WarSclerotic

What’s behind renewed war jitters in Israel, Lebanon? / The Christian Science Monitor – CSMonitor.com.

The saber-rattling between Israel and Lebanon – which Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman extended to Syria – has created an atmosphere similar to the one that preceded Israel’s 1982 invasion.

By Nicholas Blanford Correspondent / February 4, 2010

Beirut, Lebanon

A renewed flurry of threats and warnings between Israeli officials and the leaders of Lebanon’s militant Shiite organization Hezbollah have sparked a serious bout of war jitters on both sides of the border which are also threatening to draw in other regional players. Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman publicly warned Syrian President Bashar al-Assad today that getting involved in a Lebanon-Israel conflict would result in the disintegration of his regime.

Though Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu then sought to smooth Syria’s feathers, reiterating his country’s desire for restarting peace talks, tensions are running high over a possible conflict with its neighbors. Israeli leaders grumble about Hezbollah’s military build-up since their month-long war in July 2006 and warn of a massive blow against Lebanon in the event of another clash. Hezbollah’s leadership remains defiant, saying they’re ready for another confrontation and confident of victory against the Jewish state.

The saber-rattling from both sides is part of the relentless psychological war between the two bitter foes, and shows that tensions continue to exist despite the fact that the border between them has experienced its longest period of calm in more than four decades. The United Nations peacekeeping force in south Lebanon, known as UNIFIL, says there is no indication that another war is imminent.

“The most important part is the continued political will and commitment of the parties to maintain the cessation of hostilities,” says Milos Strugar, a senior advisor to UNIFIL. “In all our contacts with all sides this will and commitment is continually reinforced and strongly emphasized by everyone.”

Lebanon wants to preserve newfound stability

But the worries in Lebanon are heartfelt, particularly as the country is enjoying its first period of relative political stability in five years. In 2009 Lebanon received a record 1.9 million tourists, whose spending contributed about 20 percent of gross domestic product. Another calm summer could witness yet even greater numbers of tourists visiting this tiny Mediterranean country.

Ghazi Aridi, the transport minister, said recently that the atmosphere in Lebanon is similar to the period prior to Israel’s invasion in 1982 which was widely expected for months beforehand.

“Everyone has to work for enhancing national unity and preparing the ground to face any Israeli aggression,” he said in an interview with Lebanon’s Future Television.

Despite the jitters and the rhetoric from both sides of the border, neither Hezbollah nor Israel appear anxious to embark upon a new round of fighting. Analysts suggest that the spark for a new conflict could come from an incident along the border that flares out of control, such as a rocket attack into Israel. There have been seven isolated firings of short-range rockets into Israel since 2006, all of them suspected of being the work of either Al-Qaeda-affiliated factions or rogue Palestinian groups.

Another trigger factor: Iran

The other potential trigger factor is related to developments in Iran. A move by Israel or the West to attack Iranian nuclear facilities could result in a backlash along the Lebanon-Israel border, or a preemptive strike by Israel against Hezbollah. Some analysts suggest that Iranian leaders may seek to ignite a confrontation with Israel as a means of deflating mounting internal pressure against the regime in Tehran. While Hezbollah is ideologically and financially committed to Iran, the group’s leaders also are sensitive to the interests of their Lebanese Shiite support base, which is still recovering from the 2006 war and would not relish more destruction being visited on their families, homes and livelihoods.

Iran says Russia offers missile reassurance – News – World – bnd.com.

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Analysis: negotiation with Iran an ‘unending waltz’ – Telegraph.

Weary western diplomats view negotiating with Iran over its nuclear programme as an unending waltz. Middle East nations have however called time on the outcome.

Iran’s neighbours have already reached the conclusion that Iran will gain nuclear weapons. It is an assumption that is transforming relationships across the region.

The Sunni Muslim kingdoms of the Gulf view a nuclear-armed Iranian regime as the pre-eminent threat to their survival.

Tehran champions the rise of Shia Islam over the Sunni tradition within the Islamic world and maintains a revolutionary agenda to bolster its influence through the rise of sympathetic anti-Western forces across its neighbours.

Venerable western allies such as Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates would find it much more difficult to resist Iranian encroachment if the country became a nuclear power.

America’s very public moves last week to shore up the defences of these states against Iranian missiles is an important act of reassurance. While the message that America is willing to respond to Iranian aggression is welcome, it is only one component of the regional response.

Few doubt that several states would acquire a nuclear capability as an ultimate deterrent, a development that would amount to a Middle Eastern arms race.

More immediately nations such as Saudi Arabia that have been hostile to Israel for years now share a common threat. Behind the scenes there is talk of shared sympathies and common interests.

The Jewish state faces a range of threats from a nuclear armed Iran. The Islamic Republic would not have to use its new weapons to launch a direct attack. It would gain more scope to use its links to Hizbollah, Hamas and even Syria against Israel.

While taboos have been shaken, formal hostility remains intact and will continue while the two sides remain at loggerheads over the establishment of a Palestinian state. But privately Israeli officials expect increasing pressure to be placed on the Palestinians by their Egyptian and Saudi allies to reach an accommodation.

Any future entente would necessarily remain clandestine – popular opinion remains resolutely hostile to Israel even in Arab states that have established diplomatic relations – but would amount to a realignment of the region.

Israel is no longer the solitary Middle Eastern ally on the frontline against Iranian ambitions.

