WarSclerotic

PM: Reports meeting with Obama went badly are ‘nonsense’ – Israel News, Ynetnews.

Netanyahu rejects rumors saying his meeting with Obama, shrouded in mystery when post-meeting press conferences were canceled, went badly. ‘The atmosphere was very warm, open,’ he says

Roni Sofer

Gulf Al-Qaida chief: Shi’ites, like Iran, more dangerous than Jews – Haaretz – Israel News.

The leader of Al-Qaida in the Arabian Penninsula warned Tuesday that Shi’ite Muslims, particularly Iran, posed more danger to the world than either Jews or Christians.

“They [Shiites] are being driven by a greed to take over Muslim countries and they are full of a wish to annihilate Sunnis,” Mohammed bin Abdul Rahman al-Rashid said in an audio recording carried by the U.S. monitoring group SITE Intelligence.

“Their threat to Islam and its people is much bigger than that from Jews and Christians,” he added. The majority of the world’s Muslims are Sunni, but Iran and the Lebanon-based group Hezbollah are both Shi’ite.

“We call on the nation … to stand by [Sunnis] with whatever means they can against the danger of Iran and those who follow [the Shiite] faith in the region,” added Rashid. He also accused Shi’ites branch of helping to facilitate the U.S.-led invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq.

http://www.presstv.ir/detail.aspx?id=110841&sectionid=351020202

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http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3803196,00.html

A-Nahar reports officials in Lebanon were warned about upcoming attack by international source

Roee Nahmias

Official sources in Lebanon told the country’s A-Nahar daily that they received warning from an international defense organization according to which Israel was planning to launch an extensive attack on Hezbollah.

Tuesday’s report said the attack would not focus only on southern Lebanon, as in previous wars.

It said the threat was founded on Hezbollah’s perseverance in smuggling weapons into Lebanese territory, evidence of which was discovered by Israel on the arms ship Francop.

Britain’s ambassador to Lebanon, Frances Guy, denied having any knowledge of the alleged Israeli threat. “You journalists are always looking for trouble,” she reportedly said.

“If it’s true, it is unfortunate,” she said when pressed, but stressed her disavowal of knowledge.

Earlier Tuesday IDF Chief of Staff Gabi Ashkenazi warned that Hezbollah is currently armed with thousands of missiles, some of which could reach the southern city of Dimona.

“Some of them have a range of 300 km and some of them have a range of up to 325 km,” Ashkenazi said, adding that the missiles were ready for use.

“There is a paradox – one hand there is calm, but when you peek over the fence you can see armament and empowerment. If Hezbollah carries out a retaliatory attack for (Imad) Mugniyah it will force Israel to respond and this will lead to deterioration,” he said.

http://www.israeltoday.co.il/default.aspx?tabid=178&nid=19937

Tuesday, November 10, 2009 Israel Today Staff

First, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had to jump through hoops just to get a meeting with US President Barack Obama. When they did meet on Monday, the contents of their talks were either so negative or so classified that a near-total media blackout was placed on the gathering.

Netanyahu left Israel for Washington on Sunday to attend and address the 2009 General Assembly of the Jewish Federations of North America. Weeks earlier, he had requested to meet with Obama during the visit, a typical occurrence any time an Israeli leader travels to the US. But this time, the Obama White House made Netanyahu sweat it out till the last minute before, as media reports put it, “grudgingly” scheduling a meeting.

The White House’s apparent reluctance to invite Netanyahu was an indication to most Israelis that relations remain tense between the Obama Administration and Jerusalem.

Then things got really curious when the White House totally broke protocol by barring the media from the meeting. Following the two-hour get-together, Netanyahu left the White House immediately without speaking to reporters, and promptly cancelled a press conference that had been scheduled for Tuesday. Instead, he hopped on a plane for Europe.

Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak, who attended part of the Obama-Netanyahu meeting, also cancelled several radio interviews scheduled for Tuesday.

Speculation was rife in Israel that the unusual secrecy surrounding the meeting could either mean that Obama tried to strong-arm the Israelis to surrender to Palestinian demands and was firmly repulsed, or that the meeting focused on an impending Israeli attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities.

In remarks to Israel’s Ynet news portal, attorney Dov Weisglass, who served as bureau chief to former Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, added a third option – that Netanyahu had agreed to far-reaching concessions to the Palestinians and wanted to keep the details under wraps for now to avoid a political storm at home.

(In my opinion this story put out by army radio is complete disinformation.  Last night, literally hundreds of flights of military transports, Hercules and Sikorskys flew SE towards Jordan.  In addition, military jets were flying all night non-stop.  I’m guessing Jordan is helping Israel stage the attack against Iran and this “cover story” of a joint “earthquake exercise” is absurd on its face.  Just the cost of the fuel spent last night by Israel could be over a million dollars.)

‘Iran is radical, but not irrational – it may still curb nukes’ – Haaretz – Israel News.
Israel Defense Forces Chief of Staff Gabi Ashkenazi said on Tuesday that he believed Western powers would succeed in stymieing Iran’s contentious nuclear program, adding that the Islamic Republic “not irrational” despite its extremist nature.

