WarSclerotic

Russia state arms trader has no comment on Iran deal | Reuters.

By Dmitry Solovyov

MOSCOW, Jan 28 (Reuters) – Russia’s state arms trader on Thursday declined to say whether it would go ahead with a deal to sell S-300 anti-aircraft systems to Iran, a sore point in Moscow’s relations with the United States and Israel.

“I just don’t quite understand why supplies of the S-300 system to Iran trouble you so much,” the head of Rosoboronexport, Anatoly Isaikin, replied after being repeatedly asked about the deal at a news briefing.

Russia is under intense Western pressure to distance itself from Iran in the dispute over Tehran’s nuclear ambitions, but Moscow has refused to block the delivery of the S-300 system.

In Jerusalem, an Israeli official told Reuters Russia had yet to ship the S-300’s “main systems” — such as radars and interceptor missiles — to Iran.

Analysts say the S-300 could help Iran thwart any attempt by Israel or the United States to bomb its nuclear facilities from the air.

Isaikin said journalists must be guided by statements made by other Russian officials last year. “From my part, I just want to say I have nothing to add to these statements.”

He added that Rosoboronexport’s weapons exports this year would be no lower than last year’s $7.4 billion, and that its portfolio of current export orders exceeded $34 billion.

Isaikin said the state arms trader’s exports had increased by more than 2.4 times between 2001 and 2009. Main buyers in previous years have been Vietnam and China, and Middle Eastern orders have increased recently.

The truck-mounted S-300PMU1, known in the West as the SA-20, can shoot down cruise missiles and aircraft. It has a range of 150 km (90 miles) and travels at more than two km per second.

Washington has sought pledges from Russia for tougher sanctions against Iran over its nuclear energy programme, which the West suspects is intended to produce nuclear weapons. Tehran denies any such intention.

Israel, which is thought to have the Middle East’s only atomic arsenal, has hinted it could attack Iran in an effort to stop it obtaining nuclear weapons.

Iran has threatened to retaliate for any attack by firing medium-range missiles at Israel. (Additional reporting by Dan Williams in Jerusalem; writing by Amie Ferris-Rotman; editing by Andrew Roche)

DEBKAfile, Political Analysis, Espionage, Terrorism, Security.

Tags: Iran Germany Israel Intelligence

Iran exacts a price for this friendship

“Two German diplomats using fictitious names of Yogi and Ingo were arrested” last month during clashes at the Ashura festival, an unnamed Iranian deputy intelligence minister said Wednesday, Jan. 27.

The announcement followed shortly after Israeli president Shimon Peres told the Reichstag in Berlin that he was sure Germany would come to Israel’s aid if it came under attack from a nuclear-armed Iran.
A day earlier, Chancellor Angela Merkel standing alongside the Israeli president said time was up for Iran and February would see new and tougher UN Security Council sanctions.

These events marked International Holocaust Remembrance Day.
debkafile reports that, in keeping with its new rapid strike policy for any hostile US or Israeli action – developed in conjunction with Syria and Hizballah and first exposed by debkafile file on Jan. 26 – Tehran hit back at Berlin Wednesday. Iranian state television quoted a top official as accusing “two diplomats using fictitious names” of a hand in organizing the Ashura riots in which at least eight people died.
The report which hinted at the two having worked under cover for German BND intelligence, did not say whether they were still in detention.
In Berlin, foreign ministry spokesman Andreas Peschke said he was unaware of any German diplomats having been detained in Iran and rejected any Berlin involvement in the protests.

The Iranian deputy intelligence minister was also quoted as reporting that a close advisor of main opposition leader Mir Hossein Mousavi was arrested and made “confessions.”

He said: “Available evidence and this person’s confessions show that he was connected through a point man to the intelligence service of a European country and was releasing confidential information.”
A few days after the Shiite commemoration, Iranian officials revealed they had detained a Swedish diplomat for 24 hours on the day of Ashura.

Iran’s purported detention of two German diplomats or agents would spark a major crisis between the two countries, recalling the rupture of the mid-90s when Iranian covert agents were arrested in Germany.