Flirting With Disaster – Forbes.com.

Claudia Rosett, 02.04.10, 12:01 AM EST

As the White House dithers, Iran expands its nuclear capabilities.

Does Barack Obama really want to be the president who let Iran get the nuclear bomb?

Outside the White House bubble, signs keep multiplying that this could be the year. Iran continues to defy U.S. and United Nations sanctions, buy time with on-again off-again haggling over its growing hoard of enriched uranium, and hone its missile delivery systems–firing off yet another rocket test just this week.

Meanwhile, the voices of the Obama administration sound like the White Queen lecturing Alice in Through the Looking Glass: “The rule is, jam tomorrow and jam yesterday–but never jam today.” Except instead of jam, think Iranian nuclear projects. In the looking glass world of current U.S. foreign policy, the received wisdom is that Iran might have bombs tomorrow, and was working toward them yesterday–but in the eternal sunshine of the present moment, it is never quite clear to the White House that Iran is actually building the bomb.

The latest sample of such thinking came Tuesday from the director of National Intelligence, Dennis Blair, presenting his annual threat assessment to the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. The neon headline that came out of Blair’s testimony was his prediction that al-Qaida will try to attack America again within the next six months. But the section of Blair’s written testimony on “Iranian WMD and Missile Program” deserves a spotlight all its own–both for what Blair said and what he tried to un-say.

Blair noted that since late 2007 Iran has more than doubled the number of centrifuges at its Natanz uranium enrichment plant, to more than 8,000 from 3,000. But that’s more or less OK, it seems, because only about half these centrifuges are operating. Translation: uranium enrichment continues apace.

Blair went on to note the discovery last year of a secret, second uranium enrichment plant “deep under a mountain near the city of Qom” (and on a military base of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps–though Blair did not spell that out). Speaking of this plant in the Teflon lingo of Washington officialdom, Blair informed the senators that “some of its design features raise our concerns.” Namely, it is too small to produce a regular fuel supply for civilian nuclear power plants but big enough for producing weapons, at least–and here comes the weird Washington qualifier–“if Iran opts” to do so.

If Iran opts?

Blair went on: “The small size of the facility and the security afforded the site by its construction under a mountain fit nicely with the strategy of keeping the option open to build a nuclear weapon at some future date, if Tehran ever decides to do so.”

If Tehran ever decides to do so?

Blair further assessed that Iran would likely use missiles to deliver nuclear weapons. Why? Because “Iran already has the largest inventory of ballistic missiles in the Middle East,” and continues to “expand the scale, reach and sophistication” of these missiles, many of them “inherently capable of carrying a nuclear payload.”

According to Blair, the big question is not whether Iran can bring all this to the fruition of a full, deliverable nuclear arsenal, but whether Iran’s rulers have the “political will to do so.”

That’s backward. Iran’s rulers have displayed a driving will to arm themselves with nuclear weapons. The real question is whether the U.S. has the will to stop them. On that score, Blair laid out the tired approach in which Iran’s messianic and tyrannical ruling clique–soaked in the blood of its own people and wrapped in visions of a grand caliphate–is treated like the corner grocer calculating his next cabbage order. “We continue to judge that Iran’s nuclear decision-making is guided by a cost-benefit approach, which offers the international community opportunities to influence Iran.”

That has been tried for years. It is not working. In the cost-benefit calculus, Iran’s rulers have already judged it worth building the secret enrichment plant near Qom, worth doing sanctions-busting arms deals with nuclear-testing North Korea and worth continuing to support and train terrorist organizations such as Hamas and Hezbollah. Iran’s regime has judged it worth having a defense minister, Ahmad Vahidi, who is on Interpol’s “wanted” list in connection with the 1994 bombing of a Jewish community center in Argentina.

Iran’s tyrants have judged it worth backing terrorist carnage in Iraq and Afghanistan; worth exploiting major international banks to get around U.S. sanctions; and worth threatening repeatedly to wipe Israel off the map. Just last month, as can be seen in a video clip translated by the MEMRI Foundation, senior Iranian official Mohammad Hassan Rahimian, who serves Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, declared on Hezbollah’s terrorist TV station, Al Manar, “We have manufactured missiles that allow us, when necessary, to replace Israel in its entirety with a big holocaust.”

For Americans to leave this threat to Israel, a beleaguered democracy of 7 million, is a feckless non-policy. It signals that America will not defend its allies and flashes a green light to the world’s would-be proliferators.

If the deus ex machina is to be regime change in Iran, it is time for America to go all out to speed that along. There need not be either-or choices among preparing for U.S. military action, supporting Iranian dissidents, imposing yet more targeted sanctions and broadly imposing sanctions on Iran’s gasoline imports. Congress has given broad bipartisan support to gas sanctions. Obama should be calling in chits and twisting arms in all possible directions, beefing up U.S. penalties on those who help Iran’s regime, and urgently rallying a coalition to do the same.

While Obama dithers, let us consider the effects of a nuclear detonation in downtown Washington. A bomb about the size of that dropped 65 years ago on Hiroshima would eradicate the White House and Treasury, and reduce the Capitol and congressional office buildings to radioactive rubble. Damage would extend into Virginia, out beyond National airport. Transpose that to whatever location you most care about. Should the ayatollahs of Iran be allowed anywhere near that option?

Claudia Rosett, a journalist in residence with the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, writes a weekly column on foreign affairs for Forbes.