WarSclerotic

American Thinker Blog: Netanyahu’s agony.

Ron Lipsman
In the 1920s, an Austrian madman announced that he would take control of Germany and use that position to murder millions of Jews. Scarcely anyone believed him. But he made good on his promise. He could have been stopped. However, the nations in a position to do so failed at the task. Either they couldn’t imagine that he was serious or they weren’t particularly concerned about the implications of his intentions.

Today we observe an Iranian madman announce that he intends to repeat the process. He starts ahead of his illustrious Austrian predecessor because he, in cahoots with a mysterious group of clerical fanatics, already controls the government. It remains for him only to finish his preparations of the atomic tools with which he expects to carry out his mad plan.

Once again, there are those in a position to prevent it. But as in the past, events have demonstrated that the powers capable of checking the mad Iranian are unlikely to do so. Most dismiss his threats as political bluster. Most of the rest believe he is not serious because, they calculate, a genocidal thrust by Iran toward Israel would surely be suicidal. And then of course there are the not inconsiderable numbers who, if not gleeful at the prospect of Jewish annihilation, at least don’t see it as such a terrible outcome. I wonder into which of these three groups our benighted President falls?

There is however one major difference between the situations then and now – namely, the existence of a powerful Jewish State capable of defending the Jewish people and/or avenging them. And thereby arises the agonizing decision faced by Israel’s leaders.

I have no doubt that the people of Israel do not dismiss the madman’s threat as bluster or bluff. They understand that the centuries long enmity of Islam toward Judaism, the hysterical obsession of the Muslim world to rid the Middle East of the “Zionist entity” and the Muslim embrace of suicide bombers make it eminently possible that Ahmadinejad is deadly serious. While they retain the ability to annihilate Teheran, much of Iran and perhaps significant parts of the Muslim world – even if only in a retaliatory strike to avenge an Iranian nuclear attack on their tiny country-Israelis surely reason that a better course of action is to obliterate the enemy’s nuclear facilities first-using conventional weapons of course.

Thus the agony:

• Israel cannot be absolutely certain, short of an actual Iranian nuclear attack, that Ahmadinejad is truly serious, so a preemptive Israeli strike could conceivably be unnecessary.

• Such a preemptive strike might not succeed.

• It almost certainly will cause inadvertent civilian casualties.

• Even if it succeeds, the Iranian government is capable of causing Israel great pain via their long range missiles, and their proxies in Lebanon and Gaza.

• The Iranians are also capable of delivering immense pain to the rest of the world (e.g., by closing the Strait of Hormuz).

• And finally, successful or not, an Israeli preemptive strike will bring the wrath of the entire world down on them.

What will Israel decide to do? The agony that Netanyahu is experiencing-as the window in which he must decide shrinks-must be monumental. We shall know his decision relatively soon.

Bruno Pellaud: Iran Invites Israeli Bombers to Visit its Nuclear Facilities.

