In U.S., Barak signals Israeli autonomy against Iran | World | Reuters.

By Dan Williams

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Israel’s perspective on Iran’s nuclear program differs from that of the United States, and the two may part ways on what action to take, Israeli Defence Minister Ehud Barak said on Friday.

Washington’s clout over its Middle East ally is under scrutiny after Israel’s veiled threats to attack Iran preemptively if international diplomacy fails to rein in Tehran’s uranium enrichment, a process with bomb-making potential.

The United States this week said it did not want to hurt the Iranian people with “crippling” sanctions against Iran’s energy sector, measures Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has described as the only viable diplomatic solution.

“There is of course a certain difference in perspective and a difference in judgment and a difference in the internal clock, a difference in capabilities,” Barak told the Washington Institute for Near East Policy think-tank, when asked about Israeli-U.S. discussions about Iran.

“I don’t think that there is a need to coordinate in this regard. There should be understanding on the exchange of views, but we do not need to coordinate everything,” said Barak, who was in Washington for strategic talks.

Barak, a centrist in Netanyahu’s right-leaning coalition government, reiterated Israel’s argument that an Iranian bomb would destabilize the region by sparking an arms race and emboldening Islamist guerrillas sponsored by Tehran.

“Probably from this corner of the world it (Iran’s nuclear program) doesn’t change the script dramatically,” he said, speaking in English. “From a closer distance, in Israel, it looks like a tipping point for the whole regional order, with quite assured consequences for the wider world.”

While he played down the specter of Iran — which denies having hostile designs — trying to wipe out Israel in a nuclear strike, Barak urged the United States and other powers to keep “all options on the table” including preemptive force.

Israel bombed Iraq’s atomic reactor in 1981 and launched a similar strike against Syria in 2007. But many analysts believe it lacks the means to deliver lasting damage to Iranian nuclear facilities which are numerous, distant and well-defended.

Yet Barak hinted at Israel’s willingness to go it alone, saying: “We felt very proud that we never asked the Americans to come and fight for us. We basically … to paraphrase Churchill, we said, ‘Give us the tools and we will do the job.'”

He praised the Obama administration for making “the utmost effort” to resolve the standoff with Iran diplomatically.

Voicing reluctance to see a new Middle East war, the United States has boosted support for Israel’s strategic defences. That has led some analysts to speculate that Israel, which is assumed to have the region’s only atomic arsenal, could eventually be forced to enter a U.S.-led “containment” policy on Iran.

