Israel’s enemies are wrong – Israel Opinion, Ynetnews.
Don’t count on Goldstone to curb Israel’s response to attacks on Tel Aviv
Alex Fishman
| Published: | 10.26.09, 10:11 / Israel Opinion |
‘The more effective the rocket terror war will be, the less proportional the response would be’ Don’t count on Goldstone to curb Israel’s response to attacks on Tel Aviv Alex Fishman
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‘US better act before Israel attacks Iran’.
US congressional leader Dan Burton (R-IN) told the powerful House Foreign Affairs Committee on Wednesday that if the US does not get serious about stopping the Iranian nuclear program, it is going to have to deal with a Middle East in flames as the result of a preemptive Israeli strike on the Islamic Republic.
Burton noted that after years of international diplomatic efforts, Iran is still enriching uranium with the expected intention of building a nuclear weapon. This, warned Burton, Israel cannot and will not allow to continue past a certain point.
If Washington does not want the much larger task of calming a Middle East embroiled in war, it should get more serious about the comparatively smaller task of strong-arming the Iranian regime into giving up its nuclear quest, Burton implied.
The congressman’s warning echoed that of French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner on Monday, when he told London’s Daily Telegraph that Israel “will not tolerate an Iranian bomb,” and will eventually attack Iranian nuclear facilities if the international community fails to come up with another solution.
To defend against Iran missiles, US and Israel conduct joint exercises | csmonitor.com.
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The USS Higgins, a warship fitted with the US Navy’s most sophisticated missile-defense system, is docked so nonchalantly between the comely cruise ships and workaday shipping vessels of the Haifa port that one could hardly tell it’s in the throes of the largest-ever joint military exercises of their kind.
The exercises between the US and Israel have been held annually since 2001, but testing Israel’s ability to defend itself from a missile attack has seldom seemed this urgent.
Western nations are on edge after last week’s inconclusive nuclear talks with Tehran, which has upped the ante in recent months with numerous missile tests. Israel, too, has increased its saber rattling toward Iran, repeatedly making clear that a military option for containing Tehran’s nuclear ambitions remains on the table. Any attack by Israel would probably result in Iranian (and Hizbullah) missiles fired at Israel.
While it’s widely assumed that Israel would not attack Iran without at least tacit US approval, any military engagement between the two enemies would put significant pressure on Washington to back up its ally. Amid intensified international concern over a possible Iranian missile strike, the joint US-Israel exercises offer a window onto how effectively the two allies would be able to defend against such an attack.
While it’s widely assumed that Israel would not attack Iran without at least tacit US approval, any military engagement between the two enemies would put significant pressure on Washington to back up its ally. Amid intensified international concern over a possible Iranian missile strike, the joint US-Israel exercises offer a window into how effectively the two allies would be able to defend against such an attack. What they learn, says the US ship’s commander, will be applicable to a NATO missile-defense shield planned for Europe. President Obama recently said that such a shield is key for defending against Iran’s ballistic-missile arsenal, which he noted is capable of reaching the continent.
“We work with armies [that] we might have to go in and work with in a combat situation, so the first time we’re talking to each other is not when we’ve got a missile coming in at Mach 10,” said Cmdr. Carl W. Meuser as he led reporters around the vessel early Thursday, Day 9 of the three-week maneuvers. “We’re exercising against the threats that the Israelis are interested in … which will help as we build towards the European missile defense system.”
Meuser’s quip may sound like a joke. But the importance of being prepared was a lesson learned from the first Gulf war in 1991, says Brig. Gen. Shlomo Brom (ret.). The US-provided Patriot batteries meant to knock Iraqi-launched Scud missiles out of the sky were untested and unsuccessful.
“In 1991, the Patriot batteries deployed to Israel were completely ineffective. One major reason for that is that there was no prior preparation,” says General Brom, senior research fellow at the Institute for National Security Studies (INSS) at Tel Aviv University.
During the course of that war, 39 Scud missiles hit Israel, and the Patriots failed to stop them. Israel now has the Arrow II Ballistic Missile Defense System, which will also be tested as part of the joint exercises.
