WarSclerotic

BERES: Concluding the sanctions comedy – Washington Times.

By Louis Rene Beres

The comedy is finished!

– Pagliacci (Clowns)

Now, years after the international community has been deluding itself about Iranian nuclear intentions, Tehran openly and arrogantly confirms the worst. The Islamic republic is destined to become a fully nuclear power – international law and diplomacy be damned.

Not surprisingly, Iran has made clowns of all those smug world leaders who placed their faith in reason and statecraft. The principal loser in this lethal comedy is plainly apt to be Israel. What exactly does this microstate have to fear from a nuclear Iran?

Thirty years ago, I published the first of 10 books that contained authoritative descriptions of the physical and medical consequences of nuclear war, any nuclear war. These generic descriptions were drawn largely from a 1975 report by the National Academy of Sciences and included the following still valid expectations: large temperature changes; contamination of food and water; disease epidemics in crops, domesticated animals and humans caused by ionizing radiation; shortening of growing seasons; irreversible injuries to aquatic species; widespread and long-term cancers because of inhalation of plutonium particles; radiation-induced abnormalities in persons in utero at the time of detonations; a vast growth in the number of skin cancers; and increasing genetic disease.

What does all this mean to Israel, as it soon will face a determined and possibly jihadist nuclear adversary in Iran?

Overwhelming health problems would afflict the survivors of any Iranian nuclear attack upon Israel. Those difficulties would extend far beyond prompt burn injuries. Retinal burns would even occur in the eyes of persons very far from the actual explosions.

Tens of thousands of Israelis would be crushed by collapsing buildings and torn to shreds by flying glass. Others would fall victim to raging firestorms. Fallout injuries would include whole-body radiation injury produced by penetrating, hard gamma radiations; superficial radiation burns produced by soft radiations; and injuries produced by deposits of radioactive substances within the body.

After an Iranian nuclear attack, even a “small” one, those few medical facilities that might still exist in Israel would be taxed beyond capacity. Water supplies would become unusable. Housing and shelter could be unavailable for hundreds of thousands, perhaps even millions, of survivors. Transportation would break down to rudimentary levels. Food shortages would be critical and long-term.

Israel’s normally complex network of exchange systems would be shattered. Virtually everyone would be deprived of the most basic means of livelihood. Emergency police and fire services would be decimated. All systems dependent upon electrical power could stop functioning. Severe trauma would occasion widespread disorientation and psychiatric disorders for which there would be no therapeutic services.

Normal human society would cease. The pestilence of unrestrained murder and banditry could soon augment plague and epidemics. Many of the survivors would expect an increase in serious degenerative diseases. They also would expect premature death, impaired vision and sterility. An increased incidence of leukemia and cancers of the lung, stomach, breast, ovary and uterine cervix would be unavoidable.

Extensive fallout would upset many delicately balanced relationships in nature. Israelis who survived the nuclear attack still would have to deal with enlarged insect populations. Like the locusts of biblical times, mushrooming insect hordes would spread from the radiation-damaged areas in which they arose.

Insects are generally more resistant to radiation than humans. This fact, coupled with the prevalence of unburied corpses, uncontrolled waste and untreated sewage, would generate tens of trillions of flies and mosquitoes. Breeding in the dead bodies, these insects would make it impossible to control typhus, malaria, dengue fever and encephalitis. Throughout Israel, tens or even hundreds of thousands of rotting human corpses would pose the largest health threat. The survivors would envy the dead.

Unanticipated interactions between individual effects of nuclear weapons would make matters worse.

Although any 11th-hour pre-emption would encounter overwhelming operational difficulties, Israel can never rely upon the still-smooth assurances of clown-leaders in Washington or elsewhere. Nor can it rely entirely upon its own system of ballistic missile defense to protect civilians, Arabs as well as Jews. Until now, it seemed to many that Israel could reasonably renounce its legal right to anticipatory self-defense and depend instead on promises from others. The many were wrong.

“The comedy is finished!”

Louis Rene Beres is a professor of political science at Purdue University and publishes widely on Israeli security matters.

Obama: Iran sanctions in weeks over nuclear program – Haaretz – Israel News.

Obama: Iran sanctions in weeks over nuclear program

By Barak Ravid and Natasha Mozgovaya, Haaretz Correspondents, and News Agencies

U.S. president says despite Tehran’s denials it is clear to him that Iran is pursuing ‘nuclear weaponization.’

U.S. President Barack Obama on Tuesday said a new push toward international sanctions against Iran is moving along fairly quickly and should be completed in the next few weeks.

