around the clock around the world this is r.t. live in moscow tensions between iran and the west are soaring ever higher with fresh calls on tehran 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 u.s. secretary state hillary clinton has dubbed to iran's recent threat to close off a vital oil trade route a provocation 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 he's going to teach current looks at the latest in a deepening dispute. the cold run of tension between iran and the west is simmering . it seems the slightest the increase of heat could make it boil over into an all

out confrontation. where we'll 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 arm side 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 iran's 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's threatens to block 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 fifth fleet 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 weigh 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 what is it that i absolutely want them to believe that that's the case 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 sadly i think is connected to israel and the israeli fear of iran for rhetorical reasons war the 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 the latest developments the u.s. is sending another escorted to the persian gulf saying it is a routine mission will talk more on this joined now by current task you retired

u.s. air force the one the colonel who worked in the pentagon in the national security agency well this new move of warships into the gulf as well as the latest massing of u.s. troops in israel something we've just been hearing about in that report they are simply routine missions according to washington all of a. well periodically we three carriers in that region and periodically we stoke the fires of conflict it seems with iran and certainly we have troops in bases in iraq on one side of iran and in afghanistan on the other sects so in some ways this is a continuation of a long long long provocation with that country and certainly we work with israel in doing their. you know in some ways this is pretty much the same as we've seen before and we all hope and pray that it doesn't lead to our best fark

a spark being perhaps maybe that assassination very recently of the top iranian nuclear research or killed in that street bombing iran is it right to accuse the u.s. and israel over. well i don't know if it's right to accuse them but certainly it is logical for them to to have to seek to blame israel and or of the united states and if you think back to the stuxnet worm that unleashed upon some of the industrial and nuclear facilities overran that was traced back to america and israeli work so you know we fly drones over iran heriot you know we do that really on a weekly basis i'm sure so. you know this this behavior that we have it makes it very. logical for the government of iran to expect that the united states and to some extent israel is behind some of these activities what they need and what they do not have is the smoking gun and they don't have that came from your past

military experience you talk about the stoking the fires of conflict and perhaps a spark could ignite some sort of conflict if there was to be a military operation by the u.s. or israel what would be the primary targets and what sort of form would that military operation take. well certainly the united states is in no position and i would think has no serious plans of putting any ground troops into into iran. that we are lost and instead lost their united states to do that because it's just an impossible way to go about doing things while i'm gone because of what i've learned from iraq and afghanistan oh i don't think we've learned anything but i think that because iran is a much different. terrain it has it has a very effective army in many ways it can defend itself against that i mean we went into afghanistan and into iraq these countries had no defense i mean in particular iraq i mean we've been bombing it for twelve years before we went in there they had

no serious defense that was a for a fourth world you know i was nothing same with afghanistan these were sitting ducks iran is not a sitting duck and in our generals and admirals and know this so that along with our ears then the presence of aircraft carrier suggests an air strikes and obviously it's just that kind of thing but more than that it suggests what those carriers always suggest and that is simply sending a message. you know i really think that this is more of the same we've been doing it for a long long time when oil prices drop a little bit you know stoke the fires you sending a message will iran then listen obviously concern about closing off the home the strait that's now being threatened if that action does take place then military action has been indeed threatened by the british and the u.s. so what about then iran's position is it going to stay quiet are we just going to see a lot of rhetoric and nothing else. i think it's going to be

a lot of rhetoric on both sides with continued low level harassment as we have been doing that's what i really think is happening now in a more strategic sense periodically threatening in this is not a rand seriously threatening as much as it is ourselves talking about if you're in the west of having the strait of hormuz limited or shut down for any short period of time in some ways it incentivizes these alternative routes so this alternate routes for getting the oil to the world markets so it could be that this is very much a long term trend to decrease american dependence on one sixth of the oil that passes through the straits of hormuz no doubt karen will be talking about this again in the not too distant future in the meantime thank you so much for your thoughts karen could ask you there thank you thank you for having me. i would always like to know what you think of the stories we're covering at the moment including this one of course iran on our website we're asking what you think will

