Wired | Tensions between the U.S. and Iran are at a high point, as the Islamic Republic threatens to close off a vital waterway and two U.S. aircraft carrier battle groups sit in the seas off the Iranian coast. But across the Persian Gulf, the U.S. has a previously unacknowledged weapon in reserve: a new special operations team.

Reuters | Russia will offer Washington no explanation for arms deliveries to Syria and together with China will prevent the U.N. Security Council from approving any military intervention in the conflict-torn nation, its foreign minister said on Wednesday. Using his annual news conference to draw lines in the sand on Syria, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said veto-holding Security Council members Russia and China would stand firm against foreign intervention.

Press TV | Two British soldiers fighting in Afghanistan have been accused of raping two children aged ten in the war-ravaged country, a report has revealed. UK officials said on Wednesday that they are investigating allegations of “inappropriate behavior” by the soldiers, The Sun reported.

GlobalResearch.ca | While the possibility of a war with Iran is acknowledged in US news reports, its regional and global implications are barely analyzed. Very few people in America are aware or informed regarding the devastation and massive loss of life which would occur in the case of a US-Israeli sponsored attack on Iran. The media is involved in a deliberate process of camouflage and distortion.

Reuters | Like three previous Iranian scientists ambushed on their morning commute, the latest nuclear expert to die on his way to work was a victim of Israel's Mossad, Western intelligence sources tell TIME. Mostafa Ahmadi-Roshan, an expert on a phase of uranium enrichment, perished on a Tehran street on Wednesday after an assassin in a passing motorcycle attached a magnetized explosive to the side of his Peugeot 405. "Yeah, one more," a senior Israeli official said with a smile. "I don't feel sad for him."

RT | Even with the loss of not one, but two multi-million-dollar drones in recent weeks, the head of the US Defense Department says that America will “absolutely” continue stealth jets missions over Iran. Despite these losses, the US Department of Defense is showing no signs of retreat, even if Tehran has insisted that they are well on their well to decoding the top-secret technologies under the hood of the recovered Sentinel. Speaking to Fox News this week, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said that stealth missions into Iran will continue “absolutely,” despite ongoing opposition from overseas.

Infowars.com | Iran’s Revolutionary Guards have rejected a warning issued by the United States not to close down the Strait of Hormuz in response to crippling sanctions.

Reason | Shakira was one year old when Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Barack Obama ordered the 2009 drone strike in Pakistan's Swat valley that nearly killed her. With two other burned little girls, she was put in a trash bin to die. A volunteer doctor with House of Charity discovered the three babies and attempted to save them. Two of the little girls died from their injuries, but Shakira, who is now four, lived to be disfigured.

CNN | Soldiers who just returned from Iraq are among several thousand being ordered to Afghanistan in six months as part of a mission designed to beef up Afghan forces ahead of a planned 2014 U.S. military withdrawal, officials said. News of the pending Afghanistan deployments came as families at bases across the country were celebrating the return in recent days of troops who turned off the lights at a number of U.S. bases ahead of an end-of-the-year deadline to leave Iraq.

Wired.com | The Pentagon hasn’t come close to solving the PTSD crisis plaguing the current generation of troops. But a cutting-edge realm of treatment might change that — by wiping away the fear that military personnel associate with traumatic memories. The Pentagon this week announced an $11 million grant for three research institutions, all of them long-time hubs for the military’s ongoing PTSD investigations.

AFP | The United States plans to sell Iraq 18 more F-16 fighter jets as Baghdad seeks to secure its airspace after the full withdrawal of US forces this month, a US official said Monday. “Today the administration notified Congress of its intent to sell Iraq a second tranche of 18 F-16s,” said National Security Council spokesman Tommy Vietor.

RasmussenReports.com | Vice President Joe Biden late last week presided over the transfer of the chief U.S. military facility in Iraq to the Iraqi military, bringing even closer an end to the U.S. war there. Most voters remain convinced that the United States should never have invaded Iraq in March 2003 and believe all U.S. troops should be brought home by the end of this month as planned.

LewRockwell.com | On Dec. 8, 1941, Franklin Roosevelt took the rostrum before a joint session of Congress to ask for a declaration of war on Japan. A day earlier, at dawn, carrier-based Japanese aircraft had launched a sneak attack devastating the U.S. battle fleet at Pearl Harbor .Said ex-President Herbert Hoover, Republican statesman of the day, “We have only one job to do now, and that is to defeat Japan.”