Middle East News | Iran expands naval clout in strategic Gulf: study.

The Revolutionary Guards have gradually expanded its naval capabilities over the years (File)

WASHINGTON (Reuters)

Iran has restructured its naval forces to give an arm of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards full responsibility for operations in the strategic Gulf in the event of a conflict, according to a new U.S. intelligence study.

The concentration of fast attack boats and cruise missiles in and along the Strait of Hormuz and the Gulf by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Navy, known as the IRGCN, “better allow Iranian naval assets to contribute to and extend Iran’s layered defense strategy,” the U.S. Office of Naval Intelligence said in the study, dated fall 2009.

Iran says sees little benefit from nuclear treaty – washingtonpost.com.

Reuters
Monday, November 30, 2009; 5:14 AM

TEHRAN (Reuters) – Iran’s parliament speaker Ali Larijani said on Monday Iran saw little benefit from its membership of the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, a day after Tehran announced plans to build 10 uranium enrichment plants.

DEBKAfile – Iran hits back for IAEA censure by launching proxy military action against US, UK.

DEBKAfile Special Analysis

November 29, 2009, 7:08 PM (GMT+02:00)

Pro-Iranian Turkmen militia

Reduced Iranian cooperation with the International Atomic Energy Agency is the least of the troubles Tehran has in store for the West. The Iranians are incandescent over the nuclear watchdog’s rebuke Friday, Nov. 27 for its cover-up of the uranium enrichment plant at Fordo and demand to halt its construction.

Its latest gesture of defiance was the approval late Sunday, Nov. 29 of 10 new uranium enrichment installations, with construction on five starting immediately.

DEBKAfile‘s counter-terror sources report that earlier Sunday, Tehran moved toward a military confrontation with the United and Britain when its parliament earmarked $20 million to support “progressive currents which resist US and UK illegal activities.” The motion also ordered an investigation of alleged “US and British plots against the Islamic Republic.”

Our Iranian and counter-terror sources report that Tehran is acting to broaden its support of terrorist movements by bringing additional armed Islamist and insurgent groups into its support cycle as a means of forcing Washington and London to ease the pressure on its uranium enrichment projects and nuclear bomb program. Tehran classifies the groups combating the West in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan and Central Asia as “progressive.” The West may therefore be faced with newly-empowered armed groups in those places including possibly Taliban and al Qaeda allies.

The US and UK are specifically targeted by the new measure, which is separate from Iran’s sponsorship of Hizballah and the Palestinian Hamas and Islamic Jihad Islam and their armed confrontation against Israel.

Until now, Washington acted on the assumption that Iran would resort to military action only in reprisal for an attack on its nuclear installations. The main argument against an Israeli strike centered on it exposing US interests to the danger of Iranian retaliation.

The Iranian parliamentary motion is therefore an eye-opener because it means that Tehran is not waiting idly to be attacked but is already on the move to pre-empt international pressure on its nuclear activities by setting in motion covert and subversion operations against its foremost adversaries.

The new law authorizes clandestine Iranian agents to funnel funds directly to “progressive” armed groups willing to directly confront the US and Britain.

The bill also taps funds to “confront plots and unjust restrictions” by the Washington and London against Tehran and to disclose “human rights abuses by the two countries.”

DEBKAfile‘s sources quote Iranian sources as claiming they have evidence that the American CIA and British MI6 are secretly backing the subversive operations carried out against the regime in Tehran by Iranian opposition and ethnic movements, including the Baluchistani Gundallah, the Arabic Khuzestan Liberation movement and the Iranian Kurdish PAJK separatists.

The new legislation and allocations are therefore a signal from Tehran to Washington and London that as long as they conduct covert subversive operations against the Islamic Republic, Iran will retaliate in kind in their arenas.

Our intelligence sources report that the Revolutionary Guards terrorist arm, the al Qods Brigades, is well prepared for this covert campaign having in the past year established Arab, Baluchi, Kurdish, Turkmen and Azeri fighting units for infiltrating those arenas and joining forces with indigenous anti-West militias.