DEBKAfile, Political Analysis, Espionage, Terrorism, Security.

Joint German-Israeli government session

Israel’s president, prime minister and foreign minister are visiting Berlin, Warsaw and Budapest this week, apparently impervious to the European Union foreign ministers’ decision in Brussels Monday, Jan. 25, to back away from sanctions for Iran’s nuclear program outside the UN Security Council.

German foreign minister Guido Westerwelle signed off on the motion, the day before Israeli president Shimon Peres’ Hebrew address to the German parliament in Berlin.
debkafile: The Netanyahu government clings to the anchor of supposed international sanctions for halting Iran’s advance on a nuclear weapon. Monday, before traveling to Poland, prime minister Netanyahu said at the Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial museum:  “Today there are new Jew haters with new reasons to destroy the Jewish people. This is a test for humanity, and we will see in the coming weeks how the international community will stop the evil before it spreads.”
Well, he had his answer than same afternoon, yet this eloquence vanished on the plane trips to Europe.
None of the Israeli travelers have commented on the decision by the European foreign ministers to dump the sanctions option in the laps of Russia and China, knowing their vetoes are committed in advance and that both stand out for more diplomatic engagement plus concessions to Tehran.  The EU foreign ministers stated: “With Iran, [sanctions] will work out only if all the UN Security Council permanent members agree.” Every one of those ministers was fully aware that this proposition was a fantasy.

If Israel counted on Washington staying the course, there too there are signs of cold feet. The Obama has reduced the target of possible unilateral measures to the Revolutionary Guards Corps which is responsible for Iran’s nuclear program, in order to avoid harming the Iranian people.

As debkafile has stressed before, the Revolutionary Guards have umpteen mostly criminal ways of beating sanctions: They run a vast network of straw companies worldwide and move money around through international crime, smuggling, terror and drug conduits out of America’s reach rather than the banking system.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel and Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi are undoubtedly Israel’s best friends on the European continent, but they too conduct a dual policy on Iran. They sternly denounce Iran, while at the same time hundreds of German and Italian companies do business with the Islamic Republic, some even selling components for its missile and nuclear programs. Indeed, German and Italian firms are in tight competition over the Iranian market, with the latter reportedly gaining the edge this year.
No German transaction with Iran has been cancelled under Israeli pressure contrary to reports to this effect.
The most realistic European leader is French president Nicolas Sarkozy who Tuesday, Jan. 26, called for new and different steps to be pursued to halt Iran’s dash for a nuclear bomb. Still, French foreign minister Bernard Kouchner did not hold out against his colleagues consensus in Brussels.

AFP: Iran leader predicts destruction of Israel.

Khamenei made the remark during a meeting with Mauritanian President Mohammed Ould Abdel Aziz in Tehran

Iran leader predicts destruction of Israel

(AFP) – 4 hours ago

TEHRAN — Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei is confident Islamic nations will one day watch the destruction of arch-foe Israel, his website Wednesday quoted him as saying.

Khamenei made the remark during a meeting with Mauritanian President Mohammed Ould Abdel Aziz in Tehran, the website said.

The all-powerful Iranian leader also said that Israel’s continued “pressure to erase Palestine from the world of Islamic nations” will fail.

“Surely, the day will come when the nations of the region will witness the destruction of the Zionist regime… when the destruction happens will depend on how the Islamic nations approach the issue,” Khamenei told Aziz, who arrived in Tehran on Monday.

“The Zionist regime, by continuing to use pressure, blockades and committing genocide, wants to erase Palestine… but it will not succeed.”

Praising Mauritania for cutting its ties with Israel, Khamenei said the “Zionist regime is a great danger to the world of Islam as it was thinking of expanding its influence and grip on the region every day.”

Iranian officials, including Khamenei and President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, have earned the wrath of Israel and Western powers for their repeated anti-Israel comments.

Relations between the two nations have deteriorated particularly under Ahmadinejad who has often said that Israel is “doomed to be wiped off the map” and has termed the Holocaust a “myth”.