USS Higgins’s damp, dark combat operations center
Known as Juniper Cobra 10, the exercises are virtual war games that won’t even require the 8,300-ton USS Higgins to leave the pier. Instead, they simulate attack from a variety of potential missile threats.
Although heightened media attention on Juniper Cobra is being viewed by many “as preparation in case the dialogue with Iran fails,” Brom says, the exercises have a “a very important practical component.” In short: “If the two militaries are not capable of working together, the results will be extremely important to know ahead of time.”
So far, things are largely going swimmingly, as might be expected: They’ve been in preparation for the past 18 months. And of course, much changes in 18 years. Since the first Gulf war, the Aegis Combat System – which makes the USS Higgins such a powerful vessel – has greatly advanced. Though the Aegis system – named after a Greek word denoting a shield – was first designed for the threat of Soviet cruise missiles, it’s now capable of not only intercepting missiles, but of attacking land targets with Tomahawk missiles, ships with Harpoon missiles, and hostile submarines with what the USS Higgins staff boasts is “the most advanced ship-born antisubmarine warfare system in the world.”
That’s because down in the nerve center of the ship is the SPY 1 Delta Radar, which Commander Meuser says is “really the heart of the Aegis system.” In the combat operations center – a cold, dim, and damp place that feels much like the state-of-the-art cockpit of a submarine – Meuser and his subordinate officers explained to a few reporters (no accompanying photographers or cameramen allowed) how the vessel’s advanced radar system works. On several screens, a map of Israel’s Mediterranean coast glowed, with spokes of the radar showing the various directions in which the radar was ostensibly searching.
If a missile were incoming now, explained Lt. Jason Watson, a combat systems officer, “all we need to do is find it and put another hunk of metal moving at supersonic speeds into that missile.”
Wild cards remain
In reality, of course, the art of war is much more complicated. Some longer-range missiles are much more difficult to intercept, and depend on where the ship is at the time of the incoming missile. If it’s intercepted over a large city like this one, Meuser notes, it could still cause massive damage from the fallout.
“This isn’t a Martian death-ray out of H.G. Wells, it’s an Aegis,” says Meuser. “We’re not omnipotent.”
Pressed further on what, in additional to radar signals, is being broadcast by these exercises, he added: “You want to inspire your friends and you want to discourage your enemies.” Who specifically? “Anyone who’s watching.”
Obviously, that includes Iran. According to Israeli intelligence assessments, Iran has a range of advanced missile capabilities that are gradually growing. These include long-range coastal antiship missiles, submarine-launched and airborne versions of antiship missiles, and long-range ballistic missiles, to name a few, according to the Middle East Military Balance, a database maintained by the INSS. Yiftah Shapir, the director of that project, says that as much as Israel knows, the various unknowns remain troublesome wildcards in the deck of Middle East war games.
“How these systems can stand against the Iranian missiles is a big question,” he says. “Inherently, all these systems have their own limits. The actual data, of course, is highly classified.”
“You know that such a system can defend against so many missiles, between such and such a period of time,” he explains. “If more missiles than that will be fired, it would exceed the capability of this system. So it’s a kind of constant race of uncertainty over who will be on top.”
U.S. Destroyer’s Visit to Israel Shows Support, Commander Says – Bloomberg.com.
By Jonathan Ferziger
Oct. 29 (Bloomberg) — The presence in Haifa Bay of the USS Higgins, a Navy destroyer equipped to fire Tomahawk cruise missiles, demonstrates America’s commitment to Israel’s security, its commanding officer said.
“We’re working to keep pace with the threat as the threat evolves,” Commander Carl W. Meuser said today during a tour of the ship, whose Aegis weapon systems feature the most advanced radar-detection capabilities in the U.S. fleet. Meuser didn’t elaborate on the threat, though analysts said the war games that the vessel is taking part in are intended to send a message of solidarity with Israel to Iran.
The vessel is named after U.S. Marine Colonel William R. Higgins, who was captured, tortured and killed two decades ago by Lebanon’s Hezbollah militia. It was deployed for the U.S.- Israeli military exercises that are taking place over three weeks as pressure builds on Iran to stop its uranium-enrichment program.