In an impromptu news conference, Obama provided his most extensive comments about Iran in weeks, saying that despite Tehran’s denials it is clear to him that Iran is pursuing a path toward “nuclear weaponization.”

He said the international community is looking at a significant regime of sanctions that will provide a “variety of ways” to apply pressure to Iran’s government, without detailing them.

Obama said the United States is confident the world is “unified around Iran’s misbehavior in this area.”

Of two allies who have been reluctant to approve new UN sanctions in the past, Russia and China, Obama said he was pleased by how Russia has been “forward-leaning” lately but was uncertain about China.

“How China operates at the Security Council as we pursue sanctions is something we’re going to have to see,” he said.

Obama said it was unclear who actually speaks for the Iranian government, saying it was giving “mixed signals.”

The Islamic Republic, which denies its program has military aims, defied the international community by announcing on Sunday that it would enrich uranium to 20-percent purity for a Tehran reactor making medical isotopes for cancer patients.

U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates told Fox News earlier Tuesday: “I think it’s going to take some period of time – I would say weeks, not months – to see if we can’t get another UN Security Council resolution,” according to the transcript of his interview.

Assistant Secretary of State for Public Affairs Philip J. Crowley on Tuesday said that U.S. is ready to work with Iran, but “we need to see Iran to come to the table and address our concerns.”

“We have remained extremely flexible – we want to find a way to address the legitimate needs of Iran,: Crowley said. “But in the absence of constructive engagement of Iran, we are now paying significant attention to the second track because Iran is unwilling to come to the table.”

Russia official: Iran testing the world’s patience

Iran’s decision to enrich uranium to higher levels has raised new doubts about Tehran’s nuclear program and is testing the patience of the global community, Russian officials said Tuesday.

The tough statements appeared to indicate that Russia is increasingly warming up to the U.S. push for a new set of international sanctions against Iran.

“Iran says it doesn’t want to have nuclear weapons. But its actions, including its decision to enrich uranium to 20 percent, have raised doubts among other nations, and these doubts are quite well-founded,” Nikolai Patrushev, the chief of Russia’s Security Council, said in televised remarks.

World powers fear the Iranian nuclear program might be a cover for building atomic weapons. Iran says the program is peaceful and aims to generate power for its growing population.

The U.S. and France said the Iranian announcement that it would enrich uranium to 20 percent left no choice but to push harder for a fourth set of United Nations Security Council sanctions to punish Iran’s nuclear defiance. Iran said Tuesday it had started enrichment under UN supervision.

The Russian Foreign Ministry also criticized the Iranian move, saying that it defies the UN Security Council resolutions and would deepen doubts of the sincerity of Iran’s intentions to assuage international concerns about its nuclear program.

Patrushev urged Iran to cooperate more actively with the UN nuclear watchdog to assuage international concerns about its enrichment effort. He also warned there are limits to the world’s patience regarding Iran’s defiance.

“What matters is not whether or not sanctions will be imposed,” Patrushev said. “What matters is to settle the process. Political and diplomatic methods are important in the settlement, but everything has its limit and there are limits to patience.”

Patrushev also pointed out that Israel, in particular, has refused to rule out the use of force against Iran. “It’s very important to avert a war,” he said.

Russia has walked a fine line on Iran for years. It is one of the six powers leading efforts to ensure Iran does not develop an atomic bomb. But it also has tried to maintain friendly ties with the Islamic Republic, a regional power close to Russia’s vulnerable southern flank.

Russia has been building Iran’s first nuclear power plant, whose launch has been repeatedly delayed and is now scheduled for some unspecified time this year.

Netanyahu calls for ‘immediate, crippling sanctions’

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called for immediate and “crippling” sanctions against Iran on Tuesday, as the Islamic Republic began making higher-grade nuclear fuel in defiance of international censure.

“Iran is racing forward to produce nuclear weapons … I believe that what is required right now is tough action by the international community,” Netanyahu told European diplomats.

“This means not moderate sanctions, or watered-down sanctions. This means crippling sanctions and these sanctions must be applied right now,” he said in a short message to underscore Israel’s concern over the latest developments.

Netanyahu’s language implied Israel would not be content with so-called “targeted sanctions” which Western diplomats have predicted could be pursued against the Iranian Revolutionary Guards and other assets of the Tehran leadership.

“In the last two days the brutal regime in Tehran has made more outrageous statements including the implicit call for the extermination of my country,” Netanyahu told the EU ambassadors.