Israel shut down its embassy in Nouakchott following Mauritania’s decision in January 2009 to suspend diplomatic ties with the Jewish state a decade after they were launched.

Mauritania was one of only three Arab nations that had formal diplomatic ties with Israel, apart from Egypt and Jordan.

Copyright © 2010 AFP. All rights reserved.

DEBKA.

Hizballah elite units

According to the planning Iran’s war leaders developed in recent weeks in conjunction with Syria and its Lebanese Shiite proxy, Hizballah elite units would respond to a possible Israeli attack on its nuclear facilities by sweeping south across the border and taking hold of swathes of northern Israel. This would be in pursuance of the classical IDF doctrine of taking the war into enemy territory and assume that, at the same time, Israeli armored columns and infantry divisions would head north to hit Hizballah strongholds in southern and central Lebanon and blaze a path to Damascus.
According to DEBKA-Net-Weekly’s military sources, Tehran favors retaliation-by-invasion in preference to the missile blitz of population centers which Hizballah unleashed in 2006 – both in terms of military gains and because it would put Israel’s back to the wall in a way it has not experienced since the Yom Kippur War of October 1973.
Iran’s Revolutionary Guards instructors at especially established facilities near Tehran are already well advanced in training a cadre of 5,000 Hizballah fighters in special operations and urban combat tactics to standards equivalent to those current in similar US and Israeli military forces.
At the outset of the course, the group was split up into five battalions, each given a specific northern Israeli sector for capture with details of its topography and population for close study.
(See attached map for the territories assigned to each Hizballah battalion).

Capturing and holding Galilee towns of Nahariya and Shlomi

1^st Battalion:
This unit will break through the Naqura-Rosh Haniqra border pass and sweep south along seven kilometers to seize Nahariya, the Israeli Mediterranean city of 55,000 – or parts thereof.
UN peacekeepers have their headquarters at Naqura, the other side of Rosh Haniqra, and Israel defenses there are lax, so no military or geographic obstacles to this Hizballah drive are anticipated. This battalion will capture a large number of Israeli hostages for use as live shields against an Israeli counter-attack
A small group of 150 fighters, trained by Revolutionary Guards marines, will also try and reach the coast by swift boats. They are already standing by in Lebanon.
2^nd Battalion:
This unit is assigned to capture the northern Israeli town of Shlomi, 300 meters southeast of the Naqura border pass and home to 6,500 inhabitants. Holding this town and its environs will give Hizballah control of a key road hub and stand in the path of Israeli reinforcements heading for Nahariya through routes 89 and 899 from key Israeli bases in the Galilee and Upper Galilee regions to the east. (See map).
3^rd Battalion:
Driving further south than any other Hizballah unit, this battalion must reach the three Israeli-Arab villages of B’ina, Deir al-Asad and Majd el-Krum, which are located north of the town of Carmiel and alongside Israel’s Route 85 which connects Acre on the Mediterranean with Safad in the central Galilee mountains.

An Arab-Israeli uprising to hamper Israeli military movements

Iranian war planners want Hizballah to control the three Israeli-Arab locations for two advantages:
One: To acquire a commanding position for stirring up the disaffected Israeli-Arab villages and towns of Lower Galilee and Wadi Ara to the south into a full-blown uprising. The incoming combat force will be backed up by clandestine Hizballah cells which for some years have established, armed and funded the underground “Galilee Liberation Battalions” in Sakhnin, Araba and Deir Hana, by means of drug smugglers.
Hizballah’s West Bank cells have been active for some time in the Wadi Ara region, through which National Route 65 connects central Israel to the North.
Two: To gain fire control of Acre-Safed Route 85 from positions in occupied Arab villages and so have a shield ready for the Hizballah units holding Nahariya and Shlomi, and seriously impede the passage of Israeli forces from bases in the center of the country to relieve these northern towns. The Israeli Air Force will be constrained from attacking the areas held by Hizballah by the presence of large civilian populations.
4^th Battalion:
This battalion will push southeast into the Kadesh Valley, on the rim of which the Makia and Yiftah kibbutzim and Makia moshav are clustered. Capture of these locations would afford Hizballah fire coverage of Israel’s northernmost region, the Galilee Panhandle.
5^th Battalion:
Hizballah’s Strategic Reserve.
The Tehran-Hizballah war strategy is all but ready for any contingency. The obvious trigger would be an Israeli military operation against Iran’s nuclear facilities, but once all the elements are in place, they could be activated by any other pretext conjured up in Tehran or Damascus.
Hizballah leader Hassan Nasrallah is straining at the leash to attack Israel however the crisis over Iran’s nuclear program turns out.
Sunday, January 17, he said: “I promise you, in view of all the threats you hear today… that should a new war with the Zionists erupt, we [the Lebanese resistance movement] will crush the enemy, come out victorious, and change the face of the region.
“God willing, Israel, the occupation, hegemony, and arrogance are in the process of disappearing!”
Nasrallah was not alone in anticipating a troubled year for the Middle East.

