IRAN, ISRAEL: Flexing muscles, turning up rhetoric in preparation for possible war | Babylon & Beyond | Los Angeles Times.

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Things are not looking good for the possibility of a peaceful resolution between Israel and Iran over the latter’s nuclear ambitions. Oil prices rose and hearts sank across the region this week as Iran began its biggest air defense drill ever and Israel readied a new missile defense system in preparation for a possible three-front war.

Since President Obama was swept into office promising a change toward strong diplomacy to resolve Middle East problems, his policies have faltered and his options narrowed.

The Bipartisan Policy Center, a Washington-based think tank that favors a hard line on Iran, issued a report last week recommending that the Obama administration begin preparing for possible military strikes on Iran next year. If the U.S. does not strike Iranian nuclear and military facilities, the report said, Israel may decide to take riskier unilateral action.

The year is almost over, and so far Iran is unmoved. Neither the threat of stricter sanctions nor a U.S.-backed fuel-swap proposal has persuaded Iran to abandon its nuclear program, and the war of words with Israel is escalating.

 

“If the enemy tries its luck and fires a missile into Iran, our ballistic missiles would zero in on Tel Aviv before the dust settles on the attack,” Mojtaba Zolnour, a high-ranking government representative, told the Revolutionary Guard this week.

Meanwhile, the Associated Press reported today that Israel is investing in new high-tech weapons, including a cutting-edge antimissile system and two nuclear-equipped submarines. Israeli military experts have said that the army is expecting Iran’s allies Hezbollah and Hamas to retaliate by launching synchronized rocket attacks in the event of an airstrike against Iran.

Israel’s new antimissile system, known as Iron Dome, would detect incoming rockets and fire an interceptor that detonates into a cloud of pieces instead of trying to shoot down the rocket with a direct hit.

The Associated Press went on to report that in light of international condemnation of Israel over the Gaza Strip war, large resources are also going into developing more accurate weapons and noise-making explosions to scare away civilians before real bombs are dropped.

Some observers say Israel is bluffing, that it won’t actually attack Iran for fear of messing up Washington’s efforts in the Middle East.

But the prospect of armed conflict has alarmed some analysts, including Steven Simon at the Council on Foreign Relations, who this week published a short report examining the likelihood and consequences of an Israeli attack on Iran.

Although Simon urges U.S. policymakers to forestall an attack that could have serious military, diplomatic and political consequences for Americans, he also says Washington must take practical steps to mitigate the damage of such a conflict.

But, he warns, even such defensive preparations could be misinterpreted by Tehran:

The United States must hedge against the failure of a war-avoidance policy, and begin preparing for an Israeli attack on Iran and Iranian retaliation. This will be a thorny process insofar as defensive measures the United States takes in the region, or urges its allies to take, could be read in Tehran as preparation for an attack and thus cast as justification for further destabilizing Iranian action.

— Meris Lutz and Borzou Daragahi in Beirut

Photos: Above, Israeli soldiers this year take part in an army drill simulating a chemical missile attack near Tel Aviv. Credit: Sebastian Scheiner / Associated Press.

Market Rap – Obama Bows, Iran Taunts, and Supply Peaks, Making it Time to Look at OIL, USO and USL.

Obama Bows, Iran Taunts, and Supply Peaks, Making it Time to Look at OIL, USO and USL

It’s time to see Iran’s nuclear plan for what it is – The Irish Times – Wed, Nov 25, 2009.

It’s time to see Iran’s nuclear plan for what it is

OPINION: Iran’s determination to become a nuclear power by any means is moving towards a tragic endgame, writes RICHARD WHELAN

THE PLAY is called Nuclear Negotiations with Iran, 99th Round, October/November 2009, and it is taking place on the international diplomatic stage.

Act 1. Iran agrees a groundbreaking breakthrough agreement on nuclear energy with the international community in Geneva and Vienna. “A solution is at hand.”

Act 2. Iranian spokesmen immediately challenge key parts of the deal and refuse to accept the deadline set by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the UN’s nuclear watchdog.

Act 3. Iran apparently makes a counter-offer which totally undermines the agreement supposedly reached.

Act 4. Various Iranian spokesmen (they are never women) make comments on the deal, some contradictory, mainly negative, and with a variety of unusual counter-proposals. The complexity and ever-changing nature of the proposals and counter-proposals ensures that all but the most expert are effectively “clueless” on what is really going on by now.

Act 5. The Iranians drag out the timescale and eventually respond with their own ideas (in essence unrelated to the supposed agreement), indicating a desire to discuss with the international community world peace, universal nuclear disarmament, a new international order, etc.

Act 6. The IAEA director, Mohamed ElBaradei (soon to retire), remains positive. The international community loses interest, hopes for the best, doesn’t really understand the complexities. Meanwhile, Iranian enrichment and other nuclear weapons-related activities continue.

You’ve seen this show before?

This tragedy/comedy/farce has been going on since the mid-1980s. Since then, the international community has been trying to stop first North Korea and now Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons. The harsh reality is that these efforts won’t succeed.

