Report: CIA chief visited Israel; discussed Iran – Israel News, Ynetnews.

Israel’s approach on Iran ‘responsible’.

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US Defying Iran by Arming Arabs – Defense/Middle East – Israel News – Israel National News.

U.S. Speeding Up Missile Defenses in Persian Gulf – NYTimes.com.

WASHINGTON — The Obama administration is accelerating the deployment of new defenses against possible Iranian missile attacks in the Persian Gulf, placing special ships off the Iranian coast and antimissile systems in at least four Arab countries, according to administration and military officials.

The Persian Gulf

The deployments come at a critical turning point in President Obama’s dealings with Iran. After months of unsuccessful diplomatic outreach, the administration is trying to win broad international consensus for sanctions against the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps, which Western nations say control a covert nuclear arms program.

Mr. Obama spoke of the shift in his State of the Union address, warning of “consequences” if Iran continued to defy United Nations demands to stop manufacturing nuclear fuel. And Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton publicly warned China on Friday that its opposition to sanctions was shortsighted.

The news that the United States is deploying antimissile defenses — including a rare public discussion of them by Gen. David H. Petraeus — appears to be part of a coordinated administration strategy to increase pressure on Iran.

The deployments are also partly intended to counter the impression that Iran is fast becoming the most powerful military force in the Middle East, to forestall any Iranian escalation of its confrontation with the West if new sanctions are imposed. In addition, the administration is trying to show Israel that there is no immediate need for military strikes against Iranian nuclear and missile facilities, according to administration officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity.

By highlighting the defensive nature of the buildup, the administration was hoping to avoid a sharp response from Tehran.

Military officials said that the countries that accepted the defense systems were Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Kuwait. They said the Kuwaitis had agreed to take the defensive weapons to supplement older, less capable models it has had for years. Saudi Arabia and Israel have long had similar equipment of their own.

General Petraeus has declined to say who was taking the American equipment, probably because many countries in the gulf region are hesitant to be publicly identified as accepting American military aid and the troops that come with it. In fact, the names of countries where the antimissile systems are deployed are classified, but many of them are an open secret.

The general spoke about the deployments at a conference at the Institute for the Study of War here on Jan. 22, saying that “Iran is clearly seen as a very serious threat by those on the other side of the gulf front.”

General Petraeus said that the acceleration of defensive systems — which began when President George W. Bush was in office — included “eight Patriot missile batteries, two in each of four countries.” Patriot missiles are capable of shooting down short-range offensive missiles.

He also described a first line of defense: He said the United States was now keeping Aegis cruisers on patrol in the Persian Gulf at all times. Those cruisers are equipped with advanced radar and antimissile systems designed to intercept medium-range missiles. Those systems would not be useful against Iran’s long-range missile, the Shahab 3, but intelligence agencies believe that it will be years before Iran can solve the problems of placing a nuclear warhead atop that missile.

Iran contends that it is not trying to develop nuclear weapons, and that its program is for energy production. The White House declined to comment on the deployments.

But administration officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity said the moves have several aims. “Our first goal is to deter the Iranians,” said one senior administration official. “A second is to reassure the Arab states, so they don’t feel they have to go nuclear themselves. But there is certainly an element of calming the Israelis as well.”

As Iran’s nuclear program proceeds — more slowly, American intelligence officials say, than the United States had once thought — Israel has hinted at various times that it might take military action against the country’s military facilities unless it is convinced that Mr. Obama and Western allies are succeeding in stopping the program.

Mr. Obama’s national security adviser, Gen. James L. Jones, took an unannounced trip to Israel this month, partly to take the temperature of the Israeli government and to review both economic and covert programs now under way against the Iranian program, according to officials familiar with the meeting.

American officials argue that the willingness of Arab states to take the American emplacements, which usually come with a small deployment of American soldiers to operate, maintain and protect the equipment, illustrates the region’s growing unease about Iran’s ambitions and abilities.

Gulf countries are also taking steps of their own to harden their defenses. Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates have bought more than $15 billion in American arms in the past two years, including missile defense systems. The United States is helping support a plan by Saudi Arabia to triple the size, to 30,000 people, of a Saudi force that protects the kingdom’s ports, oil facilities and water-desalinization plants, a senior military officer said. The Washington Post reported both steps on its Web site on Saturday.