“The Iranian regime is radical, but it’s not irrational,” said Ashkenazi. “If the regime sees international insistence, its not illogical to assume that it will change its direction.”

“In 2003, the Iranians halted their nuclear program after they understood that the Americans were on their way to Iraq, and knew that Iran was next in line,” he added.

Meanwhile, Turkish and Iranian officials met secretly this week on the sidelines of an Istanbul summit, according to a Turkish daily.

President Barack Obama said on Monday that an unsettled political situation in Iran may be complicating efforts to seal a nuclear fuel deal between Tehran and major world powers.

Obama told Reuters in an interview that the United States had made more progress toward global nuclear non-proliferation in the last several months than in the past several years.

“But it is going to take time, and part of the challenge that we face is that neither North Korea nor Iran seem to be settled enough politically to make quick decisions on these issues,” he said at the White House.
Obama said the United States, along with Russia, China, Germany, Britain and France, had made a “fair” offer to Iran that would allow it to have a legitimate civilian nuclear program while allaying suspicions that it was seeking to build atomic weapons. Iran maintains its nuclear program is for purely civilian purposes.

The proposal by the UN International Atomic Energy Agency calls for Iran to transfer about 75 percent of its known 1.5 metric tons of low-enriched uranium to Russia for further enrichment by the end of this year, then to France for conversion into fuel plates for a Tehran reactor that produces radio isotopes for cancer treatment.

In talks with six world powers in Geneva on October 1, Iran agreed in principle to the draft deal.

But the deal has since stalled over details and goals and Iranian suspicions that any nuclear fuel sent abroad will not be returned to them.
“Although so far we have not seen the kind of positive response we want from Iran, we are as well positioned as we’ve ever been to align the international community behind that agenda,” Obama said.

IDF Chief: Hezbollah has rockets capable of hitting Tel Aviv – Haaretz – Israel News.

By Jonathan Lis, Haaretz Correspondent

Hezbollah guerrillas now possess tens of thousands of rockets, some capable of reaching up to 300 kilometers within Israel, Israel Defense Forces Chief of Staff Gabi Ashkenazi said on Tuesday.These capabilities would would put Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, as well cities much further south, into rocket range. “There is a war in the Middle East between two camps, the extreme and the mediated, which is pushing Iran to make radical steps. Without Iran’s support to finance weapons and terror groups they would be lacking the means available to them today,” said Ashkenazi. “While it is calm at the moment, the borders are quiet in the north and the south, it is a misleading calm,” he added. “Beyond the fences the terror groups are gaining strength.” Last week, Israel seized a ship reportedly en route from Iran to Hezbollah carrying hundreds of tons of weapons. Hezbollah has denied any connection to the weapons found aboard. The Lebanon-based militant group Hezbollah has stockpiled 40,000 rockets near the border with Israel and is training its guerillas to use missiles capable of striking Tel Aviv, the Times of London reported a couple of months ago. According to the report, militants are now being trained in the use of both long-range ground-to-ground missiles as well as anti-aircraft missiles to use against Israel. Israel, the United Nations and Hezbollah itself have all said that the milita is stronger today than it was during the Second Lebanon War. While the northern front has been relatively quiet since the 2006 conflict, Deputy GOC Northern Command Alon Friedman told The Times then that the peace could “explode at any minute.” In July, Hezbollah Secretary General Hassan Nasrallah predicted that Israel would attack Hezbollah strongholds in southern Lebanon sometime before next spring. Nasrallah told Lebanese media his organization would launch missiles at Tel Aviv if Israel attacks the Shi’ite group’s positions in Lebanon. He warned that “the equation had changed” in its method of resistance against Israel and threatened to attack Tel Aviv should the IDF bomb the southern suburbs of Beirut, as it did during the 2006 war. Senior Israel Defense Forces staff and defense establishment personnel have expressed extreme concern over the possibility of a serious incident on the Lebanese border in the near future. Tensions with Hezbollah have risen lately, especially since one of the organization’s warehouses of Katyusha rockets in southern Lebanon blew up last month. In response, defense officials have held several high-level consultations on the situation. The explosion revealed that Hezbollah was still stockpiling rockets south of the Litani River, in violation of Lebanon’s obligations under UN Security Council Resolution 1701, which marked the end of the Second Lebanon War. The Times obtained surveillance footage showing Hezbollah guerillas trying to extract rockets and munitions from the site of the explosion. UN peacekeeping forces were subsequently blocked from entering the site for investigation. Israel, meanwhile, has said that UNIFIL had precise information about the cache and a number of other installations where Hezbollah is storing rockets, but that peacekeeping force had done nothing. Senior IDF officers believe that Hezbollah has completely rebuilt its network of bunkers and arms stockpiles in south Lebanon, but has located them almost entirely inside Shi’ite villages rather than in open areas, as it did sometimes in the past. The warehouse explosion revealed this fact, and has prompted Hezbollah to worry that Israeli intelligence may know where its new bases are located.