Israel is back – Israel Opinion, Ynetnews.

Our enemies scared of ‘crazy’ Israel, which finally learned rules of region

Guy Bechor

Middle East Views | Ahmadinejad and Nasrallah prepare us for war.

Hassan Haidar

The past two weeks have witnessed many Iranian allusions to the possibility of a military conflict erupting in the region, and this coincides with the start of serious discussion over imposing further sanctions on Tehran because of its obstinacy in the nuclear issue, as well as with Washington announcing that it will present a draft concerning this matter to the Security Council before the end of this month.

Indications of war came in the words of Iranian President Ahmadinejad, who announced that he had informed Syria in a telephone call to its president that “we have reliable information (…) that the Zionist regime is after finding a way to compensate for its ridiculous defeats from the people of Gaza and Lebanon’s Hezbollah”, adding that “if the Zionist regime should repeat its mistakes and initiate a military operation, then it must be resisted with full force to put an end to it once and for all”.

He then repeated his claims in a press conference two days ago, saying that “according to information we have they (Israel) are seeking to start a war next spring or summer, although their decision is not final yet”, without making clear against whom yet adding “but the resistance and regional states will finish them if this fake regime does anything again”.

Some might find it “understandable” for Ahmadinejad to hint at the possibilities of war with Israel and to raise the level of tension in the region, in order to deter the Westerners from seeking to impose sanctions and drive them instead to rush to find a way to calm the situation down, and consider this to fall under “tactics” and “indirect negotiations”. Yet previous experience has shown that Iran’s talk of war has been serious when the matter concerns the regime’s interests. The summer 2006 Lebanon war erupted after economic sanctions were imposed on Tehran, and there is nothing preventing such a scenario from being repeated, a scenario which produced a “victory” Iran and its allies still boast of.

Yet it is noteworthy that, when Ahmadinejad spoke of resisting any Israeli offensive, he did not indicate the willingness of his country to participate in such resistance, and in fact laid the responsibility for the task on just Syria, Hezbollah and Hamas. And of course, Hezbollah Secretary-General Sayyid Nasrallah rushed to seize the direct Iranian message and gave a speech the day before yesterday in which he raised the bar of the “challenge” which he said to “accept” and threatened to strike the infrastructure in Israel if it endeavored to attack Lebanon.

Nasrallah said that he does want war, despite the fact that he “misses” it and is willing to wage it, but he seemed in effect to be luring the Israelis to confrontation under the guise of “deterrence” when he revealed a substantial development in his arsenal and his possession of accurate rocket launch systems that never miss their targets and have the ability to destroy.

And when he spoke of Israel’s “weakness” and its inability to wage a war unless it ensures its “certain, guaranteed and absolute” victory in it, and said that it needed time to regain its strength and build an anti-rocket “steel dome”, he in fact fell into contradiction with his ideology itself. Indeed, if he is certain of Israel’s weakness, of the “predicament” it is in, and of the fact that it cannot bear another defeat because that would mean its end, then why does he choose to grant it enough time to prepare since his political convictions and his “religious obligation” drive him to obliterate the “Zionist entity”?

The explanation for such contradiction has come in the words of Nasrallah himself when, in the process of attacking those who demand that he does not give Israel a pretext to launch an offensive against Lebanon, he said “since July 2006, nothing has happened on the South Lebanon front, and this has assured us of a strategy”. The strategy here means exclusively the decision and timing controlled by Tehran, which might currently want to prevent sanctions at any cost… which of course we would pay.

*Published in the London-based AL-HAYAT on Feb. 18, 2010

American Thinker Blog: Iran secretly working on developing a nuclear payload for its missiles: IAEA.

Rick Moran
Thank God Mohammed ElBaradei is no longer head of the IAEA. The guy was famous for using weasel words and outright underplaying Iran’s nuclear progress and ambitions.