Iran to build 10 new uranium plants – The Irish Times – Sun, Nov 29, 2009.

Iran announced plans today to build 10 new uranium enrichment plants in a major expansion of its atomic programme, just two days after the UN nuclear watchdog rebuked it for carrying out such work in secret.

The defiant move by hardline president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s government will further aggravate tensions between the Islamic Republic and major powers over Iranian nuclear activities, and may accelerate calls for more UN sanctions against Tehran.

The United States and its allies suspect Iran’s atomic programme is aimed at building a nuclear bomb. Iran denies this, saying it only wants to generate electricity.

The White House condemned the announcement.

“If true, this would be yet another serious violation of Iran’s clear obligations under multiple UN Security Council resolutions and another example of Iran choosing to isolate itself,” spokesman Robert Gibbs said in a statement.

“Time is running out for Iran to address the international community’s growing concerns about its nuclear programme.”

Israel, assumed to have the Middle East’s only nuclear arsenal, has hinted at the possibility of attacking Iranian facilities if it deems diplomacy at a dead end. Washington has publicly opposed the idea of Israeli pre-emptive strikes.

The new enrichment facilities would be on the same scale as Iran’s main enrichment complex at Natanz and work on the plants would begin within two months, state broadcaster IRIB said.

Iran’s atomic energy organisation chief, Ali Akbar Salehi, said they would be built so that they would be protected from any military attack, for example in the “hearts of mountains”.

Mr Ahmadinejad said Iran should aim to produce 250-300 tonnes of nuclear fuel a year and that new, faster centrifuges should be used to reach that target. He did not give a time frame.

“We have a friendly approach towards the world but at the same time we won’t let anyone harm even one iota of the Iranian nation’s rights,” he said.

IRIB said the location of five of the 10 new plants had already been decided and that work on these should start within two months. At the same time, the Atomic Energy Organisation should find suitable locations for the other five.

It did not say when the plants would be completed.

From Debka-Net-Weekly

A New Hizballah Attack Would Place All of Lebanon in Israel’s Cross-Hairs

Defense minister Ehud Barak‘s tough warning to Beirut Wednesday, Nov. 24, went virtually unnoticed in the overheated Middle East climate. It deserved more attention because he stated clearly that if Hizballah goes on the warpath again and shoots rockets at Israeli towns as it did in 2006, Israel would hold the new Lebanese unity government responsible and target the whole of the country – not just Hizballah strongholds in the south.

Barak was addressing a meeting of northern Israel mayors and local leaders representing the towns and villages blasted three years ago.

“We cannot accept the situation created now in Lebanon in which a terrorist militia is part of the government,” he said and went on to underscore pro-Iranian militia’s hugely expanded arsenals: 40,000 rockets in place of the 16,000 on the eve of the 2006 war.

The Israeli defense minister warned that the Lebanese Shiite group may be taking delivery of game-changing weapons if mobile anti-aircraft SA-8 missile batteries get the green light from Damascus or Tehran to move across the border into Lebanon.

These missiles would shield Hizba!lla strongholds against Israeli Air Force attack. They have been held in Syrian depots for months because Israel notified Damascus via Washington and Paris that they would be bombed if they tried to cross the border.

Who will draw first?

Barak’s comments are noteworthy, DEBKA-Net- Weekly military sources say, because they lift the veil from the IDF’s new military doctrine for Lebanon in the light of its changed circumstances:

This month, after seven months of crisis, Saad Hariri managed to form a unity government which also embraces the greatly empowered Hizballah without requiring its militia to disarm and disband.

The Eisencott Doctrine, as it is called after the Northern Command chief Gen. Gadi Eisencott, would avoid engaging Hizballah forces on the ground, as the IDF did in 2006, but go straight for their missile batteries and stockpiles and destroy them.

