Arshin Adib-Moghaddam in Comment is free.

It is politics that will prevail over the truth in this case; the Netanyahu administration will attempt to exploit the situation in order to make the case for increasing sanctions against Iran. Undoubtedly, it will attempt to derail Iranian-Indian relations, which has been a primary objective of the administration's grand strategy to isolate Iran. For the Netanyahu administration, the culprit of these attacks has to be the Iranian government, irrespective of the truth, because it is politically expedient to represent the country as an existential threat in order to hype up the nuclear issue and to divert attention away from the Palestinian question. Certainly, on the fringes of the Israeli right wing the drumbeats for war will beat louder.

Haaretz report.

Mossad chief Tamir Pardo visited New Delhi just days before an attack on Israeli officials in the Indian capital this week, Indian media reported on Thursday, highlighting the extent to which Israeli intelligence was in the dark regarding possibility of a terror attack taking place in the country.

Telegraph report.

Last week, the Tehran Times noted that the Iranian oil bourse will start trading oil in currencies other than the dollar from March 20. This long-planned move is part of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's vision of economic war with the west.

"The dispute over Iran's nuclear programme is nothing more than a convenient excuse for the US to use threats to protect the 'reserve currency' status of the dollar," the newspaper, which calls itself the voice of the Islamic Revolution, said.

Independent report.

Leading neuroscientists believe that the UK Government may be about to sanction the development of nerve agents for British police that would be banned in warfare under an international treaty on chemical weapons.

Craig Murray writes.

Now if nobody had been convicted for burglary last year, I would worry. There are lots of burglaries. But that nobody has been convicted for a crime that did not happen, seems to me a good thing. What is deeply, deeply worrying is that we have politicians who think there should be a regular flow of convictions for terrorism, whether there is any terrorism or not.

Marin Katusa of Casey Research writes.

Rumors are swirling that India and Iran are at the negotiating table right now, hammering out a deal to trade oil for gold. Why does that matter, you ask? Only because it strikes at the heart of both the value of the US dollar and today's high-tension standoff with Iran.

Independent report by Robert Fisk.

In the most profound financial change in recent Middle East history, Gulf Arabs are planning -- along with China, Russia, Japan and France -- to end dollar dealings for oil, moving instead to a basket of currencies including the Japanese yen and Chinese yuan, the euro, gold and a new, unified currency planned for nations in the Gulf Co-operation Council, including Saudi Arabia, Abu Dhabi, Kuwait and Qatar.

Craig Murray writes:

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It is ludicrous that Kenneth Clarke has announced that the Gibson Inquiry cannot go ahead because of the Metropolitan Police inquiry into rendition and torture anent Libya, when the Leveson Inquiry continues despite the long-running and delberately ineffective police investigations into News International.

[...]

Scotland Yard stated that there is no investigation into complicity with rendition and torture in Libya.

BBC report.

An escalation of a dispute with Iran could see Britain sending military reinforcements to the Gulf, Defence Secretary Philip Hammond has said.

USA Today reports.

Military commanders in Afghanistan have stopped making public the number of allied troops killed by Afghan soldiers and police, a measure of the trustworthiness of a force that is to take over security from U.S.-led forces.

The change in policy comes after at least three allied troops have been killed by the Afghan troops they trained in the past month and follows what appears to be the deadliest year of the war for NATO trainers at the hands of their Afghan counterparts.

Craig Murray writes.

The French government has suspended training for Afghan forces after four of their troops were killed by an Afghan soldier under training. Extraordinarily, that makes eight NATO troops killed by their trainees in 2012 already.

[...]

But do not worry: NATO have come up with a brilliant and effective policy response to this problem. They are suppressing statistics on NATO personnel killed or wounded by Afghan army and police personnel. So that's alright, then.

Juan Cole writes.

With all the talk of Iran and Israel among the GOP presidential candidates, it is worth remembering that in this poll of a few years ago, three quarters of Americans could find neither Israel nor Iran on a map. Despite the US being at that time the occupying power in Iraq, some two-thirds couldn't recognize that one, either.

A few more did recognize Iraq than the others, reminding one of Ambrose Peirce's dictum that "War is God's way of teaching Americans geography."

New York Times report.

Iran's currency, the rial, fell to its lowest level ever against the dollar on Wednesday in unofficial foreign exchange transactions in Tehran, Iranian news agencies reported.

[...]

The Iran Student News Agency and Mehr News Agency said the unofficial black market rate in Tehran was 18,200 rials to the dollar, compared with 11,000 to 12,000 last month.

Guardian report.

The judge-led inquiry into allegations of British collusion in the torture of detainees has been abandoned for the time being, Ken Clarke has announced.

Laura Rozen on her Yahoo! news blog.

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In response to questions about the various theories flying about, several current and former American officials told Yahoo News Sunday on condition of anonymity that Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak had last month issued a request to the Pentagon that the exercise be postponed. The United States did not seek the delay--and American sources privately voiced concern that the Israeli request for a postponement of the exercise could be read as a potential warning sign that Israel is leaving its options open to conduct a preemptive strike on Iran's nuclear facilities in the spring. Thus, the concern went, it may not want 5,000 U.S. troops on the ground in Israel in April and May, as had been scheduled for the exercise.

Article in Foreign Policy by Mark Perry.

Buried deep in the archives of America's intelligence services are a series of memos, written during the last years of President George W. Bush's administration, that describe how Israeli Mossad officers recruited operatives belonging to the terrorist group Jundallah by passing themselves off as American agents. According to two U.S. intelligence officials, the Israelis, flush with American dollars and toting U.S. passports, posed as CIA officers in recruiting Jundallah operatives -- what is commonly referred to as a "false flag" operation.