The international community, the two Clinton administrations and the two recent Bush administrations, the other powers negotiating with the US and North Korea (China, Japan, South Korea and Russia) and the IAEA all tried to stop North Korea from acquiring nuclear weapons. They failed. North Korea is today negotiating to be recognised by the international community, particularly the US, as a nuclear weapons state.

This is complete failure by any definition.

The second harsh fact we should now face up to is that Iran (a close ally of North Korea, with many nuclear, missile development, military and other connections with that state) is playing the nuclear game with the international community using exactly the same tactics North Korea used. Why wouldn’t they – they know they will be successful.

The Iranian game plan goes like this. Ostensibly agree to what the international community wants, raise questions and doubts, make counter-proposals, drag out the timing, ensure details are complex and ever-changing, and the attention and understanding of the international community will move elsewhere, and never focus on the big picture.

Add to this toxic brew the short timelines of democratic administrations, short attention spans for complex ever-changing issues, and the unwillingness of UN Security Council veto holders (China with North Korea and China and Russia with Iran) to back tough sanctions, and the result is a foregone conclusion.

A regime with single-minded purpose easily outmanoeuvres the international community. What worked for North Korea will work for Iran. Iran will soon have nuclear weapons.

A logical conclusion, but is it accurate? Consider two pieces of evidence. Firstly, from the IAEA itself.

Most likely generated due to frustration with the successful tactics adopted by North Korea and Iran, parts of an internal 67-page working paper by the IAEA’s safeguards department, entitled Possible Military Dimensions of Iran’s Nuclear Program, were leaked recently. The paper indicated that the department “believed that Iran had the ability to make a nuclear bomb, and was working on developing a missile system that could carry a nuclear warhead”. It said Iran had established a high-explosives industry capable of manufacturing nuclear-weapons triggers, and concluded Iran “has sufficient information to be able to design and produce a workable implosion nuclear device” using HEU (highly enriched uranium).

Secondly, what do Iran’s Arab neighbours, who are focused on long-term political and military implications, think? “I think the Gulf states are well advised now to develop strategies on the assumption that Iran is about to become a nuclear power,” according to Abdul Khaleq Abdullah, a political science professor at United Arab Emirates University. “It’s a whole new ball game. Iran is forcing everyone in the region now into an arms race.”

According to Abdulaziz Sega, former Saudi diplomat and current chairman of the Gulf Research Centre in the United Arab Emirates: “Israel can start the attack, but they cannot sustain it; the United States can start it and sustain it. The region can live with a limited retaliation from Iran better than living with a permanent nuclear deterrent. I favour getting the job done now instead of living the rest of my life with a nuclear hegemony in the region that Iran would like to impose.”

What is to be done? In my opinion, the international community needs to face up to its failures and adopt a much more robust policy, using targeted financial sanctions in particular, to attempt to dissuade Iran from its current course. This will involve Russia and China agreeing to harsh sanctions against a regime that China is developing strong trading relationships with (particularly with respect to energy), and that Russia sees as a good neighbour, to whom it wishes to sell advanced armaments. This will take time. Waiting in the wings is Israel, which is crystal clear on what Iran is up to.

Israel is “targeted” by Iran in all kinds of negative ways. There has to be a reasonable possibility that Israel will adopt the “Sadat Option” – that is, launch an attack on certain Iranian nuclear facilities. In 1973 the then president of Egypt, Anwar Sadat, did as much against Israel not in the expectation that it would succeed, but to force the international community in general, and Israel in particular, to consider the policies they had been adopting and to change the strategic landscape on the issue. This policy succeeded.

Israel could well judge that a focused strike on a known Iranian nuclear facility would wake up the international community and force it to take real action. Such an attack would change everybody’s strategic calculations, including those of Russia and China, and might lead to a better outcome for Israel than waiting for the inevitable.

Israel could assume after an attack on Iran that “something could come up” in the three to five years’ breathing space that such an attack could provide. At the very least the international community would start treating the threat posed by another rogue state acquiring nuclear weapons seriously.

Either way, the last act is shaping up to being quite a tragedy.

Richard Whelan is a commentator on international affairs. His website is http://www.richardwhelan.com

iddle East News | Six powers draft resolution to press Iran at IAEA.

Six powers draft resolution to press Iran at IAEA

The last IAEA board resolution passed against Iran was in February 2006

VIENNA (Agencies)

Six world powers have drafted a resolution at the United Nations nuclear watchdog urging Iran to clarify the purpose of its previously secret uranium enrichment site and confirm it has no more hidden atomic work, diplomats said.

The draft text, backed by the United States, Germany, France, Britain, Russia and China, is to be presented at the year-end meeting of the International Atomic Energy Agency’s 35-nation governing board that starts on Thursday.

Russian and Chinese support could be significant since they have often blocked tougher action against Iran in the IAEA’s governing body and the U.N. Security Council, including the pursuit of tough sanctions.

Nevertheless, it was not certain if the draft text would muster a majority among IAEA governors, almost half of whom belong to a developing nation bloc that includes Iran.

The IAEA said in a report last week that Iran’s late admission of the Fordow enrichment plant had eroded confidence that it was not harboring more secret activity.