By destruction, the general means the entire environment of those batteries and stocks would be ground to dust, like the Shiite Dahya borough of Beirut which a three-week Israeli bombardment flattened three years ago because it was the seat of Hizballah’s headquarters and offices.

Since then, Hizballah has spread its thousands of missiles across Lebanon. According to the Eisancott Doctrine, a Hizballah attack would therefore cost Lebanon dear. Israel would hit its missiles wherever they may be located – even at the cost of destroying much of Lebanon’s civilian and military infrastructure.

Barak was giving Beirut advance warning because of the widespread belief that Hizballah will loose a missile blitz against Israel as Iran’s first response to a possible Israeli attack on its nuclear sites. At the same time, Hizballah is certain Israel will precede such an attack by hitting Lebanon first to save its own population from retaliatory punishment.

From Debka-Net-Weekly

Tehran Tenses for Israeli Tactical Nuke attack on Its Nuclear Sites

DEBKA-Net-Weekly military and intelligence sources report that on Monday night, November 22, and on Tuesday, November 23, the air defense exercise dubbed The Defenders was geared to a possible Israeli tactical nuclear weapon strike against its nuclear facilities.

DEBKA-Net-Weekly’s Iranian sources have come to the conclusion that Israel is capable of launching missiles tipped with tactical nuclear warheads from ground bases at home and from the Israel Navy’s five modern German-built Dolphin-class submarines. They estimate that Israeli cruise missiles carry a 200kg nuclear warhead containing 6kg of plutonium and are capable of range of more than 2,000 km. They can be delivered with a high degree of accuracy from the Dolphin submarines.

Western military sources say that Israel’s acquisitions of these submarines from Germany were actuated by the proven effectiveness of its home-manufactured cruise missiles. The subs are fitted with torpedo tubes adapted to launching nuclear-capable cruise missiles to a distance of 1,500-2,400 km.

Tehran is also acting on the assumption that Israeli intelligence has mapped most of its covert nuclear sites, many of which have been sunk into fortified chambers between 60 and 90 meters underground. To reach them, Iranian war chiefs believe Israel has developed tactical nuclear depth and gravity bombs for blowing up fortified underground bunkers and/or heavily-defended target locations difficult or impossible to access with conventional weapons.

Long-term destruction, no civilian harm

Tactical nuclear weapons have never been used in the history of international conflicts. Tehran assumes Israel may be willing to pioneer this class of warfare for two goals:

1. To totally grind Iran’s nuclear facilities to ashes so that they will take many years rebuild. This would disprove some Western intelligence contentions that bombing the Iranian program would be a short-term remedy shutting it down for no more than a couple of years. Iranian calculations are a lot more pessimistic. They fear that if, for instance, their uranium enrichment facilities in Natanz, the uranium mines in Yazd and the secret military nuclear laboratories in South and North Tehran were struck by tactical nuclear weapons, they would need five to six years to rebuild the installations and plants from scratch and decontaminate their locations.

2. Since most of Iran’s nuclear installations are located near civilian populations, its war planners expect tactical nuclear weapons to be used by Israel so as not to expose civilians to collateral contamination. These weapons focus tightly on targeted locations and do not spread radiation over wide areas.

For this reason, DEBKA-Net-Weekly military sources say, the planners of Iran’s air defense exercise did not waste time or strength on drills for the protection of civilian populations near the Iranian facilities. But, on the contrary, in view of the war games’ poor results, some began considering parking large numbers of civilians at nuclear sites ahead of a potential US or Israel attack, as human shields.

In 2003, when US troops invaded Iraq, the dictator Saddam Hussein tried this trick but failed to save his regime.

Human shields and an India-Pakistan status quo

Iran is taking steps of its own to counter this purported Israeli strike strategy:

While planning to loose a shower of ballistic missiles on Israel in response to an attack, the Iranians are also trying hard to beat the clock and put together a primitive nuclear device or radioactive dirty bombs for their own use or for their Middle East allies to try out on Israeli targets.