By DAVID E. SANGER Published: February 26, 2010

WASHINGTON — When Iran was caught last September building a secret, underground nuclear enrichment plant at a military base near the city of Qum, the country’s leaders insisted they had no other choice. With its nuclear facilities under constant threat of attack, they said, only a fool would leave them out in the open. So imagine the surprise of international inspectors almost two weeks ago when they watched as Iran moved nearly its entire stockpile of low-enriched nuclear fuel to an above-ground plant. It was as if, one official noted, a bulls-eye had been painted on it. Why take such a huge risk? That mystery is the subject of fervent debate in the White House and the C.I.A., and among European, Israeli and Arab officials trying to decode Iran’s intentions. The theories run from the bizarre to the mundane: Under one, Iran is actually taunting the Israelis to strike first. Under another, it is simply escalating the confrontation with the West to win further concessions in negotiations that have dragged on four months. The simplest explanation is that Iran has run short of suitable storage containers for radioactive fuel, so it had to move everything. The debate reflects the depth of confusion about the intentions of a badly divided Iranian leadership. Since October, when Iran agreed in principle to ship much of its nuclear stockpile out of the country so that it could be converted to fuel for a medical reactor, there have been a series of unexplained actions. President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has veered from hailing the deal to backing away from it. The country has declared it would soon build 10 new enrichment plants — a number it does not have the capacity to carry out. It has declared that it has answered all the questions posed by inspectors about potential work on weapons; the inspectors say there have been no responses since mid-2008. So while Washington and its allies are deeply immersed in assessing Iran’s technical capabilities, they are still trying to divine its political intentions. Despite considerable evidence that the United States and Israel have at least partly penetrated the Iranian program — snatching up scientists, obtaining photos of the inside of facilities and tapping into computer data from the nuclear program — they still are not certain whether Iran is seeking a nuclear bomb, or just the ability to build one, or even merely the appearance of the ability. As one senior adviser to Mr. Obama said late last year, “We’ve got a near-perfect record of being wrong about these guys for 30 years.” What touched off this whole guessing game was a single sentence in one of the normally bone-dry reports of the International Atomic Energy Agency. The report said that on Feb. 14, with inspectors present, the Iranians moved roughly 4,300 pounds of low-enriched uranium out of deep underground storage to the small facility that they have declared they will use to re-enrich the fuel to 20 percent purity. (It takes 80- to 90-percent purity to make a weapon, a relatively small technological leap from 20 percent.) On the surface, the move made no sense. Iran does not need anywhere near that much fuel for its ostensible purpose: feeding an aging reactor in Tehran thatmakes medical isotopes. Moreover, the fuel now sits out in the open, where an air attack, or even an carefully staged accident or fire, could destroy it. American and European officials will say little on the record because the guessing-game touches on three of the most sensitive subjects in the dispute: Whether Israel will strike the facilities and risk igniting a broader Middle East war; whether there is still time to stop the Iranian program through sanctions and diplomacy; and who is really in control of Iran and its nuclear program. “There’s no technical explanation, so there has to be some other motivation,” one senior administration official who studies the Iranian strategy said after a White House briefing last week following the atomic agency’s revelation. The strangest of the speculations — but the one that is being talked about most — is that the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps is inviting an attack to unify the country after eight months of street demonstrations that have pitted millions of Iranians against their government. As one senior European diplomat noted Thursday, an Israeli military strike might be the “best thing” for Iran’s leadership because it would bring Iranians together against a national enemy. It would offer an excuse some Iranians might sorely want to throw out the nuclear inspectors and renounce the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. That would leave Iran in the position North Korea is in today: free to manufacture fuel or bombs without inspectors to blow the whistle. Other, including some officials in the White House, say they do not buy that theory. Iran has worked too hard to let its supply be destroyed, they argue. “I really doubt they are taunting the Israelis to hit them,” said Kenneth Pollack, a scholar at the Brookings Institution who recently ran a day-long simulation of what would happen after an Israeli attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities. “It would be humiliating for the Iranian regime,” he said. He speculated that Iran would have to retaliate, and “the ensuing confrontation would go in directions no one can really predict.” Mr. Pollack numbers among those who suspect another explanation: brinkmanship. The Iranians have made clear that they do not like the terms their own negotiators came home with for swapping their nuclear fuel for specialized fuel for the medical reactor. By moving their fuel supply to the enrichment plant, they are essentially threatening to turn it all to near-bomb-grade fuel — and perhaps force the United States to reopen negotiations. But the simplest explanation, thatthe Iranians had no choice, has its proponents. The fuel is stored in one big, specialized cask. When someone ordered that the fuel begin being fed into the giant centrifuges for further enrichment, engineers moved it to the only spot available — the exposed plant. Or, as one American intelligence official said, “you can’t dismiss the possibility that this is a screw-up.” Whatever the cause, military officials say this is a tempting moment for the Israelis. The Obama administration clearly wants to make sure Israel does not take military action. In recent weeks it has sent the national security adviser and the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff to Israel to ensure there are no surprises like Israel’s 2007 strike on a nuclear reactor under construction in Syria. In that case, the Israelis gave the White House little warning of its decision to act. Michael Slackman contributed reporting from Cairo and Amman, Jordan; Robert F. Worth from Beirut, Lebanon; and Mark Landler from Washington.

Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmedinejad travelled urgently to Damascus on February 25 to tighten the nuts and bolts of Iran’s military-strategic coordination with its allies, Syria, Hizballah and the Palestinian extremist Hamas, in readiness for a showdown against Israel. Their insistent queries had called for on-the-spot answers at the highest Iranian level.
The Iranian president brought with him a sizeable assortment of Revolutionary Guards chiefs, national security experts and strategists, commanders of the al-Qods Brigades guerilla units, officers acting as military intelligence liaison with the Damascus-based Palestinian organizations Hamas and Islamic Jihad, along with some economic advisers.
Ahmadinejad’s key conference with Syrian president Bashar Assad was followed in the short hours of his stay in the Syrian capital by meetings with Hizballah leader Hassan Nasrallah, his deputy Naim Qassem, a flock of top Hizballah operatives called especially to Damascus, as well as Hamas’ politburo chief Khaled Meshaal who is based there.
The Iranian president planned the morning after his return home Thursday night to report on his talks in Damascus to a special session of the Iranian National Security Council. It was also decided to summon to a conference in Tehran Saturday, Feb. 27 the heads of Hizballah, Hamas, Jihad Islami and the other Iran-sponsored radical Palestinian factions to discuss their next instructions.
As DEBKA-Net-Weekly Iranian sources reported in recent issues, Tehran is now convinced an Israeli attack on its nuclear facilities is unavoidable and wants its allies to embark on pre-emptive action. Last week, a team of military and intelligence experts appointed by the president presented its report to supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. They warned that Israel’s war preparations were close to completion after certain sensitive issues concerning its military cooperation with the US had been ironed out.

Tehran sees danger in late March or early June

The experts fixed on late March as a probable timeline for an Israeli strike or alternatively early June.
On March 22, Iran celebrates the New Year with masses of ordinary people and most military and government officials going off on a five-day vacation and bringing the country to a standstill. Iran intelligence believes Israel may use this window for its surprise attack.
Tehran takes as confirmation of this tight time frame the fresh warnings picked up from high-ranking Israeli officials, deputy prime minister Sylvan Shalom and former Israeli Chief of Staff and current minister for strategic affairs Moshe Yaalon, that it had become critically important for Israel to make up its mind about how to handle the Iranian nuclear threat in the coming days.
Their words were taken in Tehran to confirm the imminence of an Israeli decision to go on the offensive unless the nuclear controversy is resolved quickly.
And on Thursday, Feb. 25, as Ahmadinejad sat down with Assad in Damascus, the Israel military completed a five-day command-and-control practice of the worst-case scenario of a four-front war.
Iranian eyes are also glued on the intense official traffic tramping back and forth between Jerusalem and Washington in the belief that each visit adds a brick to the military coordination structure rising between the two allies and the finishing touches to Israel’s buildup for war.
Note was taken of CIA chief Leon Panetta‘s unofficial visit to Jerusalem in late January, followed last week by Chairman of the Joint US Chiefs of staff Adm. Mike Mullen, and Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak‘s visit to Washington this week and his talks with American Secretary of Defense Robert Gates.
Wednesday, Feb. 24 a high-ranking US State Department-Pentagon-NSA delegation arrived to resume the US-Israel strategic dialogue in Jerusalem. This round was to focus on Iran.
Then, on March 8, US Vice President Joe Biden is due in Jerusalem.
The Iranians link the movements of additional high-ranking travelers to a run-up to a Middle East war: Secretary of State Hillary Clinton made the rounds of the Gulf in mid-February, prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu traveled to Moscow last week and Israel central bank governor Stanley Fisher and Minister Yaalon chose this moment to go to China.

New Israeli super-drone is a game changer

According to DEBKA-Net-Weekly‘s Iranian sources, it is suspected in Tehran that the flood of conflicting American statements on Washington’s next moves against Iran are deliberate attempts to misdirect and deceive: In public, Gates talks out against the military option, but does not take it off the table, while Admiral Mullen, they point out, stated clearly when he visited Israel that this option is still in force. He only hedged that bombing Iran’s nuclear facilities would not wipe them out, only temporarily hold back Iran’s attainment of a nuclear weapon for a while.
CENTCOM chief US Gen. David Petraeus was more explicit when he commented last week that the US military was set and ready to launch an offensive if and when the President so ordered.
Israel contributed to the perturbation in Tehran by announcing Sunday, Feb. 21, that its new “Eitan” drone had gone into service. This Heron-TP type unmanned aerial vehicle, dubbed a super-drone, has a wingspan of 26 meters (85 feet) like that of a Boeing 737, is 24 meters (79 feet) long and weighs 4.5 tons.
Most tellingly, it can stay aloft for more than 24 hours, which means it can reach Iran. Reports published in Tehran emphasized that the new Israel super-drone can stay that long over Iran at an altitude of 45,000 feet, the while monitoring Iranian military activity and instantaneously reporting back to headquarters in Tel Aviv.
“Eitan” can also carry a ton of ordnance and be fitted out for firing missiles.
The Iranians fear Israel would not have gone public unless it had a fleet of the new Herons ready for its opening move in the coming attack; some of the unmanned craft would be used to paralyze Iran’s air defense and radar systems, others to inflict the initial strike against Iran’s nuclear facilities and clear its skies for incoming Israeli bomber squadrons.
These bombers, the Iranians fear, would be supplied by the Herons with enough data to destroy the missiles while still deployed on their pads for launching against Israel or US Gulf targets.
Iran’s Shehab-3 solid-fuel propelled Shihab-3 missiles are only present in limited numbers; the others would take 20 hours to fuel, time enough for Israeli bombers to locate and destroy them on the ground.
The introduction of the Eitan drone means that even the solid-fuel missiles might not escape Israeli bombing raids because the two to three hours needed for their positioning would be enough to expose them to danger.