The Juniper Cobra exercise — the biggest in 10 years of joint maneuvers — is as important in assuring Israelis of U.S. backing as it is in deterring enemy states, said Meuser, 43. Israeli confidence in the U.S. has fallen as President Barack Obama seeks to improve relations with the Arab world while pressing Israel to make concessions to the Palestinians.
“Make no mistake that the key audience for these war games is Iran,” Gerald Steinberg, a Bar-Ilan University political scientist, said in a telephone interview. “The Obama administration also needs to show Israelis that it stands behind them and this serves that purpose too.”
Iranian Nuclear Program
The U.S. and several major allies say that Iran’s nuclear program is a cover for the development of a weapon. The government in Tehran, which doesn’t recognize Israel, denies the allegation and says its work is lawful and intended for civilian purposes such as generating electricity.
The exercise started Oct. 20 and continues for three weeks, drilling more than 1,000 personnel from the Israel and U.S. air, sea and land forces in cooperating against missile threats from neighbors in the Middle East.
While F-16 warplanes from both countries have taken part in maneuvers over the Mediterranean Sea and tank exercises have involved both U.S. and Israeli soldiers, the USS Higgins will not leave its pier, dwarfed by a cruise ship floating alongside it in the northern port city.
“We can go through the entire scenario using our sensors and on-board computers,” Meuser said. “You don’t have to send the ship to sea and burn a lot of fuel to get value out of the exercise.”
The war games come after Turkey canceled a similar exercise that was scheduled to take place earlier this month. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said Israel wasn’t welcome because of its war in Gaza 10 months ago, in which more than 1,100 Palestinians were killed. Turkey instead staged a separate set of war games with Syria, an enemy to Israel.
To contact the reporter on this story: Jonathan Ferziger in Tel Aviv at jferziger@bloomberg.net.
Last Updated: October 29, 2009 13:23 EDT
Yossi Klein Halevi: The Return of Israel’s Existential Dread – WSJ.com.
Jerusalem
The postcard from the Home Front Command that recently arrived in my mailbox looks like an ad from the Ministry of Tourism. A map of Israel is divided by color into six regions, each symbolized by an upbeat drawing: a smiling camel in the Negev desert, a skier in the Golan Heights. In fact, each region signifies the amount of time residents will have to seek shelter from an impending missile attack. If you live along the Gaza border, you have 15 seconds after the siren sounds. Jerusalemites get a full three minutes. But as the regions move farther north, the time drops again, until finally, along the Lebanese and Syrian borders, the color red designates “immediate entry into a shelter.” In other words, if you’re not already inside a shelter don’t bother looking for one.
The invisible but all-pervasive presence on that cheerful map of existential dread is Iran. If Israel were to launch a pre-emptive strike against Iranian nuclear facilities, Tehran’s two terrorist allies on our borders—Hezbollah and Hamas—would almost certainly renew attacks against the Israeli home front. And Tel Aviv would be hit by Iranian long-range missiles.
David Gothard
On the other hand, if Israel refrains from attacking Iran and international efforts to stop its nuclearization fail, the results along our border would likely be even more catastrophic. Hezbollah and Hamas would be emboldened politically and psychologically. The threat of a nuclear attack on Tel Aviv would become a permanent part of Israeli reality. This would do incalculable damage to Israel’s sense of security.
Given these dreadful options, one might assume that the Israeli public would respond with relief to reports that Iran is now considering the International Atomic Energy Agency’s proposal to transfer 70% of its known, low-enriched uranium to Russia for treatment that would seriously reduce its potential for military application. In fact, Israelis from the right and the left have reacted with heightened anxiety. “Kosher Uranium,” read the mocking headline of Israel’s largest daily, Yediot Aharonot. Media commentators noted that easing world pressure on Iran will simply enable it to cheat more easily. If Iranian leaders are prepared to sign an agreement, Israelis argue, that’s because they know something the rest of us don’t.
In the last few years, Israelis have been asking themselves two questions with increasing urgency: Should we attack Iran if all other options fail? And can we inflict sufficient damage to justify the consequences?