One senior military officer said that General Petraeus had started talking openly about the Patriot deployments about a month ago, when it became increasingly clear that international efforts toward imposing sanctions against Iran faced hurdles, and the administration’s efforts to engage Iran were being rebuffed by the Tehran government. In October, the two countries reached an agreement in principle to move a significant portion of Iran’s nuclear fuel out of the country, but Iran backed away from the deal.

In discussing the Patriots and missile-shooting ships, General Petraeus’s main message has been to reassure allies in the gulf that the United States is committed to helping defend the region, said the military officer, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the delicate nature of the topic. But the general’s remarks were also a pointed reminder to the Iranians of American resolve, the officer said.

DEBKAfile, Political Analysis, Espionage, Terrorism, Security.

Tags: Gulf Emirates military deployment Saudi Arabia US-Iran

Aegis, US anti-missile missile

The Obama administration took the unusual step Saturday night, Jan. 30, of leaking word to major US media that the United States, Saudi Arabia and Gulf allies – the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait and Bahrain – have accelerated the deployment of new defenses against possible Iranian missile attacks. They are preparing for Iran, or its surrogate Hizballah, to hit back for a possible US or strikes on Tehran’s nuclear facilities.
debkafile‘s US military sources confirm that Washington plans to treble the 10,000-strong US troop contingent, already present in Saudi Arabia for guarding its oil fields and port facilities against medium or short-range Iranian missile attack, or sabotage by Hizballah marine units trained for their mission by Iran’s Revolutionary Guards Corps.
Additional US Aegis missile interceptor cruisers with advanced radar and anti-missile systems were also reported to be heading for round-the-clock patrol around Iranian shores, with more Patriot anti-missile missiles to reinforce the eight batteries already deployed in the four emirates.
The Obama administration set these exceptional steps in motion, debkafile reports, in anticipation of  nuclear provocations from Tehran while the regime celebrates the 31st anniversary of the Islamic revolution from Feb.1-11.
President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has promised to announce Iran’s attainment of a 20 percent uranium enrichment capability, a short step to weapons grade material.

Some high-ranking Revolutionary Guards officers have also said that Iran will parade a new type of surface missile during the celebrations, without revealing its features, while Iranian space scientists predicted the launch of a new spy satellite of the Toloo series.
All this was taken in Washington as a challenge that could not be left without an appropriate response. Administration officials also feared that Israel might be goaded into going forward with a military operation against Iran’s nuclear facilities. The Gulf Arab states were in need of reassurance too.
The White House’s decision to deploy additional defenses in the Gulf came only a day after National Security Adviser James Jones warned that Iran was liable to react to pressure by having its proxies Hizballah and Hamas attack Israel.  The abruptness of this step pointed to the administration having woken up to the realization that its diplomatic and military position in the region was in grave jeopardy and in dire need of shoring up without delay.

DEBKAfile, Political Analysis, Espionage, Terrorism, Security.

The British embassy in Tehran

debkafile‘s Iranian sources report that the Basijj militia chiefs have a plan to seize the British embassy in Tehran. Western intelligence agencies monitoring Iran have warned London that radical groups are secretly preparing to overrun the British embassy buildings and living quarters and take the diplomats hostage, replicating the siege of the US embassy in 1979, when extremist students held the staff hostage for 444 days. Those students were the early nucleus of the radical Revolutionary Guards Corps.
Britain maintains two embassy compounds in Tehran – one downtown occupies a 100-yer old landmark building surrounded by a large garden and a wall; the other housing the embassy’s nerve center and living quarters on a large site which the deposed shah presented to Her Majesty’s Government as a gift.

Our intelligence sources report that two Iranian militia teams have been formed to seize the two compounds: one takes orders from Ayatollah Mohammad Mesbah Yazdi, whereas the other is under the command of senior cleric Hojat-ol-Eslam Ahmad Khatami. The plan has been submitted to Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmedinejad for approval. He favors the project but has yet to set a date. It has also provoked controversy in the Majlis (parliament).

The pretext for the seizure would be that the two sites are the rightful property of the Iranian people. The real reason is that the Iranian regime has been gunning for Britain for some time, scheming revenge for London’s alleged direct role in organizing the wave of opposition protests besetting the government since last June. Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki has been leveling this charge at the UK for the last six months.

Most of all, the Islamic regime would like to set off a huge row with Britain to overshadow the dispute over another round of tough sanctions against Iran for its nuclear program.