Iran must commit forces to get allies to act

In several conversations this past week, the Iranian president pressed the leaders of Syria, the Lebanese Hizballah and Palestinian Hamas to go ahead and initiate military action against Israel without waiting for the Jewish state to complete its preparations to strike Iran. Each had his own casus belli, he argued: Hizballah had still to avenge its legendary commander Imad Mughniyeh two years after he was killed in Damascus, while Hamas is on a vendetta for the death of its senior officer Mahmoud al-Mabhouh in Dubai last month.
The Iranian president dangled the prospect of Israel’s eradication: “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.”
In their public statements, Tehran’s allies sounded as though they were just as impatient to punish the Jewish state.
Syrian foreign minister Walid Moallem said ominously that the next war would see Israeli cities blown away by Syrian missiles; Hizballah’s secretary general Nasrallah warned that Israel would pay in equal measure for every attack on Beirut’s Shiite Dahya district or its international airport, while Hamas leader Khaled Meshal said any Israeli attack would trigger a regional war.
Hizballah lawmaker Navaf Al-Moussavi this week called on Syria and Iran to strengthen Lebanese armed forces and prepare them to confront Israel.
But Tehran was not satisfied with the heated rhetoric and ensuing war fever. Ahmadinejad went to Damascus to demand action not just words. He was given to understand that none of Iran’s Arab associates would move unless Iran went first. Their discussions Thursday focused therefore on how many and when Iran would post expeditionary forces to Syria ahead of the coming showdown with Israel, their military framework and precise operational missions. No less important, they needed to define the exact circumstances warranting the crossover of Iranian troops from Syria into Lebanon.
The four-way Damascus talks therefore took the prospect of a Middle East war out of the realm of general speculation and into the field of practical operational planning.

Ahmadinejad, Assad escalate rhetoric.

Photo by: AP

By HERB KEINON AND E.B. SOLOMONT
26/02/2010 05:41

J’lem silent as Iran’s leader says Israel is doomed; Assad slams “aggression.”

The MEMRI Blog – Full Blog Entry.

‘

Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad said, in response to U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s demand that Syria cut off relations with Iran and stop supplying Hizbullah with weapons, that Syria is not asking anyone’s advice, and that Syria will determine how to run its own affairs.

To prove his statements, he presented the Iran-Syria declaration of increased cooperation and abolition of visa requirements between them.

At a press conference with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Assad said that Syria opposed efforts to prevent Iran from obtaining nuclear energy for civilian purposes, because Syria wants such energy for itself. He also noted that Syria is in a constant state of preparedness for an Israeli attack.

Ahmadinejad said that Clinton’s demand expressed American annoyance, and stated his wish that the Americans would “drop dead from this annoyance.” He added that a Middle East without Israel was a divine promise.

Source: SANA, Syria; Mehr, Iran; nowlebanon.com, February 25, 2010.

MEMRI – Middle East Media Research Institute.

In the past two weeks, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has several times reiterated his call for eliminating Israel. In a number of conversations with the leaders of countries in the region and with Iran’s allies, Ahmadinejad stressed that Iran would stand alongside Syria, Lebanon, and the Palestinian organizations if they were to be attacked by Israel, and stated that this time there must be joint action to bring about Israel’s end.