Signals from Tehran and the recent IAEA report on the country’s nuclear activities provide unmistaken clues that the Iranian government may welcome a limited bombing of its nuclear facilities. This in order to unleash a patriotic swell bound to bolster the Ahmadinejad regime. The IAEA report issued on 18 February 2010 reveals out of the ordinary details of the Iranian program.
The Natanz enrichment site first. The basic well advertised provocation is of course the decision to re-enrich the low-enriched fuel available on site (at less than 5%) to the upper limit of what may be defined as low-enriched uranium (20%). Allowed by the Non Proliferation Treaty, but not by the Security Council. The second provocation is to do so – not in the bomber-proof underground tunnels of the Natanz Production Facility – but in a vulnerable surface building , the Pilot Facility. The third provocation was to transfer in one go on February 14 the complete stock of low-enriched uranium, some 2000 kilograms, from the same deep underground tunnels to the above-ground Pilot Facility. Therefore, today, one precision-guided air-to-ground missile could disperse the whole strategic stock of Iranian enriched uranium! Why are these moves deemed to be sheer provocations? Because, there were alternatives aplenty: re-enrich uranium with the 3000 unused centrifuges in the cellars of Natanz, or bring up to the surface gradually only the daily low-enrich feed required by the Pilot Facility.
Similar situation in Esfahan. The IAEA reports that Iran has announced the construction of several R&D lines for the production of natural, depleted, and enriched uranium metal in an underground laboratory at the Esfahan Uranium Conversion Facility (UCF). Without obvious civilian applications, metallic uranium has been a traditional indicator of an interest in metal components for weapons. The interest is not new, since Iran had fiddled with uranium metal hemispheres already in the eighties and nineties. This is a serious matter by itself. But why the provocation of setting up that chemical laboratory in a cellar of the UCF building, in a shallow-underground location, vulnerable to surgical bombing, instead of one of the tunnel dug out around the Esfahan site or, again, deep underground at Natanz?
Will Israel take the bait? Technically, a single strike in Natanz or a double strike in Esfahan as well, would make some sense since key facilities and materials would in truth be destroyed. Never-theless, the overall Iranian nuclear potential would remain intact, since Iran has widely distributed its nuclear assets across the country. Within less than one year, Iran would have rebuilt its stock of low-enriched uranium and would have accelerated re-enrichment to higher levels, may be beyond 20%. Israel could well avoid the potential political consequences of a very limited military operation at Natanz or Esfahan – as was the case in Syria in October 2007 where a nuclear facility under construction, undeclared and illegal, was bombed out by Israeli planes without much protest on the part of the Syrian government and the international community.
How would the Iranians react to a targeted bombing of the Pilot Facility in Natanz and/or the Ura-nium Conversion Facility in Esfahan? Very recent signals from Tehran indicates that the Ahmadine-jad faction – it seems with the blessing of the Supreme Leader – would welcome a limited Israeli attack on a nuclear facility – for sheer internal political reasons, in order to strengthen the govern-ment and to silence the opposition. If limited, such a military action would not compel the Iranian leadership to react immediately against Israel or to impede sea traffic in the Hormuz Straits (not to affect Arabic interests). At any rate, the technical details provided by the IAEA can only be interpreted as see-through provocations, as baits for the Israeli Air Force to come over now, at a favorable time (e.g., in Natanz, prior to the 20% re-enriched uranium being trucked down deep underneath).
The domestic political situation in Iran deserves greater attention. Remember the reasons why Iran refused at the end of 2009 the swap of its low-enriched uranium for brand-new fuel elements needed by the Tehran Research Reactor. Jahili, the nuclear negotiator, accepted the deal in Geneva on October 1; Soltanieh, the ambassador, did likewise in Vienna three weeks later. Ahmadinejad endorsed it publicly, and his Army Chief of Staff, Firouzabadi did the same. Others, eager to deprive Ahmadinejad of a diplomatic success, turned the tide against the swap: Larijani, the Speaker of Parliament, Moussavi the opposition presidential candidate and finally the Supreme Leader as well. Any kind of swap – other than simultaneous – has become impossible for Iran.
At this point, Iran is confronted with two scenarios. First, a strong regime of sanctions. In spite of his bravado, the Ahmadinejad faction knows that effective sanctions endorsed by both Russia and China in the Security Council would seriously affect Iran’s economy. Quite likely, Russia and China would not participate, more concerned by their commercial interests than by nuclear proliferation. On the other hand, if the European Union would show more spine and less concern about its own commercial interests, Iran would fear just as much a joint sanction regime managed by a “EU-US Sanction Office” that would see a.o. the trade of two key European players – Germany and Italy – reduced drastically. Second scenario, yes, an Israeli bombing at Natanz or Esfahan. Looking at these alternatives from an Iranian perspective – from the perspective of ensuring the survival of the Islamic regime, it is not really surprising that many players in Tehran prefer the second sce-nario. This is why Ahmadinejad is putting on a sliver plate, inside a light building on the open site of Natanz, the accumulated 2000 kgs of uranium.
The bottom line. While in these days the Israeli Air Force fine tunes its potential air corridors, Washington, Brussels, Berlin and even Rome, should think seriously about all the implications of what looks like a tempting and easy way to move the Iranian nuclear file, a way that could nonetheless easily get out of control.

Iran to Build More Enrichment Plants – NYTimes.com.

PARIS — A senior Iranian official said on Monday that his country planned to build 10 more nuclear enrichment plants — two of them within the next year — and had identified “close to” 20 sites for such facilities.

Ali Akbar Salehi, the head of Iran’s Atomic Energy Organization, also said the plants would use a new kind of centrifuge, but did not provide details.

His remarks came just days after United Nations nuclear inspectors said they had extensive evidence of “past or current undisclosed activities” by Iran’s military to develop a nuclear warhead.

Coupled with that conclusion, Iran’s latest affirmation of intent to expand its nuclear capacity seemed likely to further deepen Tehran’s dispute with the United States and other world powers over its nuclear program. Earlier this month, Iran also began processing uranium to a higher level of enrichment, closer to — but still far below — weapons grade.