He did not repeat veiled threats Israel has made in the past to attack Iran’s nuclear facilities in a pre-emptive strike.

A spokesman of the atomic agency, Ali Shirzadian, said Tuesday morning that “preparatory work” had started at 9:30 A.M. local time and that production would formally get under way at about 1 P.M.

“Today we started to make 20 percent enriched nuclear fuel … in the presence of IAEA [International Atomic Energy Agency] inspectors,” an unnamed official told Iran’s Arabic-language state television, al-Alam.

Reacting to the announcement, the United States said on Tuesday it wanted the United Nations Security Council to move quickly to enforce sanctions on Iran, demanding approval of a resolution “within weeks, not months.”

But China, which like the U.S. holds a Security Council veto, remains reluctant to support sanctions and on Tuesday called for more talks in the wake of calls by other world powers for possible sanctions on Iran over its nuclear developments.

Foreign Ministry spokesman Ma Zhaoxu refused to comment on sanctions
at a news conference, saying only: “I hope the relevant parties will step up efforts and push for progress in the dialogue and negotiations.”

Italy says Iranian militia attacked its embassy | Reuters.

ROME (Reuters) – Italy said dozens of members of Iran’s hardline religious Basij militia had tried to attack its embassy in Tehran on Tuesday, but Iranian media described the incident as a student protest and did not mention any violence.

Italian Foreign Minister Franco Frattini told a Senate hearing: “About a hundred Basij dressed as civilians tried to assault the embassy shouting ‘Death to Italy’ and ‘Death to (Prime Minister) Berlusconi’.”

He later told reporters the attackers were “certainly or most probably Basij.”

“We did not recognize them, but because of the type of demonstration and the slogans chanted it looked a bit suspect.”

He said the attackers had hurled stones at the embassy but caused no serious damage. Iranian police had intervened to “stop a full-blown assault.”

Iran’s IRNA news agency said university students had protested outside the French and Italian embassies, condemning both countries’ “interference in Iran’s domestic affairs.” The report made no mention of any violence.

Television footage showed people throwing stones and eggs at the embassies.

Italy has traditionally been one of Iran’s main trading partners in Europe but Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi’s close ties with Israel, and diplomatic pressure over the nuclear dispute, have led to a sharp drop in Italian investments.

On a trip to Israel last week, Berlusconi said his government would block new investments in Iran’s oil and gas sector, where Italy’s ENI is active. Iranian media later condemned Berlusconi as “a slave of Israel.”

Frattini said Rome would not send its ambassador to celebrations on Thursday marking the 1979 Islamic Revolution.

Hardline students often hold demonstrations in front of Western embassies in Tehran.

(Reporting by Roberto Landucci; Editing by Kevin Liffey)

DEBKAfile, Political Analysis, Espionage, Terrorism, Security.

In a well-coordinated offensive, pro-government Basijj militiamen in civilian dress hurled rocks and eggs at the Italian and French embassies in Tehran Tuesday, Feb. 9, shouting death to their respective leaders. Some reports say the Dutch embassy was also targeted.  debkafile‘s Iranian sources report the attacks appear to have kicked off the campaign for “stunning” the West – as threatened by spiritual ruler Ayatollah Ali Khamenei,  or “crushing” the West – in president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s words this week.
Our sources expect the government-instigated violence to escalate up to and including Thursday, Feb. 1, the start of anniversary events marking Iran’s 1979 Islamic revolution. They are designed to raise international tensions around Iran to fever pitch to deter opposition leaders from staging their planned mass protest demonstrations lest they be accused of treason and collaborating with the Islamic republic’s foreign foes.
The Iranian regime has a long score to settle with French president Nicolas Sarkozy and his ministers. They are the most outspoken of any Western critics of Iran, often citing intelligence input to prove Iran is running a military nuclear program and building a nuclear bomb.
Sarkozy also warns that Israel will not stand by and let this happen without resorting to a military offensive that will generate a major war drawing Middle Eastern and other nations into the conflict
Tehran’s grievance against The Hague stems from the suspicion that the Dutch BVD national security service maintains the farthest-flung network of agents inside Iran of any other agency and the high quality of its intelligence on happenings inside the Islamic republic:

Faster, Please! » What is Iran Planning for Thursday?.

Khamenei, whose public statements should be taken seriously, is promising some sort of devastating “punch” against the West on Thursday the 11th, the same day as the Green Movement is calling for a monster protest against his regime.