The radical factions behind Ahmedinejad are cheered on by China’s opposition to sanctions and even more bucked up by the letter the US Chamber of Commerce sent to President Barack Obama urging him to refrain from harsher sanctions.

While played up in Tehran, this letter received little media coverage in the US and none at all in Israel.

It states: “The proposed sanctions would incite economic, diplomatic, and legal conflicts with U.S. allies and could frustrate joint action against Iran.”

Iranian radicals believe US business interests took this position under the influence of Tehran’s intransigence in the face of Western pressure to cut back on their weapons-related nuclear projects. They insist that by continuing to play hard ball they will throw the plans for serious military action or economic penalties out of court altogether.

Clinton: China risks diplomatic isolation over Iran – Haaretz – Israel News.

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton warned China on Friday it risks diplomatic isolation and disruption to its energy supplies unless it helps keep Iran from developing nuclear weapons.

Speaking in Paris, Clinton said she and others who support additional sanctions on Iran for refusing to prove it has peaceful nuclear intentions are lobbying China to back new UN penalties on the Iranian government.

She said she understood China’s reluctance to impose new penalties on Iran, its third-largest supplier of oil. But she stressed that a nuclear-armed Iran would destabilize the Persian Gulf and imperil oil shipments China gets from other Arab states in the region.

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There is a new push for sanctions at the UN because of Iran’s continued refusal to engage on the matter with the five permanent members of the Security Council – Britain, China, France, Russia and the United States – and Germany.

Administration officials have invited new talks with Iran, but with no sign that Iran wants to do business, the focus has turned to penalties.

“As we move away from the engagement track, which has not produced the result that some had hoped for, and move forward on the pressure and sanctions track, China will be under a lot of pressure to recognize the destabilizing impact that a nuclear-armed Iran would have in the Gulf, from which they receive a significant percentage of their oil supplies,” Clinton said.

The United States is the most visible leader in the new push for UN Security Council sanctions, and Clinton spent much of her time in Europe this week lobbying major powers whose support she needs to pass and enforce new economic penalties. Some of the additional measures that will be proposed target elements of Iran’s powerful militia structure, U.S. officials said.

The Obama administration has said Iran appears bent on developing nuclear weapons, although Iran claims its nuclear work is peaceful. Iran is thought to have stockpiled more than enough nuclear material to manufacture a single bomb, and more is being made daily.

Clinton said the risks of an Iranian bomb are manifold.

“It will produce an arms race, in the Persian Gulf, and Israel will feel its very existence threatened,” Clinton said in response to a question from an audience member during a speech at a French military academy. “All of that is incredibly dangerous.”

The United States has cautioned Israel publicly against a pre-emptive strike on Iran’s known nuclear facilities, arguing that such an attack would invite an arms race and retaliation.

U.S. Senate approves sanctions on Iran’s fuel suppliers – Haaretz – Israel News.

The U.S. Senate on Thursday approved legislation that would let President Barack Obama impose sanctions on Iran’s gasoline suppliers and penalize some of Tehran’s elites, a move aimed at pressuring Tehran to give up its nuclear program.

The sanctions, approved on a voice vote, would target companies that export gasoline to Iran or help expand the country’s oil-refining capacity by, in part, denying them loans and other assistance from U.S. financial institutions.

The House of Representatives has already passed similar legislation. Differences between the two bills will have to be worked out before the measure becomes law.

Lawmakers and the Obama administration fear Iran’s uranium enrichment program will be used to develop weapons, while Tehran says it is for peaceful purposes such as generating electricity.

Many in Congress want to give Obama more tools to pressure Iran. Cutting off gasoline supplies would hurt Tehran’s economy; while Iran has the world’s third biggest oil reserves, it must import 40 percent of its gasoline to meet domestic demand because of a lack of refining capacity.

In his State of the Union address on Wednesday, Obama warned Tehran aced “growing consequences” over its nuclear program. The administration has been working with several other major powers to build a consensus on new sanctions to be imposed jointly.

But U.S. business groups have warned the White House that the lawmakers’ approach threatens to undercut this joint strategy. The critics say broad-based sanctions sought by lawmakers would upset U.S. allies whose companies would be affected, and frustrate joint action with other countries against Iran.

The sanctions in the Senate bill would extend to companies that build oil and gas pipelines in Iran and provide tankers to move Iran’s petroleum.