The draft resolution will call on Iran to provide the agency with a timeline of the site’s design and construction, diplomats familiar with its content told Reuters, asking for anonymity due to the subject’s political sensitivity.

“There was a strong measure of agreement at the P5+1 meeting in Brussels last week that the (Fordow) revelation was a serious new development,” one senior diplomat said.

Iran revealed the site to the IAEA in September, two years after it said construction began. The IAEA said Iran was legally bound to own up about the plant as soon as plans were drawn.

The eight-point resolution draft highlighted this and also urged Iran to cooperate fully with the agency to clear up all outstanding issues about its nuclear work.

Western powers fear Iran is using the cover of a civilian nuclear programme to develop bomb-making capability. Iran denies this and says its atomic work is for peaceful uses only, like power generation.

The last IAEA board resolution passed against Iran was in February 2006 when governors referred Tehran’s case to the U.N. Security Council over its refusal to suspend enrichment and open up completely to IAEA inspections and investigations.

DEBKAfile – Iran is advancing on dual nuclear bomb track: uranium plus plutonium.

ran is advancing on dual nuclear bomb track: uranium plus plutonium

DEBKAfile Special Report

November 19, 2009, 4:29 PM (GMT+02:00)

DEBKAfile‘s military sources report that the UN inspectors’ October visit to Iran turned up dual-track progress in support of its nuclear weapons program: Feverish activity was registered in the production of plutonium at Isfahan as an alternative to the Fordo enriched uranium plant near Qom which starts up in 2011.

The IAEA experts discovered 30 metric tons-IS of heavy water hidden in 600 tanks, each holding 13 gallons, according to the report they handed in last week to agency headquarters in Vienna.

From the shape of the tanks and other indications, the experts concluded that this stock had not come from the heavy water plant at Arak but was imported.

Metric tons-IS measure the amount of energy a given quantity can release. The force and types of nuclear bombs are gauged in kilotons or megatons. The American nuclear bomb dropped on Hiroshima in World War II was equal to 20 kilotons of TNT. By this standard, the amount of heavy water discovered at Isfahan would be enough to make at least one plutonium bomb when the plutonium reactor under construction near the Arak heavy water facility is finished.

Other than its civilian uses, heavy water may be used to produce tritium, which intensifies the explosive force of nuclear warheads. The discovery of quantities of heavy water at Isfahan confirms the suspicions surrounding Iran’s nuclear program in three respects.

1. The long concealment of the Fordo site suggested to the UN inspectors that Iran has more hole-in the-corner nuclear facilities in the country. The discovery of a stock of heavy water further confirmed that Tehran is working hard to attain a nuclear weapon capacity on more than one track and at additional covert sites.

2. The IAEA wants to know who is selling Iran heavy water in violation of Security Council resolutions banning the sale or export of nuclear materials to Iran.

The very fact that some government or outside entity is willing to flout UN resolutions demonstrates that any further international sanctions would be ineffective for halting Iran’s nuclear drive, even assuming that President Barack Obama gained Russian and Chinese backing for such penalties. This backing has so far been withheld.

DEBKAfile‘s sources report from Vienna that on November 10, IAEA director Mohamed ElBaradei sent a request to the Iranian Nuclear Energy Committee asking it to confirm the presence of the heavy water and document its origin with a full explanation. Tehran has yet to reply.

3. The presence of the heavy water tanks at Isfahan is additional proof that the reactor at Arak is designed for military purposes, not a peaceful installation as Tehran claims.

DEBKAfile – Jordanian forces pitch in to help Saudis expel Yemeni rebels.

Jordanian forces pitch in to help Saudis expel Yemeni rebels

From DEBKA-Net-Weekly 422 Exclusive

November 24, 2009, 11:17 PM (GMT+02:00)

Jordanian elite force faces Iran-backed Yemeni rebels

In response to an appeal from the Saudi King Abdullah, the Jordanian monarch this week dispatched his army’s elite Royal Special Force of 2,000 commandoes to help the Saudis drive out the Yemeni Houthi rebels, who invaded the oil kingdom with Iranian support earlier this month. DEBKAfile‘s military sources report that the Jordanian troops are now battling the Yemeni invaders holding onto the Jebel Dukhan sector, which is split between the southern Saudi Jizan region and northern Yemen.

Day after day, Saudi troops backed by artillery, marines, tanks, engineers and air force F-15 and Tornado warplanes, together with the Yemeni army, have been fighting to dislodge the intruders from the rugged mountains which rise 6,600 ft high over a desolate landscape with no roads. They were repeatedly beaten off. The Yemeni rebels have sowed the narrow mountain passes with thousands of improved explosive devices.

In the early hours of their engagement, the Jordanian troops also took dead and wounded. It was their first experience of combat outside the borders of the Hashemite Kingdom since the 1960s, certainly the first time they had encountered Iranian-backed fighters.

DEBKA-Net-Weekly disclosed that Hashemite King Abdullah II sent this crack troops across in response to an urgent phone call Saudi King Abdullah put through on Nov. 16, appealing for Jordanian military back-up to support the Saudi effort to purge its southern border of the Yemeni rebel intrusion. An broader inter-Arab dimension was thus added to the Yemeni civil war.