What might he have in mind?  I don’t know; they say a lot of things just for effect, but threats/promises from the supreme leader have a certain standing. If I were an Israeli official, I’d recheck my information on Iran, Hamas, Hezbollah and Islamic Jihad.

Some think he’s preparing some kind of attack against Israel. Surely there has been no shortage in recent weeks of nasty language against the Jewish state. Here’s Foreign Minister Mottaki a day ago:

“Iran is facing a mad nation led by insane people. This is the reason why all of us in the region – in Syria, in Lebanon, and the Palestinians – must be prepared constantly for any crazy operation against us.”

Other Iranian leaders have spoken of the “inevitability” of Israel’s destruction.  Maybe they have something in mind.

The other obvious possibility is that he’s ordered a massive, Chinese-style crackdown on the opposition.  Since he believes that the opposition is foreign-based and foreign-controlled, a devastating massacre might count as a big “punch” to the West.

He’s totally obsessed with bringing an end to the protests, and the nightly chants of “Death to the Dictator” that haunt him so.  In the last few days he’s been telephoning opposition journalists and intellectuals, telling them to give it up, and the preparations for the crackdown have gone so far as to replace the traditional plastic garbage cans in Tehran — in which demonstrators have been setting fires to combat tear gas — with metal ones.  I don’t understand the point of that, but I’m sure it annoys the sanitation workers, who will now have to heist much heavier containers.

Meanwhile, the purge of journalists and activists continues. Since June 12th, the regime has arrested slightly more than 11,000 people, more than 3,000 of whom are still in those nightmare cells.  Executions continue at a regular tempo, as does torture.

The Greens expect the regime to go all out on Thursday.  The leaders believe they will be arrested on Friday, and are prepared for it.  In his recent interview Mousavi remarked that a large number of his best friends were in prison, and he was sad not to be with them.

He also said that the Green Movement did not depend on his leadership, or anyone else’s.

That theory may be about to be tested by Ali Khamenei, starting Thursday.

‘I wouldn’t cry if he was killed’.

Photo by: AP [file]

Netanyahu: Crippling Iran sanctions needed now – Haaretz – Israel News.

		Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad inspects a uranium enrichment plant. (Archive) Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called for immediate and “crippling” sanctions against Iran on Tuesday, just as the Islamic Republic began its production of higher-grade nuclear fuel. “Iran is rushing forward to produce nuclear weapons…I believe that what is required right now is tough action by the international community,” Netanyahu told European diplomats that dealt only with the Iranian issue. “This means crippling sanctions and these sanctions must be applied right now,” he declared, adding that Iran’s nuclear development was being carried out in “brazen defiance” of the international comminity. “What is required is a lot more than words.” “The international community must decide if it is serious about neutralizing this threat to Israel, the region and the entire world,” Netanyahu added. The director of Iran’s Atomic Energy Organization said Tuesday that the Islamic Republic would not need to enrich uranium to a higher level if the West were to provides the fuel it needs for the Tehran research reactor. Iran started enriching nuclear fuel to 20 percent on Tuesday from its present 3.5 percent, a defiant move that immediately increased Western pressure for new international sanctions on the major oil producer. “Whenever they provide the fuel, we will halt production of 20 percent,” Ali Akbar Salehi, who also serves as Iran’s vice president, told state TV. A spokesman of the atomich agency, Ali Shirzadian, said Tuesday morning that “preparatory work” had started at 9:30 A.M. local time and that production would formally get under way at about 1 P.M. “Today we started to make 20 percent enriched nuclear fuel … in the presence of IAEA [International Atomic Energy Agency] inspectors,” an unnamed official told Iran’s Arabic-language state television, al-Alam. Reacting to the announcement, the United States said on Tuesday it wanted the United Nations Security Council to move quickly to enforce sanctions on Iran, demanding approval of a resolution “within weeks, not months.” But China, which like the U.S. holds a Security Council veto, remains reluctant to support sanctions and on Tuesday called for more talks in the wake of calls by other world powers for possible sanctions on Iran over its nuclear developments. Foreign Ministry spokesman Ma Zhaoxu refused to comment on sanctions at a news conference, saying only: “I hope the relevant parties will step up efforts and push for progress in the dialogue and negotiations.” The IAEA said on Monday that it feared Iran’s plan to start producing higher-enriched uranium would damage chances to save a proposed atomic fuel supply deal between Tehran and world powers and is prepared to intervene as necessary. Iran plans to build 10 new uranium enrichment facilities during the next Iranian year, its atomic energy chief was quoted as saying on Sunday, in comments likely to further raise tension with the West. Iranian insistence on pushing ahead with its nuclear program, which it claims is for civilian purposes but which the West fears is an attempt to build an atom bomb, now seems likely to provoke a strong international response. The United States and France declared earlier Monday it was time to impose new sanctions over Iran’s nuclear defiance. “This is real blackmail,” said French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner. “The only thing that we can do, alas, is apply sanctions given that negotiations are not possible.” Speaking at a separate event in Paris, U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates also said more pressure had to be applied. “We must still try and find a peaceful way to resolve this issue. The only path that is left to us at this point, it seems to me, is that pressure track but it will require all of the international community to work together,” he said. Gates said the international community had “offered Iran multiple opportunities to provide reassurance about its intentions with respect to its nuclear program”. Russian officials also called on Monday for the international community to prepare to act response to Iran’s announcement that it would start making higher-grade reactor fuel. Konstantin Kosachyov, head of the foreign affairs committee in Russia’s lower house of parliament, said a strengthening of international economic sanctions should be considered. “The international community should swiftly react to the news in order to send Tehran a new signal of its intent to react with serious measures, right up to a strengthening of economic sanctions,” a spokeswoman for Kosachyov quoted him as saying