They also see Israel’s potential as the first user of tactical nuclear weapons offering them a major diplomatic and propaganda advantage to justify developing their own nuclear weapons quite openly.

In that case, Tehran would go for a nuclear balance on the India-Pakistan model.

The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists created the famous “Doomsday Clock” in 1947 to convey how close humanity is to “catastrophic destruction.” The clock reached its high-point – 2 minutes to midnight – after the first hydrogen bomb tests in 1953. The BAS moved the clock back to 17 minutes after the end of the Cold War but it has been steadily ticking forward toward midnight since then, with rogue states such as North Korea and now Iran developing nuclear weapons, and with tensions rising between nuclear-armed India and Pakistan, and Israel and Iran. It currently stands at 5 minutes to midnight.

If Israel does strike Iran with a tactical nuclear weapon, the clock would move to one minute, or perhaps half a minute, before midnight.

From Debka-net Weekly

Iran’s Air Defense Exercise – I
Tehran Fully Expects to be Hit by Israeli Cruise Missiles

Iran‘s five-day Modafean-e Aseman-e-Velayat (The Defenders) exercise for testing the defenses of its nuclear sites gave away more information than intended, DEBKA-Net-Weekly’s military sources report. It showed how Tehran perceived a possible Israel attack on those sites and a potential ensuing war, and revealed most strikingly the paucity of its anti-air and anti-missile defenses.

For this reason, Iran long avoided these war games, fearing they would expose too many of its vulnerabilities. But after spurning every international compromise proposal for its military nuclear program (whose existence is denied) or even for its enriched uranium, Tehran has had to deal with the possibility of an Israeli, US or joint US-Israeli strike against its nuclear facilities, which may be only weeks or short months away.

Tehran will regard a purely Israeli operation as a joint effort in view of its expected American support in the form of radar, intelligence and interceptor missiles.

With this peril looming, Iranian leaders had no option but to stage trials for national air defenses, especially after carrying out every other possible military exercise, whether missile tests or land, naval and air maneuvers. The public needed to be satisfied that all was well, but most of all, it was high time for the military and Revolutionary Guards Corps generals to find out at last whether the Iranian air force in tandem with anti-aircraft batteries and radar units was actually able to defend the country’s skies and nuclear installations – even though it consists of 300 ageing warplanes starved of spare parts and upgraded equipment.

Iran‘s multi-branched air defense system has its first trial

At a press conference in Brasilia Wednesday Nov. 24, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad pooh-poohed a possible Israeli attack: “Weapons, threats and attacks are means of the past,” he said. “And (such words) belong to those politicians who are lagging behind.”

“Those you mentioned (the Israelis) do not dare to do such a thing and are too small to take military action against Iran.” The era of military invasions is over,” he said, “and today is the time for talks and thinking”.

But DEBKA-Net-Weekly military and intelligence sources report that the facts emerging from Iran’s war game tell a different story from Ahmadinejad’s arrogant words. Rather than looking forward to “talks and thinking,” Iran’s leaders are deeply worried that Israel may decide to send cruise missiles and tactical nuclear warheads, both of which have never been admitted, to destroy their nuclear installations and strategic infrastructure.

The exercise consequently kicked off Sunday, Nov. 22 with maneuvers for preventing enemy aircraft penetrating Iranian skies over nuclear facilities. They focused on protecting the uranium enrichment facilities in Natanz, the uranium hexafluoride gas production plant at Isfahan, the two military nuclear reactors under construction at Arak and on the Persian Gulf coast across from the Straits of Hormuz, the uranium mines in Yazd, the key military installations housing nuclear weapons laboratories – among them the cluster of military nuclear installation in northern and southern Tehran – as well as missile factories, missile silos and ballistic missiles launch pads concentrated in Central Iran.