come next in the standoff between tehran and the west and this is how the opinions are lining up for the moment almost half of the vote say the u.s. will attempt to provoke iran into an all out war that's under a third think that washington will simply strike and worry about the consequences later and the rest is split fairly quickly eleven percent say iran will try to scare off its advice reached by claiming it has nuclear capability and ten percent believe it to rumble for an alliance against the u.s. with countries in south america log on to r.t. dot com to cast your vote. well with the iranian standoff gaining momentum its bitter rival israel is coming in for stinging criticism at home had on the program we report on the wave of anger over a planned new laws which people there say threaten their freedom of speech and human rights. and also still to come worldwide protest more guantanamo bay's tenth anniversary with activists and human rights agencies condemning president obama's broken vile. to shut it down. a story still to come the first yet

another scandalous 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 among viewers the u.s. department of defense is not an investigation with reports that two of the marines have been identified david swanson author and campaigner at roots action dot org told me earlier that he thinks this latest scandal is a byproduct of a force being made to fight a war it doesn't believe in the sacked that these soldiers have apparently referred these people and the scandal is that they are your navy not. sure it is necessary to get people to do such a thing which is necessary to motivate soldiers to fight in a war that has no other credible rationale 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 peanuts on a body that he has killed. john glaser from antiwar dot com told r.t. the real issues are being sidelined as u.s. military brass 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 the great 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 the problem with damage limitation is that this is not 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 prisoners turn ten years on the anniversary of guantanamo bay it 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 not to the new law allowing the military to indefinitely detain anyone it deems hostile potties. one zero zero zero zero zero zero zero one zero zero abdel moneim 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 and 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 warlords basically and he actually thought all the americans that my goodness it will save me from the torture that he's had lots 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 fall 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 one ton of there i'm very sorry indeed president obama for reasons. lack of political will or he would say complete inability to live. up to that promise and is now bracing to book an american citizen. 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 not knowing whether he can expect to be released. r.t. london born that story online at r.t. dot com let's see what else is available on the website at the moment

a crying shame the north korean authorities have reportedly begun to punish citizens who didn't display enough of the death of former leader kim jong il. to examine the claims of the first reason to be considered up to no good by british police has become a skin color those stories and plenty of others at r.t. dot com. a foreign journalist has been killed in syria for the first time since the ten month regime uprising began a french reporter and eight 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 backed by a large number of syrians. director of the center for middle east studies believes terrorists are behind the attack in homs. they blame each other but that is so out of question that the government. have any interest you know to shoot a journalist among demonstration pro-government it's silly to accuse the syrian government about this and he was killed by snipers or from terrorists from the opposition it's a clear and my opinion but the position that has the government it's a part of the said going to go well said but it's not it's not acceptable it's not true that if you eat out of this the nation about five thousand victims in syria since ten months and thought of them but it's not a member of dogmeat and i think that's not the way they see the government

that's a video. the chorus of critics is growing in israel against the so-called boycott it punishes anyone who speaks out against the country settlement construction in the west bank human rights activists have turned to israel supremes court to overturn the legislation as artie's policy reports as 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 not monic 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 way the soldier gilad shalit exchanged for palestinian prisoners after five years in captivity gershon says it was his contacts within hamas that allowed the two sides to reach an agreement but now a controversial so-called boycott law threatens to find the post war hero if he steps out of line to appeal to the public and to our arab appeal. 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 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 ignore the law the morning after it was passed in parliament until the court rules otherwise israeli owners of companies based in the statement can seek damages for boycotts called against the goods so i don't i don't accept any boycott. but it's the. right not. the boycott law is one of several controversial pieces of legislation being advanced by the netanyahu