The following are several recent statements by Ahmadinejad on eliminating Israel:

At a press conference with Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad in Damascus on February 25, 2010, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said: “A Middle East without Zionism is a divine promise… Time is on the side of the peoples of the region. The Zionist entity is nearing the threshold of nonexistence. Its raison d’être is finished, and its path is a dead end. If Israel wants to repeat the mistakes of the past, the death of the Zionist entity is certain… This time, all the nations of the region will stand fast in the face of the [Zionist regime], and will uproot it.”

Ahmadinejad promised further that “the Palestinian and Lebanese resistance and the Syrian people are standing alongside each other.”[1]

In a February 23, 2010 speech in Birjand in eastern Iran, Ahmadinejad said: “I have told Israel’s neighbors to be prepared. I told them that if Israel makes one more mistake, this is the end of this regime.”[2]

In a February 18, 2010 phone conversation with Hizbullah secretary-general Hassan Nasrallah, Ahmadinejad assessed that Israel wants war in the region as compensation for its defeats in Gaza and in Lebanon – but that it “fears the ramifications of such a move.” He called on Hizbullah to prepare for a possible Israeli attack, and said: “We must be ready at such a level that if they [Israel] repeat their mistake from the past [that is, attack Lebanon], an end will be put [to the Zionist regime], and the region will be delivered from its evil.” He promised that “on this issue, the Iranian nation stands alongside the nations of the region, and alongside Lebanon.”[3]

In another February 18 conversation, this time with Lebanese President Michel Suleiman, Ahmadinejad reiterated his statements to Nasrallah and called for planning “for every kind of possible attack by the Zionist regime, so that if it repeats its mistakes of the past, the matter [of Israel] will be ended. This is possible,” he continued, “because they [i.e. the Israelis] are in a position of weakness… Without a doubt, Israel will take heavy blows due to the solidarity among Lebanon, Syria, and the other friendly countries.”[4]

In a February 10, 2010 phone conversation with Syrian President Assad, Ahmadinejad promised that “Iran will always stand alongside Syria and Lebanon, the Palestinian resistance [organizations,] and the rest of the Muslim nations.” He called on Syria to act together with Iran against Israel: “If the Zionist regime again repeats its mistakes from the past, and launches a military operation, all forces must be brought into action, and an end must be put [to the Zionist regime], by means of steadfastness and resistance.”

He added that Israel was “on the slope of downfall” and that “all its moves are being made from a position of weakness.”[5]

Norm Kurz: The President’s Narrowing Options on Iran.

Vice President Joe Biden is fond of saying that “big nations can’t bluff.” Perhaps the most trusted adviser to the President on national security issues, including Iran, Biden must be wondering how the Administration can square its rhetoric on Iran with its actions.

As Senator, Barack Obama was the lead sponsor of sanctions legislation against Iran, and in his Presidential campaign he could not have been more clear. A nuclear Iran would pose a grave threat, and the world must prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon, candidate Obama said in July, 2008, adding that the world should “offer big carrots and big sticks” to signal its seriousness.

Gaining almost universal approval, the Administration has delivered on half of that promise, with high ranking U.S. diplomats having met with their Iranian counterparts in the hope the President’s outstretched hand would be met with an unclenched fist. Unfortunately, after more than a year of persistent efforts, Iran has rejected every proposal proffered by the U.S. and its allies to address Tehran’s unshakable desire to continue to enrich uranium.

Almost every day brings new Iranian statements about programs and plans to build even more enrichment facilities – last week Tehran unveiled 10 more sites ready for construction – to hasten the day when Iran attains weapons grade material.

The day of reckoning for Iran, when the Administration might have been expected to fulfill the other half of its promise to show the mullahs that our negotiating basket contained “big sticks” along with the carrots, was supposed to arrive, according to the White House, by the end of last September, when the G-20 nations met in Pittsburgh. Earlier, the Administration had given Tehran an end of year deadline. Either way, both timelines, in the age-old language of Washington, have proved “inoperable.”