As sanctions efforts faltered, most Israelis came to answer the first question affirmatively. A key moment in coalescing that resolve occurred in December 2006, when the Iranian regime sponsored an “International Conference to Review the Global Vision of the Holocaust,” a two day meeting of Holocaust deniers. For Israelis, that event ended the debate over whether a nuclear Iran could be deterred by the threat of counter-force. A regime that assembles the world’s crackpots to deny the most documented atrocity in history—at the very moment it is trying to fend off sanctions and convince the international community of its sanity—may well be immune to rational self-interest.
Opinion here has been divided about the ability of an Israeli strike to significantly delay Iran’s nuclear program. But Israelis have dealt with their doubts by resurrecting a phrase from the country’s early years: Ein breira, there’s no choice. Besides, as one leading Israeli security official who has been involved in the Iranian issue for many years put it to me, “Technical problems have technical solutions.” Israelis tend to trust their strategic planners to find those solutions.
In the past few months, Israelis have begun asking themselves a new question: Has the Obama administration’s engagement with Iran effectively ended the possibility of a military strike?
Few Israelis took seriously the recent call by former U.S. National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski to shoot down Israeli planes if they take off for Iran. But American attempts to reassure the Israeli public of its commitment to Israel’s security have largely backfired. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s recent threat to “obliterate” Iran if it launched a nuclear attack against Israel only reinforced Israeli fears that the U.S. would prefer to contain a nuclear Iran rather than pre-empt it militarily.
On the face of it, this is not May 1967. There is not the same sense of impending catastrophe that held the Israeli public in the weeks before the Six Day War. Israelis are preoccupied with the fate of Gilad Shalit (the kidnapped Israeli soldier held by Hamas), with the country’s faltering relations with Turkey, with the U.N.’s denial of Israel’s right to defend itself, and with an unprecedented rise in violent crime.
But the Iranian threat has seeped into daily life as a constant, if barely conscious anxiety. It emerges at unexpected moments, as black humor or an incongruous aside in casual conversation. “I think we’re going to attack soon,” a friend said to me over Sabbath dinner, as we talked about our children going off to the army and to India.
Now, with the possibility of a deal with Iran, Israelis realize that a military confrontation will almost certainly be deferred. Still, the threat remains.
A recent cartoon in the newspaper Ma’ariv showed a drawing of a sukkah, the booth covered with palm branches that Jews build for the autumn festival of Tabernacles. A voice from inside the booth asked, “Will these palm branches protect us from Iranian missiles?”
Israelis still believe in their ability to protect themselves—and many believe too in the divine protection that is said to hover over the fragile booths. Both are expressions of faith from a people that fear they may once again face the unthinkable alone.
Mr. Klein Halevi is a senior fellow at the Adelson Institute for Strategic Studies at the Shalem Center in Jerusalem, and a contributing editor to the New Republic.
Iran Rejects Deal to Ship Out Uranium, Officials Report – NYTimes.com.
This article is by David E. Sanger, Steven Erlanger and Robert F. Worth.
WASHINGTON — Iran told the United Nations nuclear watchdog on Thursday that it would not accept a plan its negotiators agreed to last week to send its stockpile of uranium out of the country, according to diplomats in Europe and American officials briefed on Iran’s response.
The apparent rejection of the deal could unwind President Obama’s effort to buy time to resolve the nuclear standoff.
In public, neither the Iranians nor the watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency, revealed the details of Iran’s objections, which came only hours after Iran’s president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, insisted that “we are ready to cooperate” with the West.
But the European and American officials said that Iranian officials had refused to go along with the central feature of the draft agreement reached on Oct. 21 in Vienna: a provision that would have required the country to send about three-quarters of its current known stockpile of low-enriched uranium to Russia to be processed and returned for use in a reactor in Tehran used to make medical isotopes.
If Iran’s stated estimate of its stockpile of nuclear fuel is accurate, the deal that was negotiated in Vienna would leave the country with too little fuel to manufacture a weapon until the stockpile was replenished with additional fuel, which Iran is producing in violation of United Nations Security Council mandates.
American officials said they thought that the accord would give them a year or so to seek a broader nuclear agreement with Iran while defusing the possibility that Israel might try to attack Iran’s nuclear installations before Iran gained more fuel and expertise.