The measure also prohibits the U.S. government from purchasing goods from foreign companies that do business in Iran’s energy sector.

The Senate acted on the same day that Iran hanged two men convicted in the wake of political unrest in the country. “The situation in Iran is terrible and it’s worsening. People are dying in Iran as we speak,” said Senator John McCain just before the Senate vote.

Other provisions in the bill would:

* Impose a broad ban on direct imports from Iran to the
United States and exports from the United States to Iran,
exempting food and medicines

* Require the Obama administration to freeze the assets of
Iranians, including Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps, who are
active in weapons proliferation or terrorism

* Allow state and local governments and private asset fund
managers to easily divest from energy firms doing business with
Iran

* Strengthen export controls to stop the illegal black
market export of sensitive technology to Iran through other
countries and impose tough new licensing requirements on those
who refuse to cooperate

DEBKA.

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad

Tehran has finally met international demands and “leveled” on its forbidden uranium enrichment process – but only as a calculated provocation.

Sunday, Jan. 24, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad admitted that Iran was now able to enrich uranium up to 20% grade. He was clearly crowing, telling President Barack Obama and the six powers – who engaged Iran in five months of fruitless negotiations to halt its drive for a nuclear weapon – that the Islamic Republic had trumped their card. He had also outmaneuvered his opponents at home.

A retrospective look at seven years of Iran’s nuclear development shows that the nuclear diplomatic strategy pursued by spiritual ruler Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has paid off. Its built-in assumptions were that America is a paper tiger and would never dare confront Iran militarily or even diplomatically, and that Israel, reined in by the US, would never venture to attack Iran’s nuclear facilities on its own.

Since his election as first-term president in 2005, Ahmadinejad has spiced this strategy with added zest, pugnacity and brass, which is why Khamenei was so keen on him winning a second term in the June 2009 election by hook or by crook. Together with the Revolutionary Guards, he has backed the president through thick and thin ever since.

(Details about the internal opposition to his tactics in next article).

For Iranians involved in the nuclear program, the cocky president is an icon. They credit his tenacity and bravado in the face of international and domestic opposition for bringing the program to the point where Tehran can build a nuclear weapon at any time it chooses. Had Ahmadinejad not persevered in walking on the edge and braving all odds, they say, Iran’s uranium enrichment processing, missile projects and nuclear infrastructure would still be in their infancy.

Effrontery is the name of the game

Effrontery continued to be the name of the game when Ahmadinejad beamingly informed Iranian journalists Sunday: “We will soon give good news on Iran’s 20 percent enriched uranium.” The news about Iran’s “scientific progress” will mark Iran’s celebrations of the Islamic Revolution victory from February 1-11.

He knows that he has not only saved Iran from having to give up uranium enrichment but also trumped the Six-Power proposal to export low-grade enriched uranium for reprocessing overseas. By dragging out its reply to this proposal, Tehran has won precious time for raising it own enrichment process to a level a bare weeks short of 90 percent military grade.

Iran already has the technology for weaponizing nuclear materials; it has experimented with nuclear triggers and in February 2010 will have reached the point where it is able construct a nuclear weapon and test it, should it so decide. All this has been achieved under the noses of the policy-makers and intelligence analysts who doggedly insist that Iran’s military nuclearization is three years, some say, five years, in the future.

The estimate which DEBKA-Net-Weekly‘s sources have stuck to since September 2008, that Iran will be capable of constructing a nuclear weapon by February 2010, has withstood the passage of time most of all.

This accuracy was not reached by pure analysis but by using the compass of Iranian president’s own scheduling data, which proved to be the single constant factor guiding Iran’s nuclear program.

Israel must decide on military action by May at a stretch

As this program advanced, governments in the US and other Western countries changed and bureaucracies continually adjusted their estimates to policy requirements. Those policies were built around the impression that there was plenty of time for decision-making and maneuvers between Washington and Jerusalem to prevent Israel resorting to military action against Iran’s nuclear momentum.

During those years, Tehran never swerved from its two-track march along the enriched uranium and plutonium paths towards a nuclear weapon.

Tehran has arrived at its goal leaving the US in the dust.

President Obama’s engagement strategy has failed together with its tactics for preventing an Israeli strike against Iran. DEBKA-Net-Weekly military sources estimate that Ahmadinejad’s announcement has brought an Israeli decision forward by a whole year. Instead of the end of 2011, the Netanyahu government must decide by May 2010 whether or not to take up its military option for destroying or crippling Iran’s nuclear weapons capabilities. The schedule is tight indeed because it means that any attack must take place by early summer of this year – or not at all.