Iranian Air Force Mirage F-1 multi-role aircraft were the mock attackers, whereas Mig-29 interceptors and F-5 ground support craft, some of US manufacture and some made in Iran, were assigned to defending the nuclear facilities. They were supported from the ground by Russian-made Tor-M1 anti-aircraft missiles – which are advanced but short range – outdated SA-6 ground-to-air missiles and a motley assortment of anti-aircraft weapons including a variety of guns.

Iranians try to boost morale after homemade radar, communications fail

To coordinate the operation of the different branches, Iran tried out in quasi-combat conditions for the first time two big homemade systems, the Bassiou radar and the Thoram-1 digital communications network.

The latter, with its advanced and flexible design, was expected to become a key element in coordinating Iranian weapons systems and enhancing communication and data transmission among the various Iranian units.

But in the first hours of the exercise, both systems failed to cope with the influx of data. By the end of Day One, they had crashed. Furthermore, the air force planes in the roles of attacking US or Israeli aircraft broke through Iran’s air defenses; they defeated the defending aircraft in dogfights and took control of the skies over the nuclear sites.

The exercise demonstrated that Iran’s nuclear facilities would be smashed in the first hours of any attack, a conclusion that cast a pall of gloom over all the participants.

To raise their spirits, Iranian Air-Force Commander Brig. Gen. Ahmad Mighani delivered a speech Monday, Nov. 23, to senior officers at exercise headquarters in the Khatam ol-Anbia air base in the southern Khuzistan, assuring them that any Israeli warplanes that might reach Iran’s nuclear sites would have nowhere to return to because their home bases would have been destroyed meanwhile by Iranian ballistic missiles.

DEBKA-Net-Weekly’s military sources report that this was an idle boast for two reasons:

1. Tehran knows that a US or Israeli strike would first single out Iran’s ballistic missiles before even approaching its nuclear sites. Even if not all its missiles are wiped out, few would be left intact for mounting a second strike and would therefore have only a remote chance of rendering Israeli air bases unusable.

2. With their radar and communication systems inoperable, Iranian commanders are short of the basic tools of modern warfare, including counter-measures for dealing with the electronic jamming capabilities owned by their adversaries and capable of throwing Iranian missiles off-course.

Iran complains Russians left them in the lurch

Monday, Nov. 23, Day Two of the war game, was devoted to testing Iran’s defenses systems against a mocked-up Israeli cruise missile attack. The result was a major let-down. Taking into account that Israel plans to shower hundreds of cruise missiles from ground bases, warships and aircraft stationed hundreds of miles away out of the range of the Iranian air force, the Iranians focused this part of the exercise on intercepting Israeli or US cruise missiles as they homed in on Iranian targets. According to our military sources, no world army, the US and Israel included, has ever come up with an effective defense against a cruise missile. The development of interceptors is still in its infancy.

When this vulnerability was demonstrated too, Iranian war chiefs, from Defense Minister Ahmad Vahidi, through Iranian Chief of Staff Maj. Gen. Hassan Firouzabadi and down to Air Force Commander Mighani vented their fury over Moscow’s failure to deliver S-300 missiles, the only weapons system offering Iran an effective defense for its precious nuclear and strategic centers. They were heard to lament: “We are unhappy with the Russian friends up north. … Don’t the Russian strategists take into consideration Iran’s geopolitical importance…?”

And when the Russians did not dignify Tehran’s complaints with a response, Iran’s leaders switched from gripes to threats. Tuesday, Nov.25, Brig. Gen. Mohammad Hassan Mansourian, deputy head of Iran’s air defenses said: “Iran can take legal action if Russia refuses to fulfill its commitments to deliver the advanced missile defense system to the Islamic Republic. And because this is an official agreement it can be pursued through international legal ! bodies,” he said.

Russia retains electronic counter-measures to all its weapons

Tehran is certain that Moscow was bullied by the Americans and Israelis into withholding the S-300s, which would have transformed the face of its air defense and missile interceptor capabilities. But the truth is that the Russians never let any advanced weapon out of their hands without retaining the electronic key to neutralizing it or handing it over to a third party. In this case, they might have concurrently sold the missiles to Iran and the counter-measure key to Israel.

