the problem is that in the past when things like this have come up say like abu ghraib photos of you

know naked men in pyramids or when. they were standing next to detainees smiling with their thumbs up i mean these kinds of things happen a lot and all we ever hear is yes we'll investigate this don't you worry we're going to these are the bad apples it doesn't represent the most of most people so on and so forth that happens over and over again to the problem with damage limitation is that this is not a limited instance i mean the abuses borno daily basis by afghans including the embarrassment of being militarily dominated for over a decade exceeded the imaginations of most ordinary americans i mean this war is an utter failure in every sense it's costing thousands of lives on both sides nobody bothers to count how many afghans have died it's costing hundreds of billions of dollars much of the money from america just goes into corruption or is even sometimes funneled to the taliban one of the primary missions in afghanistan

is to train independent afghan army but that's a complete failure the army is made up right now of illiterate criminals and drug addicts who sometimes attack nato soldiers and quit all the time by the month and this is only a little window into how much of a disaster it all is the world's most controversial prison has turned ten years old and of a sort of guantanamo bay was met with protests around the world with fresh calls on the bomber to keep his election promise and shut it down but today that's a fading fantasy off to washington and next to the new law allowing the military to indefinitely detain anyone it deems hostile ati's smith. one zero zero zero zero zero one zero zero zero abdel nour i am not freely today's probably just another day for the inmates of guantanamo bay they may not even know that people around the world are campaigning for them but as far afield as london demonstrations are held

to demand the release of the hundred seventy one men still held without trial in the cuban camp after ten years one of those men is shaka omer who's earned the dubious distinction of being the last british resident held in guantanamo he was in afghanistan or nine eleven he says doing charity work digging wells and building a girls' school in kabul. when the u.s. invasion began almost went into hiding from an increasingly wary northern alliance but his freedom didn't last shuckers supporters maintain he was sold for a bounty went into the hands of the northern alliance who were warlords basically and they actually thought all the americans that my goodness it will save me from the torture that had months of torture by them but no he was transported to toddler and there he has remains despite president obama's original election pledge to

close guantanamo altogether despite being cleared for release and despite being a legal permanent resident in the u.k. with family here in london which includes one son he's never even see and full for moving closer to being freed shuckers supporters see worrying developments in the us is attitude to extrajudicial detention obama recently signed the national defense authorization act which places domestic terror investigations into the hands of the military and extends a ban on transferring prisoners out of kuantan i'm very sorry indeed president obama for reasons. lack of political will or he would say. inability to live. up to that promise and he is now basing to book american citizens. in military commissions which are very far from being

fair to. the british government has requested the release of but there's been no movement on the case since two thousand and seven meanwhile as his family grows up without him he lives out his life in a tiny windowless cell not knowing whether he can ever expect to be released laura smith r.t. london. the ten year anniversary of guantanamo bay has also brought a strong reaction from human rights organizations and activists international for the little prisoners stages protest at the statue of liberty in paris. new york's famous. has previously called the prison the gulag of our age hundreds also gathered across america demanding a key piece of work to shut it down something he says he can't do because of the opposition of congress investigative reporter jason leopold believes there's no real domestic pressure on him to act as the majority of americans prefer to turn a blind eye. it's very sad that the public more or less this tune kuantan m o out

has tuned out. widespread human rights abuses it is an issue and abuse that we condemn other governments for however what's happening now is that we have come to accept indefinite detention i think that people are willing to accept it now it doesn't affect them let's face it they look at this an issue that they do not need to be concerned about because they still see the majority of people there as terrorists even though we have seen evidence surface over the years that the vast majority were in fact innocent. in this reporter jason libelled leopold talking to on team you can get more on that story online that come on website and see what else is available there at the moment should you log on now a crying shame on out about north korean authorities. have reportedly begun to

punish citizens didn't this plan of sadness and the death of former leader kim jong il. also want to examine the claims of the first reason to be considered up to no good by british police has become skin color those stories and plenty of features of our t.v. don't calm. the chorus of critics is growing in this rant against the so-called boycott law it punishes anyone who speaks out against the country settlement construction in the west bank human rights activists of turn to israel supreme court to overturn the legislation but reports there's a whole raft of other controversial bills that might not be to their liking either