DEBKAfile, Political Analysis, Espionage, Terrorism, Security.

Iranian air force chiefs listen to Ali Khamenei

Tuesday, Feb. 9, Tehran followed through on its leaders’ promise to start home-processing of uranium up to 20 percent grade, in open defiance of a UN ban.  Adding insult to injury, UN inspectors were invited to Natanz to witness the event, which was charged with echoes of the threat sounded by Iran’s spiritual ruler Ayatollah Ali Khamenei the day before:  “The Iranian nation with its unity and God’s grace will punch the arrogance [of Western powers] on the 22nd of Bahman (Feb. 11) in a way that will leave them stunned!”

This declaration climaxed the series of “scientific and military” achievements to which president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad laid claim in the last ten days: The launching of a space capsule carrying a small zoo by the new Kavoshgar-3 carrier on Feb. 3; the inauguration of production lines for “advanced drones capable of precision bombing,” on Feb. 8; Iran’s attainment of the ability to enrich uranium up to 20 percent grade – all capped now with the spiritual ruler’s ominous remark.

Some of the claims are dismissed by certain informed circles in the West as empty boasts, part of the extremist Islamist regime’s war of propaganda against the world or its campaign to still domestic fears of a US or Israeli attack.

Yet debkafile‘s military sources say certain points cannot be lightly dismissed:

1. While some boasts are indeed unfounded – like the one that Iran has developed an interceptor against air and missile attack more advanced the S-300 system withheld by Russia – most of Tehran’s claims with regard to military, missile and nuclear advances have been borne out as resting on solid achievement.

2.  The fact that Khamenei issued his apparently wild threat in the presence of the commanders of the Iranian Air force – and just three days before its promised execution – indicates he must have something serious up his sleeve and is building up the drama.
Foreign minister Manouchehr Mottaki contributed to the heightened tension generated by the war-mongering from Damascus in the last ten days. He pledged that if Israel attacked Syria or any other Arabs, Iran would come to their aid.

Manifesting deep-seated racism, he commented contemptuously: “The Jews are mad and Israel is a nation led by lunatics.”
He was contemptuous too about a possible US attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities: The Americans will fail here too, said the Iranian foreign minister, just as they failed in Iraq and Afghanistan.

US defense secretary Robert Gates hinted at a change of tune after meeting French president Nicolas Sarkozy in Paris Monday Feb. 8: He said he hoped “strong international sanctions on Iran will forestall the need for a military strike designed to end the country’s chances of developing a nuclear weapon.”

debkafile‘s Washington sources note that this was Gates’ first mention of a possible resort to military action (which Barack Obama has never eschewed) for ending Iran’s development of a nuclear weapon. He has always been staunch opponent of military action and preferred sanctions,
But he knows perfectly well that the chances of the UN Security Council imposing a fresh round of penalties against Iran are nil. China made it clear that it will not come on board for stiffer sanctions and, at the Munich conference, sided solidly with Tehran, urging “the parties concerned” to “step up diplomatic efforts and exercise greater patience and flexibility with Iran.”

Israeli and Middle East Options » Publications » Family Security Matters.

February 9, 2010

Israeli and Middle East Options

Maj. Gen. Paul E. Vallely, US Army (Ret)