The Obama administration was anticipating that Iran would seek to back out of the deal, and in recent days the head of the nuclear agency, Mohamed ElBaradei, traveled secretly to Washington to talk about what to do if that happened, according to several American officials. Last weekend, President Obama called President Dmitri A. Medvedev of Russia and President Nicolas Sarkozy of France in an effort to maintain a unified front in dealing with Tehran’s leadership.
A senior European official characterized the Iranian response as “basically a refusal.” The Iranians, he said, want to keep all of their lightly enriched uranium in the country until receiving fuel bought from the West for the reactor in Tehran.
“The key issue is that Iran does not agree to export its lightly enriched uranium,” the official said. “That’s not a minor detail. That’s the whole point of the deal.”
American officials said it was unclear whether Iran’s declaration to Dr. ElBaradei was its final position, or whether it was seeking to renegotiate the deal — a step the Americans said they would not take.
Michael Hammer, a spokesman for the National Security Council, said that “we await clarification of Iran’s response,” but that the United States was “unified with our Russian and French partners” in support of the agreement reached in Vienna. That agreement explicitly called for Iran to ship 2,600 pounds of low-enriched uranium to Russia by Jan. 15, according to officials who have seen the document, which has never been made public.
News of the accord led to a political uproar in Iran, with some leading politicians arguing that the West could not be trusted to return Iran’s uranium, produced at the Natanz nuclear enrichment plant. Clearly, however, the Iranian government does not want to appear to be rejecting the agreement. Mr. Ahmadinejad, in a speech in the northeastern city of Mashhad that was broadcast live on state television on Thursday, said, “We welcome cooperation on nuclear fuel, power plants and technology, and we are ready to cooperate.”
He did not address Iran’s efforts to change the deal, but cast it as a victory for Iranian steadfastness against the West. “A few years ago, they said we had to completely stop all our nuclear activities,” Mr. Ahmadinejad said. “Now, look where we are today. Now, they want nuclear cooperation with the Iranian nation.”
In fact, the Iranians found something to like in the Vienna deal. It essentially acknowledged their right to use low-enriched uranium that Iran produced in violation of three Security Council agreements. The Obama administration and its allies were willing to create that precedent because the material would be returned to Iran in the form of fuel rods, usable in a civilian nuclear plant but very difficult to convert to weapons use.
Mr. Ahmadinejad’s remarks seemed to extend Iran’s two-track public position on the nuclear dispute, offering a degree of compliance while also insisting that there were limits to its readiness for cooperation.
“As long as this government is in power, it will not retreat one iota on the undeniable rights of the Iranian nation,” Mr. Ahmadinejad said. “Fortunately, the conditions for international nuclear cooperation have been met. We are currently moving in the right direction and we have no fear of legal cooperation, under which all of Iran’s national rights will be preserved, and we will continue our work.”
Mr. Ahmadinejad also suggested that Iran expected Western countries to honor payments for nuclear assistance it made before the 1979 Islamic Revolution. Iran paid more than $1 billion to help build a French reactor in return for access to that reactor’s fuel. After the revolution, France reneged on the contract.
“We have nuclear contracts,” Mr. Ahmadinejad said. “It has been 30 years, we have paid for them. Such agreements must be fulfilled.”
Iran’s envoy to the International Atomic Energy Agency, Ali Asghar Soltanieh, arrived in Vienna on Wednesday night to deliver Iran’s response to the plan. On Thursday he told the ISNA news service that Tehran held a “positive view” of the Vienna talks.
An atomic energy agency team returned to the headquarters in Vienna on Thursday after inspecting a second nuclear enrichment plant, at Fordo, near the city of Qum, the state-run Press TV reported on its Web site.
Iran had kept the plant a state secret until a few days before the United States and other Western powers disclosed its existence last month.
In Washington on Thursday, the Senate Banking Committee unanimously approved a measure that would let the White House impose stronger sanctions on Iran. The Senate bill, passed a day after the House Foreign Affairs Committee passed a similar measure, would authorize sanctions against companies that provide Iran with refined petroleum products and would ban most trade between the countries, exempting food and medicine.
David E. Sanger reported from Washington, Steven Erlanger from Paris, and Robert F. Worth from Beirut, Lebanon.
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