. gershon baskin is a wanted man in israel for his outspoken views against the government's policy of settlement expansion it's ironic because if it wasn't for those left wing israeli activists it's dark for israel would have secured a recent prisoner swap that's always weighty soldier gilad shalit exchanged for palestinian prisoners after five years in captivity gershon says it was his contacts within him us that allowed the two sides to reach an agreement but now a controversial so-called boycott threatens to find the post war hero if he steps out of line the appeal to the public is an arab appeal. and there is a competition of who is more strongly advocating a position which is a very arab what the law says is that any israeli could face legal action just for speaking out in favor of boycotting settlements the first steps to fascism are quiet so. i i hope that the supreme court gives us

a loud screaming telling us that fascism shouldn't pass but for now the supreme court is keeping quiet the state attorney again this month asked for more time to consider the arguments angering gabion who team who filed a petition to another law the morning after it was passed in parliament until the court rules otherwise israeli owners of companies based in the settlements can seek damages for boycotts called against the goods i don't accept any boycott not by the book or not right not left boycott the boycott law is one of several controversial pieces of legislation being advanced by the netanyahu government a number of similarly criticized bills are currently under discussion in the israeli parliament another bill aims to dramatically limit foreign funding of nongovernmental groups critical of israel it's expected to receive cabinet approval soon this is a very conservative right wing coalition they have a solid majority in parliament but. still they sort of promote these

bills which which are perceived not only by the left but by the press by the courts . is not encouraging democracy ok or sort of limiting free speech in israel many here think it's a way for the right wing coalition government of prime minister netanyahu to stay in power but for people like gershon baskin he says he'll continue to call for a boycott of the settlements and far from since when him the law has only strengthened his resolve to stop israel's growing onslaught on democracy policy r.t. tel aviv. a foreign journalist has been killed in syria for the first time since the ten month regime uprising began a french reporter and more civilians died when shells struck a pro-government rally in the central city of homs both the country's government and the opposition were quick to blame each other for being behind the attack meanwhile one of the arab league monitors in syria has abandoned the observer

mission claiming it was unable to achieve its goals another monitor threatened to follow suit within twenty four hours despite growing tensions president assad is still a number of syrians. the director of the center for middle east studies has told me that he believes terrorists are behind the attack in homs. they blame it but that is it's out of question and the government. have an interest you're not short a journalist among demonstration pro-government it's silly really to accuse the syrian government about this and he was killed by snipers or from their orders from the opposition it's unclear and my opinion but the position accuse the government it's a part of the said got to go was fair but it's not it's not acceptable it's not credible if we have this the nation about five thousand victims in syria.

of them. and members of badly and i think it's not the way that see the government in the civilian. with the implications of the ongoing bloodshed in syria still hard to predict r.t. spoke to professor of middle east politics dr germy salt to get a broader view of what's going on in the region and that interview is coming your way in just a minute stay with us for that here on r.t. .

thank you jeremy for joining us here on our team as well as call put it when it comes to the middle east the west talks idealistically and acts brutally if it's true if you agree with this what should be done what can be done to prevent syria from fallen into these patterns look at what's been happening in the middle east and the policies the western governments of followed since the beginning of this year they have always had the noble motive we're doing this for this very very good reason but we don't have to be terribly skeptical or cynical to understand that actually behind the noble motive is self-interest if we look at what happened in egypt the west backed mubarak right to the very last and there was no longer possible to back him when it was indefensible they dumped him and with him with the president of tunisia and then they moved very very quickly on libya what was happening in libya that was absolutely terrible in many cases in the name of human

rights the kind of attack in libya the same with syria you know it's kind of it it's a protest movement it's democratic change and reform which are very worthwhile motives to support but there is another agenda here which has to do with broader global and regional strategies what has the libyan scenario failed in syria will the western powers change their tactics i think that libya with the template for syria. kind of went to the u.n. they got the no fly zone resolution and that opened up libya to aerial attack and i think they thought that they could repeat this in syria but it didn't prove to be possible largely because of russia actually because russia made it plain that it would not support another no fly and no fly zone resolution in the security council so this left the government of britain france and the u.s. in particular with you know they had to work out what policy they were going to pursue you know still think they would like to intervene in syria but they realize