In 2007, Moscow supplied Syria with the Pantsir (SA-22 Greyhound system), which was purchased to protect its secret atomic reactor then under construction. When Israel struck that reactor in 2007, the Pantsir defense system failed to function or even register the approach of Israeli warplanes.  According to some reports, Israel received the key for disarming the Pantsir from Moscow – or alternatively fabricated one of its own.

White House sees progress from Chinese trip | U.S. | Reuters.

By Patricia Zengerle – Analysis

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Perhaps Barack Obama‘s trip to China this month was not such a flop after all.

Obama was criticized for kowtowing to the Chinese and apparently returning empty-handed, but movement from Beijing last week on Iran‘s nuclear program and climate change suggests the U.S. president got further than it seemed at first.

Obama went to China with three major issues on the table — economic relations, climate change and denuclearization — and seems to have made progress on at least two of them.

But analysts said it was unclear exactly how much the U.S. leader had actually influenced the Chinese, or what the long-term impact would be of what was announced last week.

“The Chinese were pressed in a very focused fashion on both of those issues,” said Kenneth Lieberthal, director of the John L. Thornton China Center at the Brookings Institution in Washington.

“I think their position does reflect, in fact, the impact of the Obama visit and of American diplomacy,” he said.

China offered rare backing on Friday to a vote by the U.N. nuclear watchdog to rebuke Iran for building a uranium enrichment plant in secret, the first such vote against Tehran in almost four years.

China, like Russia, backed the measure, smoothing its 25-3 passage through the International Atomic Energy Agency and departing from an earlier pattern of blocking global attempts to isolate trading partner Iran.

Obama stressed in Beijing that Iran‘s nuclear program could disrupt the Middle East and world energy supplies, experts and administration officials said.

The Washington Post reported that U.S. officials had argued that Israel saw Iran‘s nuclear ambitions as an existential threat, and implied Israel could one day attack Iran to disrupt those ambitions. That argument helped bring the Chinese on board to take a firmer line on Tehran, it reported.

“Obama pressed very hard with the Chinese,” Lieberthal said. “And they went the right way today.”

On Thursday, Beijing said Premier Wen Jiabao would go to U.N.-led climate talks in Copenhagen next month and offered its first firm carbon intensity target, pledging to cut the amount of carbon dioxide produced for each yuan of national income by 40-45 percent by 2020, compared with 2005 levels.

‘THESE THINGS ARE INCREMENTAL’

Washington gave only a guarded welcome to China’s emissions announcement, saying the world would watch progress by the top greenhouse gas emitter. Observers said measuring and verifying implementation would be central going forward.

Bonnie Glaser, a China expert and senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, said China’s 40-45 percent reduction target was disappointing, but it was a good sign that they made an announcement at all.

“I think the Obama administration is relieved that it got a public statement from the Chinese going into the Copenhagen meeting,” she said.

White House officials expressed satisfaction at the developments, which they termed “tangible progress” in the wake of Obama’s visit.

“These things are incremental, but the president’s belief throughout his engagement process and policy is that by having these discussions in a respectful manner and by having these exchanges over time you can develop consensus,” a senior administration official said.

Analysts said they were still waiting for movement from Beijing on the U.S. view that China, the largest holder of U.S. foreign debt, should let its yuan currency rise in value.

“I don’t know what he accomplished in terms of the economic crisis,” Lieberthal said. “I know they had real serious discussions. I don’t know if they moved things forward or not.”

A White House official said Obama had laid the groundwork on Iran — as on climate — during repeated meetings with Chinese officials.

“We were obviously locked into waiting for this (the IAEA board of governors’) vote and now we’re … where we thought we would be in terms of reflecting that level of cooperation that we’ve been able to develop with China on this issue,” he said.

(Editing by Simon Denyer and Vicki Allen)