Thankfully, the new head of the International Atomic Energy Administration is made of sterner stuff. Yukia Amano has completed his first report on Iran and comes to a frightening conclusion:

The information available to the Agency in connection with these outstanding issues is extensive and has been collected from a variety of sources over time. It is also broadly consistent and credible in terms of the technical detail, the time frame in which the activities were conducted and the people and organizations involved. Altogether, this raises concerns about the possible existence in Iran of past or current undisclosed activities related to the development of a nuclear payload for a missile. These alleged activities consist of a number of projects and sub-projects, covering nuclear and missile related aspects, run by military related organizations.

[…]

While the Agency continues to verify the non-diversion of declared nuclear material in Iran, Iran has not provided the necessary cooperation to permit the Agency to confirm that all nuclear material in Iran is in peaceful activities.

The IAEA strongly suspects Iran of carrying out a “dual track” nuclear program with an above board aspect that, since Iran is party to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, is carefully monitored and inspected, but also a secret program run by the military. Before Iran was politicized by our intelligence agencies, the Bush administration had a strong suspicion that such was the case. Now the CIA and others have dismissed that notion.

Looks like another rewrite is in order for that 2007 National Intelligence Estimate that predicted Iran would not get the bomb until 2015 and that they gave up trying to make a bomb in 2003.

Reading between the lines of this diplomat-speak, you cannot escape the impression that the IAEA believes that, in addition to all the declared facilities (and declared stockpiles of uranium) that the Iranians actually have other, secret facilities and nuclear stockpiles where they are probably working on mating a nuclear warhead to a missile.

What now?

The president is pushing another round of sanctions at the UN with both Russia and China making noises as if they would be agreeable in principle. But really, it is far too late for any sanctions to matter. Iran will not be denied by peaceful means. There is no upside for them to give up on making a nuclear weapon. They have committed enormous sums, virtually ruined their economy, in order to get to this point. It is not likely they will be deterred – unless someone or a group of someones physically prevents them from taking the last step over the cliff.

This piece in the J-Post outlines the thinking in Tel Aviv; if Obama says “no” to Israel regarding an Iran strike, it is probable that they will not risk an open break with Washington. But, there are different ways that Obama can say “no:”

At the end of the day, it may all come down to how clear and explicit the American red light to Israel is. If President Obama looks Prime Minister Netanyahu in the eyes and says, “Absolutely not,” then it will be extremely unlikely Israel will attack Iran. But in politics and diplomacy, there are many different ways of saying no, many different ways of interpreting a “no,” many different shades of red. Sometimes things are not so cut-and-dry, red is not always black and white.But the parade of US officials here will be reminding their Israeli counterparts that red is a primary color, not made up of some green, some yellow and some white. It is not magenta, it is not crimson. If the Americans give Israel a firm red, in the clearest possible terms, and they really mean it, then there is no room for constructive ambiguity, and those in the driver’s seat of Israel’s car will have to approach the oncoming fateful intersection with extreme caution.

I’m sure, given the anti-Israeli advisors that Obama has brought into his administration, that there will be several key foreign policy figures who would want to punish Israel severely for protecting itself from the mad mullahs. It may even be Obama’s feeling as well.

Given this report by the IAEA, the clock in Tel Aviv is close to striking midnight – where Israel must make a decision that would certainly be the most fateful of this century, and perhaps the most important decision regarding the peace of the planet in many decades.

IDF welcomes ‘super-drone’ – Israel News, Ynetnews.

IDF welcomes ‘super-drone’

New unmanned aircraft can fly higher, stay in air longer than other drones

Hanan Greenberg

Inspectors Say Iran Worked on Warhead – NYTimes.com.

WASHINGTON — The United Nations’ nuclear inspectors declared for the first time on Thursday that they had extensive evidence of “past or current undisclosed activities” by Iran’s military to develop a nuclear warhead, an unusually strongly worded conclusion that seems certain to accelerate Iran’s confrontation with the United States and other Western countries.

The report, the first under the new director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, Yukiya Amano, also concluded that Iran’s weapons-related activity apparently continued “beyond 2004, “ contradicting an American intelligence assessment published a little over two years ago that concluded that work on a bomb was suspended at the end of 2003.

The report confirms that Iran has enriched small quantities of uranium to 20 percent, but makes no assessment of how close it might be to producing a nuclear weapon, which Tehran denies it is seeking to do.