Syria may step in even without an Israeli attack

Political insider Tzahi Hanegbi, chairman of the Knesset Security and Foreign Relations Committee said earlier this month: “Since it is obvious that the Obama administration is not going to solve the Iranian nuclear issue, 2010 will be a fateful year in the history of Israel.”
Our analysts took him to mean that Israel would have to deal with the Iranian nuclear threat itself while appreciating that the cost might be heavy.
A senior US official, speaking on condition of confidentiality, chipped in by leaking this comment to the Kuwait newspaper Al-Rai: “If Syria allows surface-to-air missiles SA-2 to go through to Hizballah in Lebanon, war will break out and Tel Aviv will hit Damascus directly.”
This official was confirming the perception that more than one trigger existed for a possible outbreak of hostilities and Syria would probably be involved. Israel is determined as a top priority to prevent the SA-2 reaching Hizballah’s hands.
Following reports that Syria has ignored the Israeli warning and begun training Hizballah crews in Damascus in the use of the SA-2 missiles, the US official added: “A possible military attack by Hizbollah on Israel will be met with a damaging attack on Lebanon. Israel made the mistake of not striking Syria once before in 2006, but if Hizballah goes back to the offensive, Damascus will not be spared again.”

Der Spiegel: Iran could produce nuclear bomb this year – Haaretz – Israel News.

Iran is serious about developing a nuclear bomb and has the ability to produce a primitive, truck-sized version of the bomb this year, the German magaziner Der Spiegel reported on Monday.

An intelligence dossier obtained by Der Spiegel shows that there is a secret military branch of Iran’s nuclear research program that answers to Tehran’s ministry of defense, according to the report.

Officials who have read this document – which is currently under review by the U.S., Germany and Israel – claim that it shows that their nuclear program aimed at producing a bomb is well advanced.

The officials said to Der Spiegel that the truck-sized bomb which they are capable of producing will have to be compressed to a size that would fit into a nuclear warhead for the strategic threat potential they desire.

Der Spiegel also wrote that Israel and the West were alarmed by the dossier’s revelations, as Iran could reach the compressed level of a nuclear bomb between 2012 and 2014.

Tehran has consistently denied that it is enriching uranium for weapons, claiming it is exclusively dedicated to the peaceful use of nuclear technology.

The Associated Press

JERUSALEM —

Israel’s prime minister has called on the international community to band together against enemies calling for the destruction of the Jewish state.

Benjamin Netanyahu’s comments were clearly directed at Iran.

He spoke Monday at a ceremony held at Israel’s national Holocaust memorial where the blueprints of the notorious Auschwitz death camp were unveiled.

Netanyahu said the lesson of the Holocaust is to “stop bad things when they are small.”

He said: “There is new Jew-hatred in our midst. There are new calls for the extermination of the Jewish state.”

Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has repeatedly questioned the Holocaust and called for Israel to be “wiped off the map.” Israel also fears Iran is developing nuclear weapons.

via Nation & World | Netanyahu says world must learn from Holocaust | Seattle Times Newspaper.

Syria, Hizballah preparing for war with Israel.