it's not the same as little or nothing as libya is a different situation altogether stakes are much higher the risk is much greater the dangers are much greater because intervention in syria how would you describe it whether you're talking about a buffer zone or the top american military humanitarian chordal as the french foreign minister does it still adds up to the same thing as the invasion of another country and syria would resist that iran would get involved actively get involved it's hard to take the fall back position i think is to support. certain activities inside syria which are calculated in the downfall of the assad government right and its replacement by. government will be formed presumably from exiles from the agitating against the prison would take take over in your book the unmaking of the middle east you chronicled alone in a bloody history of western invasions in arab lands with all the efforts by the u.n. and arab league of arab league is the threat of foreign military

invasion for syria is in the past right or not yet of course is still a possibility of course as to the possible to do rather do because it's so risky for intervention would be. done would be to kind of maintain the support for what's happening inside syria on the side of the opposition like the calculation would be that sooner or later these precious if they maintained will result in the collapse of the assad government well as compare syria with the lead and iraq to what extent the syrian national council similar to libya's national transitional council or iraqi national congress rocky national congress was almost a fiction the leader no support inside iraq whatsoever. iraq for a long long time and he was pumped up because they want to create this exiled body called the iraqi national congress so there was an iraqi voice in the propaganda

war against saddam hussein the libyan situation the lives of the libyan transitional council as you know basically would affect us from the government tripoli they jump ship when it got too hot they took of informing the they went to benghazi and the transitional national council for all of whom we didn't know we knew someone from all the places we can't say the syrian national council is largely composed of the mixture of people who have the roots who are inside syria but the dominant i think exiles. has been in paris for a long time like read one. who's based in washington and has very very close ties with the state department you know what kind of clout holder these people have inside syria i would say not much. you know so there are similarities between these councils and of course we know that the transitional national council for national transitional council in libya. recognize the syrian national council as

a legitimate representative the syrian people it's not this is simple as that so it's kind of part of the campaign against syria of which that that now the live part is now the libyan government is now part elections at various levels are currently on to go in in syria with more bad so what do you think will bashar al assad remain in power as a result and we have a very very dangerous situation in syria which could have exploded into a very very nasty. proto breakdown inside the country it could lead to regional war so in this context let's see if this is given a few months and see how the process works out bashar does have. a base of popular support so i don't think you can say that the party would be doomed the moment they call free elections that could well.

if they shoot something inappropriate from the public they can easily be shot. casualties of war ok. i wish he would have never happened but it has happened. in a war a t.v. camera becomes an unnecessary what destroys their own safety all foreign nationals including journalists and inspectors should leave. and this clear what happens with such witnesses i got on my site. many checks a. person is shooting. on.

good. news. is just. awful. when an uncomfortable question leads to a grave accusation the world sues moore's you know fog the president who isn't supposed to hide anything. or it's someone asking him why do you make a secret of it when the powers to be suppress the voice of those who think

different culture when you get experiencing very serious problems off of the saakashvili government came to power in two thousand and three but if you will that was when the problems began piling up. interviews were now off limits to our journalists they were all from beason up and humiliated in public and one of the attempt to protect property puts life in real danger is that we have been deprived of the only means of earning a living and i have the gall to originals of all the papers that the at the little ice the ownership rights on the basis of cause freedom becomes just a stage prop.

well for the. science technology innovation all the developments from around russia we've got the future covered. with you twenty four hours a day this is our t.v. live here in moscow top stories this hour a storm brews over wrong as the west accuses it of provocation but suspicion is developing nuclear weapons to ramp blames the u.s. and israel for the assassination of a fourth son just two years. another scandal erupts in afghanistan centering around a video appearing to show u.s. marines urinating on the corpses of minutes and fights it's sparking uproar among afghans. and violence in syria claim to much of a foreign journalist from the.