government a number of. similarly criticized polls are currently under discussion in the israeli parliament another ball 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 preceded not only by the left but by the previous by the courts. is not encouraging them ocracy 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 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. now the winter sports season is in full swing but a new viral video hit shows that it's not just the jet set on the slopes of france or switzerland who like to get involved this ritual about showing up shows how a thrill seeking crow was just as keen to enjoy a spread of adventure sport appeared to be using the lid of a jar as an improviser snowboard. enjoyed its first run so much it decided to have another go of course there was no ski lift provided. i think that's what you call slow burning this is next with daniel stay with us for that. welcome to business a new gas war is looming off the moscow rule dealt ukraine cutting supplies kiev signed a contract to receive fifty two billion cubic meters from russia in twenty twelve but made a surprise announcement this week that it would only take half that ukraine's

leadership says it's a struggling economy called afford to pay the full amount but gazprom has today insisted the deal must be made in full will be following the story and we'll bring you any developments as they happen. despite the financial challenges of twenty eleven russia's become the third fastest growing economy in the world of the china and india the latest economic data on prime minister vladimir putin showed g.d.p. grew over four percent last year industrial production also rose among the world's best and despite major global economy suffering budget deficits russia ended the year with a surplus. now the threat of oil supply disruptions continues to trouble investors as japan the second largest consumer of iranian crude new sanctions against the islamic republic saudi arabia says it has an oil pipeline that could stand in for a portion of the missing supplies but energy strategy davis believe that in the worst case scenario alternative energy routes coal plug the gap. if the straits of

most were to close and again we don't believe this will happen alternative routes of getting middle eastern oil to market need to be examined saudi arabia already has a pipeline across the arab peninsula to the red sea which is not being used at the moment to take two million barrels a day. of production you eat about to start a pipeline that will circumvent the straits of hormuz again that's right about one point five million barrels a day so taken together that's still a small proportion of the oil that would be lost if the straits of hormuz were to be closed. let's have a look at the stock markets now european equities headed higher in early trading or news the boring course death options on thursday week new data for the u.s. economy ruin the sentiment in london with the footsie crossing the line just in the rid of a managed to stay afloat closing almost half a percent higher as you can see their markets closed here in moscow continuing

a lot of the week for the l.t.s. and my six indices are suffering contagion from world economic fears with both barely managing to end the day in the black. this level. some of the. six today energy majors have lost gains from earlier in the week. plans to spend five point seven billion dollars on the sort she winter olympics in twenty fourteen take also fell natural gas production grew forty one percent from last year after versus exhilarated for a second day there are some reports the british lawyers plans to increase its share in the russian car maker to fifty percent in the first quarter of this year. trade for us. it was a surprising news from europe which actually lead the markets today. finally we realized the crisis was not that hard but the worst was my and italy placed their bones and screenplays their bones and were low rates for italy for

example. it was a big surprise and we were opposed to surprise from markets so we had quite a positive second half of the day and also some numbers from us on the retail retail sales. jobless claims also affected the market. versus move is pretty much positive from. the data we had today from. sales will support this move. as the business news stay with us for the headlines next.

wealthy british style. that's not on the time. markets why not come to. find out what's really happening to the global economy with mike's cause or for a no holds barred look at the global financial headlines tune into cars a report. if they shoot something inappropriate for public they can easily be shot by accident 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 room. and it's clear what happens with such witnesses i got on my site. one of many objects submitted to. the boy. nurses shooting on our t.v. . this is our time. to reclaim the american dream and reaffirm that fundamental truth that out of many we all want that war we breathe we hope. to me the american dream is to live in peace and prosperity and freedom and a government under socialism is not a government a free. man. you

. have very motivated out cross the country who are activists who are willing to fight for what they think is right for themselves but the fact is forty four bridge. we are counting. properly drowning and i think it's spread by it's cutting off heart. it's making the marker see. all but impossible.

news stories this hour. a storm brewing over iran as the west accuses it of provocation and that suspicion is developing nuclear weapons blames the u.s. and israel for the assassination of a fourth so. another scandal erupts in afghanistan centering around the video appearing to show u.s. marines urinating on the corpses of militants sparking uproar among afghans. and violence in syria claimed the life of a foreign journalist for the first time since the unrest began as the arab league continue its.