Pan-Arab newspaper Asharq Al-Awsat reported on Monday that Syria has begun calling up reserve military forces in anticipation of a full-scale war with Israel.

Officials in Syria and from Lebanon’s Hizballah terrorist militia have been saying for the past week that they are being threatened by Israeli military maneuvers along the Israel-Lebanon border, and expect the Israeli army to launch a surprise attack on Hizballah positions in Lebanon.

According to UN Resolution 1701 that ended the 2006 Lebanon War, Hizballah is not supposed to have any positions in southern Lebanon, but the international peacekeeping force on the ground there has not enforced those terms.

On Saturday, Israeli cabinet minister Yossi Peled, a former commander of Israel’s Northern Command, said at an event in Beersheva that “we are heading for another round [of battle with Hizbullah] in the north.”

Over the weekend, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office clarified that Israel is not looking for another war on its northern border, and the current chief of Northern Command, Maj.-Gen. Gadi Eizenkot said that Arab reports of tension along the border are unfounded.

“Reports in the media about tension in the North is a virtual reality that has no grounds in reality,” said Eizenkot during a ceremony at the Institute for National Security Studies in Tel Aviv. He warned, however, that if the Arabs start something, Israel will respond with disproportionate force.

Also at the weekend, French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner acknowledged that Israel is very unlikely to initiate another armed conflict, but warned that Iranian agents might try to escalate the situation on the Israel-Lebanon border in order to divert attention from Iran’s nuclear program.

DEBKAfile – Iran crosses red line, can enrich uranium up to 20pc grade.

January 25, 2010, 11:22 AM (GMT+02:00)

Ahmadinejad throws down another gauntlet

Attaining the ability to enrich uranium up to 20 percent grade brings Iran dangerously close to “break-out” point for a nuclear weapon capability, DEBKAfile‘s intelligence sources report. President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad promised the “good news” would be announced during the Feb. 1-11 celebrations of the Islamic Revolution. The “news” also prompted an urgent cabinet meeting in Jerusalem last week.

Ahmadinejad’s announcement is a provocative demonstration of contempt for the six world powers and their offer to trade Iran’s low-grade uranium for 20 pc enriched product overseas. By going public on the banned process and abandoning concealment, Iran’s rulers are throwing down the gauntlet to them and Israel.

DEBKAfile‘s Iranian sources report that the hawks of the Islamic regime led by Ahmadinejad and spiritual ruler Ayatollah Ali Khamenei have won the day for their tactics of jumping ahead of any possible US-led or Israel steps against their nuclear program with its own aggressive initiatives.

The Iranian president’s enrichment announcement at a time that the Obama administration is pondering tough sanctions against the Revolutionary Guards was part of this policy; so were the Syrian and Hizballah declarations of military preparedness for a purported Israeli attack last week, taking advantage of an IDF war game to raise the alarm.

Our political sources predict that Tehran’s provocative move will be met with more of the five months of foot-dragging with which Washington and Jerusalem have met Iran’s contempt for one deadline after another for ending nuclear enrichment.

Both will continue to dither and pretend that stiff sanctions can scotch the Iranian nuclear threat. Tehran has meanwhile made good use of those five months to go forward and achieve a 20 pc enrichment capability.

The only straight talk from any Western leader has come from French president Nicolas Sarkozy.

Saturday, Jan. 23, he told visiting Lebanese prime minister Saad Hariri that France has evidence Iran is developing nuclear weapons contrary to its claims. He warned that Israel “would not stand by while Iran develops nuclear weapons.”

Middle East News | Egypt’s Mubarak defends Gaza border barrier.

Mubarak said Egypt has plenty of documented information” that “rhetoric campaigns” to attack his country were organized in “a sister country”

CAIRO (Al Arabiya, Agencies)

Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak on Sunday defended the construction of an underground barrier on the border with the Gaza Strip as a matter of national security and sovereignty.

“The works and reinforcements on our eastern border are a matter of Egyptian sovereignty. We do not accept a debate on the issue with anyone,” Mubarak said in a speech to mark Police Day.