Since Tehran is fully conscious of this timeline and has made its preparations accordingly, the Middle East and Persian Gulf regions are in for a hectic period.

Israel slams Iran as world recalls Holocaust | Reuters.

OSWIECIM, Poland (Reuters) – Israel’s leaders, with Iran on their minds, vowed never again to allow the “hand of evil” to kill Jews as the world marked International Holocaust Memorial Day on Wednesday.

Speaking at the former Nazi death camp of Auschwitz, liberated by Soviet Red Army troops 65 years ago, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said a strong Israeli state was the only guarantee for the security of his people.

In Berlin, Israeli President Shimon Peres told the German parliament Iran posed a threat to the whole world and lashed out at its president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who denies the Holocaust and has called for the destruction of the Jewish state.

“From this site, I vow as the leader of the Jewish state that we will never again allow the hand of evil to destroy the life of our people and the life of our state. Never again,” Netanyahu said at the Auschwitz ceremony.

“We will not allow the deniers of the Holocaust… to erase or distort the memory (of what happened),” he said, in a clear reference to Ahmadinejad’s denial of the Nazis’ genocide.

Poland’s president and prime minister, the education ministers from nearly 30 nations, including Russia, and about 150 camp survivors attended the commemoration. In subzero temperatures, young Israelis placed candles on top of the crematoria nearby where the Nazis’ victims were gassed.

Up to 1.5 million people, mostly Jews, perished at Auschwitz, located near the village of Oswiecim in southern Poland, before Soviet troops liberated it on January 27, 1945.

Auschwitz-Birkenau was the largest and most notorious of the Nazi death camps. Others operated by the Germans on occupied Polish territory included Majdanek, Sobibor and Treblinka.

BEWARE DICTATORS

Like Netanyahu, Peres stressed the need for vigilance.

“Never again ignore blood-thirsty dictators, hiding behind demagogical masks, who utter murderous slogans,” he told the German lawmakers in a speech delivered in Hebrew.

“The threats to annihilate a people and a nation are voiced in the shadow of weapons of mass destruction, which are held by irresponsible hands, by irrational thinking and in an untruthful language,” said Peres.

Western nations and Israel suspect Iran of trying to build nuclear weapons, a charge Tehran denies.

Peres, 86, recalled how his grandfather was burned to death in a Belarus synagogue that the Nazis locked from the outside.

Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, who declined a Polish invitation to attend Wednesday’s ceremony, warned in a message read out at the Auschwitz commemoration by Russia’s education minister Alexei Fursenko of attempts to rewrite history by downplaying the role of the Red Army.

Russians are immensely proud of their country’s role in defeating Hitler’s Germany at huge human cost. The Auschwitz ceremony was widely shown in Russian state media and Russian Jewish groups organized memorial services across the country.

The theme of the Auschwitz commemoration was the education of young people about the Holocaust.

“This place determined who I am today, aged nearly 90. I still have one mission — to pass on to the next generation knowledge of what happened here,” August Kowalczyk, one of very few of the camp prisoners to escape, told reporters at the site.

“The need for teaching about Auschwitz is greater than ever before,” Wladyslaw Bartoszewski, 87, a Catholic survivor of Auschwitz and now the Polish government’s special envoy for relations with Germany, said at the ceremony.

Poland was home to Europe’s largest Jewish community before World War Two. The vast majority perished in the Nazi camps.

ANTI-SEMITISM

Jewish groups have voiced concern about what they see as a rise in anti-Semitism and xenophobia in some European countries and have called for more education about the Holocaust.

Earlier this week, they angrily criticized a Polish Catholic bishop after he was quoted as saying Jews had expropriated the Holocaust as a propaganda weapon. Roma, homosexuals and other groups were also systematically murdered there by the Nazis.

Speaking to the Italian parliament in Rome on Wednesday, Nobel Peace Prize winner and Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel attacked wartime Pope Pius XII for his “silence” during the Nazis’ mass killings of Jews.

German-born Pope Benedict has annoyed Jews by defending the actions of his wartime predecessor.

(Additional reporting by Philip Pullella in Rome and Erik Kirschbaum in Berlin and Moscow bureau; Writing by Gareth Jones; Editing by Charles Dick)