At a briefing at the White House shortly after the agency’s report was released, senior administration officials said they saw continuing evidence that Iran had to struggle just to keep its uranium-enrichment equipment running. Thousands of centrifuges that it installed at Natanz, its main site for enrichment, are not spinning.

The Obama administration said that Iran was producing only 100 grams a day of enriched uranium, and that even if it could quadruple its capacity it would still need several years to make enough for a weapon.

Still, the report cited new evidence, much of it collected in recent weeks, that appeared to paint a picture of a concerted drive in Iran toward a weapons capability. Echoing the Obama administration, the agency described an escalating series of steps by Iran: the enrichment to 20 percent, its acknowledgment of a secret enrichment plant in Qum, its efforts to metalize uranium and its rejection of a deal to enrich its uranium outside the country.

The report also reiterated evidence that Iran appeared to have tested ways of detonating weapons and to have worked extensively to design warheads small enough to fit atop a missile.

One senior administration official, told of the report’s main conclusions, said that he thought the actions described in the document “almost suggest the Iranian military is inviting a confrontation.” In fact, some in the Obama administration suspect that Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps or its leading religious leaders are betting that an escalation of the nuclear confrontation might distract attention from the protests that have rocked the government, while unifying the country against outsiders supposedly trying to suppress Iran’s rise as a significant power.

The report buttressed that view by indicating that Iran had moved most of its stockpile of low-enriched uranium into an above-ground storage plant at Natanz, where it is vulnerable to military attack.

“It’s odd, and there is no technical explanation for it,” the senior administration official said at a briefing. “There must be some other explanation.” He and other Obama administration officials declined to speculate why the Iranians would deliberately place their stockpile in a place where, with relatively little effort, Israel or another country could strike it.

The report also indicated that for the first time Iran told inspectors it was preparing to make its uranium into a metallic form — a step that can be explained by some civilian applications, but is widely viewed as necessary for making the core of an atom bomb. The report does not say what explanation the Iranians offered, if any, for the activity, other than general research and development.

Mr. Amano’s attitude toward Iran is being closely watched; some officials were concerned that he would be unwilling to confront the Iranians directly in his first months in office. But as one American official said Thursday, “It’s been clear to us that he recognizes the severity of what’s going on.”

In fact, the report detailed Iran’s past commitments to stop enriching uranium, its decision to go ahead and its refusal to comply with a series of United Nations Security Council resolutions demanding that it halt its work. It also detailed questions Iran has refused to answer about evidence that it may have worked on the difficult problems of developing a warhead small enough to fit on a missile.

“Since August 2008, Iran has declined to discuss the above issues with the agency or to provide any further information and access” to locations and scientists, the report said.

“Altogether,” it said, the accumulated evidence of weapons work and lack of explanatory cooperation “raises concerns about the possible existence in Iran of past or current undisclosed activities related to the development of a nuclear payload for a missile.”

The 2007 intelligence estimate that Iran had ceased work on a weapon was controversial from the beginning. While the intelligence agencies have never renounced that conclusion, several of President Obama’s top national security advisers have said they do not believe the American intelligence estimate. Many in the Bush administration also questioned that conclusion.

A European diplomat who works with the nuclear agency praised the report as tough and more tightly written than some of the more equivocal assessments of the past, under the direction of Mohamed ElBaradei. “It restricts Iran’s ability to spin,” said the diplomat, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. “The new language makes it harder for Iran to cherry-pick the report.”

The agency’s report disclosed Iranian work on uranium metal at an institute in Tehran and at Iran’s sprawling atomic center at Isfahan, where it said Iran planned to build several production lines.

The Institute for Science and International Security, a private group in Washington that tracks nuclear proliferation, said in a report on Thursday that the new lines at Isfahan “raise suspicions that Iran could use them to make metal components for weapons.”

In its report, the institute also questioned Iran’s moving most of its stocks of low-enriched uranium into the plant at Natanz, which is doing the high enrichment. The transfer, it said, implied that Iran planned to enrich it all to higher levels and produce “far in excess” of any fuel needed for its stated purpose of fueling a medical reactor in Tehran.