Iran has made similar claims about its ambitions to build more enrichment plants in the past and it is not clear whether it has the capability to fulfill its pledges in the near future.

The International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna, the U.N. nuclear oversight body, had no immediate comment on the report.

According to the semiofficial ISNA news agency in Tehran, Mr. Salehi said Iranian ministers had decided last December on a plan to greatly expand the country’s nuclear enrichment program to supply fuel for planned electricity generation.

Western officials fear that Iran’s nuclear program is designed to build a bomb, dismissing Iran’s insistence that it is for peaceful purposes permitted under international law.

Mr. Salehi was quoted as saying that “nearly 20 locations” for building new enrichment plants had been identified, but did not say where.

Iran’s nuclear fuel needs, he said, required an initial 10 new enrichment plans with the same capacity as its current facility at Natanz, south of Tehran.

“The 10 enrichment plants will be constructed in a way that they are protected against any attack,” ISNA quoted the official as saying, an apparent reference to Iranian fears that the United States or Israel might attack its nuclear plants.

Iran “may start construction” on two of the sites, as ordered by President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, in the Iranian year beginning March 21, ISNA quoted Mr. Salehi as saying.

The announcement came as the United States sought to build an international consensus — resisted so far by China in particular — to back more stringent sanctions against the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, which runs the nuclear program.

Iran has insisted that it is prepared to suspend enrichment in return for imported fuel rods. But it has laid down conditions for the exchange that the United States and its allies do not accept.

The first public word on Iran’s plan to build more plants came last November when Tehran refused to comply with a demand by the United Nations nuclear agency to cease work on a once-secret nuclear fuel enrichment plant and said it would construct 10 more such plants.

At that time, nuclear experts said that even if Tehran proceeded with a plan to build 10 enrichment plants, it was doubtful Iran could execute the project for years, or even decades.

Israel Urges Iran Oil Embargo Even Without U.N. Okay – NYTimes.com.

JERUSALEM (Reuters) – Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called on Monday for an immediate embargo on Iran’s energy sector, saying the U.N. Security Council should be sidestepped if it cannot agree on the move.

Iran’s uranium enrichment in defiance of several rounds of Security Council sanctions has spurred world powers to consider tougher measures to halt what the West fears is a drive to produce nuclear weapons.

Israel has endorsed the talks while hinting at preemptive military action should it deem diplomacy a dead end.

If the world “is serious about stopping Iran, then what it needs to do is not watered-down sanctions, moderate sanctions … but effective, biting sanctions that curtail the import and export of oil into Iran,” Netanyahu said in a speech.

“This is what is required now. It may not do the job, but nothing else will, and at least we will have known that it’s been tried. And if this cannot pass in the Security Council, then it should be done outside the Security Council, but immediately.”

Though it is the world’s fifth-largest oil exporter, Iran imports some 40 percent of its gasoline from foreign refineries.

Many Western diplomats believe that China, along with fellow veto-wielder Russia, would block any Security Council sanctions targeting Iran’s energy sector. Proposed sanctions for now focus on Iranian government assets like the Revolutionary Guard Corps.

INTERNATIONAL SUPPORT

Netanyahu spokesman Mark Regev said Israel would prefer the Security Council to curb Iran but believed there was enough international support outside that forum for energy sanctions.

“If the United States, Europe and like-minded countries act in unison, they can succeed in sending the desired message and forcing the regime in Tehran to rethink its nuclear weapons programme,” Regev said.

Israel’s Haaretz daily reported in 2008 that Netanyahu’s predecessor, Ehud Olmert, proposed for the United States to enforce a naval blockage on Iran. Regev declined to discuss whether the current Israeli government had similar ideas.

Netanyahu has in the past predicted energy sanctions would be enough to “cripple” Iran. He appeared to demur on Monday by raising the prospect that Iran — which announced plans to build two new enrichment plants — could weather even an oil embargo.

Regev said the premier was speaking extemporaneously in his English address to diaspora Jewish leaders, and that there was no change to Israel’s strategic view on its arch-foe.

Iran says its uranium enrichment is for energy or medical needs, but Tehran’s anti-Israel rhetoric and support for Islamic guerrillas on the Jewish state’s borders, as well as concerns over an Israeli military strike, have stirred fears of conflict.

Netanyahu made no reference to the possibility that Israel, which is assumed to have the Middle East’s only atomic arsenal, would try to attack Iran’s nuclear facilities. Some analysts believe this option is circumscribed by the long ranges, Iranian defences, and U.S. reluctance to see another regional conflict.

(Additional reporting by Jeffrey Heller; Editing by Dominic Evans)