The only thing that has changed during the past year, of course, is that for a period of a few months following the June 12 elections in Iran, the world’s attention was focused on a regime many have come to see as illegitimate, its brutality finally unmasked. Prior to that day, anyone who spoke of regime change was labeled a neo-con and a war monger. After that day, democracy advocates and human rights activists did a 180 and became instant supporters of regime change as the vehicle to help millions of Iranians gain their freedom.

Globally, left and right united under the banner led by the Iranian opposition, with the notion of regime change emerging as the strategy by which Tehran’s nuclear ambitions could be denied, notwithstanding scant evidence the Green Movement would slow Iran’s drive for nukes. Predictably, the mullahs have turned the screws of oppression tighter. Now, they not only attack peaceful protesters in the streets, but with the assistance of western companies, they’ve acquired the tools to suppress and control the flow of information and the ability of the “greens” to communicate effectively with each other.

What can we do while a ruthless Iran intensifies the pace of its efforts to acquire nukes and to silence internal opposition, continues its brazen and open transfer of missiles and other munitions to Hizbollah and Hamas, ratcheting up regional instability, and uses its growing influence to undermine and dominate its neighbors?

For those who counsel pragmatism and realism as foundation stones for U.S. foreign policy, there’s nothing more real than to respond with resolve to the threat posed to our national security by Iran. The true ideologues in the West are those who for decades have been in denial about the regime of the Ayatollahs and the genuine threats they pose. In their inability to see the mullahs realistically, the zealots are tireless in their efforts to construct arguments, excuses, and all manner of explanation completely unaffected by the steady and alarming drumbeat of Iranian behavior.

The ideologues regularly try to feed us a diet of happy talk about the growing influence of Iranian moderates. This is not new, as we have been told for decades that the seeming rigidity of the power elite in Tehran is a myth, that there is great diversity and meaningful debate among the mullahs. After 31 years of waiting for these distinctions to make a difference, it’s time for foreign policy realists to take charge.

Given Iran’s pronouncements in recent weeks about advances in its nuclear program, and the IAEA’s new report this week alerting the world to Tehran’s unmistakable efforts to build nuclear weapons, the time has come when President Obama’s actions will begin speaking louder than his words. Tehran makes cost-benefit calculations every day and has chosen to continue along its belligerent course, believing the price of ignoring the U.S. is acceptable.

President Obama has been left with no choice but to alter Tehran’s cost-benefit equation by applying the crippling sanctions he supported during his campaign, during his years as Senator and more recently as President. No less than Iran, corporations engaged in business-as-usual, propping up Iran’s leadership, must be forced to conduct a new cost-benefit analysis: you can play in Iran’s $300 million economy or in the $13 trillion U.S. economy, but not both.

In these politically difficult times for the White House, there is no substitute for bold and determined American leadership committed to denying the goals of the messianic regime of the Ayatollahs. Ultimately, sanctioning the assets of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard, Iran’s gasoline supplies, its banks and oil shipping capacity may not prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons. But it is the only thing left that has a chance to prevent it peacefully.

For a President being tested almost daily by momentous challenges in an unforgiving part of the world, and who had hoped the reset button would yield greater flexibility, it may seem unfair to find the pressure mounting and the options narrowing. With Vice President Biden’s words ringing in his ears, President Obama must be the realist who knows the time for crippling sanctions has arrived, because the only other paths remaining are even more unpalatable: suffering history’s judgment that it was under his watch that Iran’s mullahs attained their goal of acquiring weapons of mass destruction, or having to go to war to stop that eventuality.

Norm Kurz, President of The Kurz Company, was Joe Biden’s communications director and spokesman for the Senate Foreign Relations Committee from 2000 – 2006.

Iran and Syria put on show of unity in alliance Clinton finds ‘troubling’ | World news | guardian.co.uk.

The MEMRI Blog – Full Blog Entry.

The Kuwaiti daily Al-Siyassa reports, citing British diplomatic sources, that Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who is visiting Syria today (February 25), will give a green light to Hizbullah secretary-general Hassan Nasrallah, and to Hamas political bureau head Khaled Mash’al, to attack Israel within the next two weeks on two fronts simultaneously, so as to hamper the implementation of sanctions on Iran.

Source: Al-Siyassa, Kuwait, February 25, 2010