WarSclerotic

DEBKAfile, Political Analysis, Espionage, Terrorism, Security.

Tags: Hillary Clinton Iran nuclear Vladimir Putin

Control room of Bushehr nuclear reactor

US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton landed in Moscow Thursday, March 18, on the wrong foot. She made no headway in persuading Russian leaders to line up behind tough sanctions for Iran, any more than defense secretary Robert Gates did in Riyadh earlier this week. These setbacks left a question hanging over President Barack Obama’s pledge Wednesday of “aggressive sanctions” against Iran, in the light of Russian and Chinese commitments to veto such penalties if tabled at the UN Security Council.
Clinton’s talks with Russian leaders turned on the Middle East, sanctions against Iran and a new treaty to cut both their nuclear arsenals.  But straight after discussing Iran with her Russian hosts, the US Secretary of State heard prime minister Vladimir Putin announce: “The launch of the first unit of Iran’s nuclear power station [at Bushehr] should be implemented already this summer.”

He spoke during a video conference in the southern city of Volgodonsk.

Our sources report that President Obama and Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu had been given Putin’s word to ascertain that the Bushehr reactor would not go on line. Moscow had been expected to continue to drag its feet indefinitely before completing and activating the Iranian reactor.

Until now, all the fairly vague announcements about Russia’s involvement in its construction came from relatively low-ranking officials, the most senior being Sergei Kiriyenko, head of the Russian nuclear energy commission. The fact that the new commitment came from Putin in person was seen by debkafile‘s Moscow sources as a message to Tehran that the Russians now took exception to Washington’s line against Iran’s nuclear program and intended to go through with getting the reactor up and running by mid-year.
Faced with this second contretemps, Clinton was still mildly disapproving when she faced reporters with Russian foreign minister Sergey Lavrov:
“…we think it would be premature to go forward with any project at this time, because we want to send an unequivocal message to the Iranians” she said.
Lavrov just as unequivocally slapped her down by insisting the Bushehr project facility “would be finished. …and this plant will open and produce electricity.”
debkafile‘s intelligence sources report that, far from being a strictly civilian plant, the Bushehr reactor’s activation will make a real contribution to Iran’s military nuclear program by providing such by-products as plutonium extracted from spent fuel rods.

Friday, Clinton attended a meeting of the Middle East Quartet along with the Russian foreign minister, EU foreign policy executive Catherine Ashton, UN Secretary Ban Ki-moon and Quartet envoy Tony Blair. They predictably called on Israel and the Palestinians to help restart talks for creating a Palestinian state within 24 months and condemned Jewish housing in east Jerusalem.

US Middle East envoy George Mitchell is due to return to Jerusalem Sunday, March 21, to continue his effort to get proximity talks started.

Israel Faces Iranian-Sized Dilemma – The Philadelphia Bulletin.

Should US Ally Make The First Strike?

By JOSEPH PUDER, For The Bulletin

Few in the know doubt the fact that Iran has acquired the knowledge to produce an atomic bomb. Israeli intelligence is far more concerned with Iran’s pace of advancement towards the bomb making than American or European intelligence sources. The question in Israel is no longer if Israel should eliminate the Iranian threat but rather when?

The (Prime Minister Benjamin)Netanyahu government is skeptical about the Obama administration’s ability to reverse Iran’s quest for a nuclear weapon. And Hillary Clinton’s statement about offering the Arab Gulf states a protective umbrella against an Iranian nuclear threat intensified the Sunni-Arab state’s skepticism over America’s capacity to stop the Iranians. In fact, in the Middle East, it appears as if the weak and indecisive Obama administration has resigned itself to the reality of a nuclear Iran.

For several years now, a game of mutual intimidation has gone on between Israel and Iran. The Islamic Republic of Iran and its theocratic leadership advertised its successful testing of long-range missiles, while Israel responded with public show of long range refueling of its aircrafts. Iran acquired sophisticated anti-aircraft missiles to defend against aerial attacks, Israel responded in September of 2007 with the destruction of the Syrian nuclear facility.

This back and forth “game” is serious. Both sides understand the consequences of a nuclear attack. And although former Iranian President Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani boasted that an Iranian attack would destroy Israel, an Israeli counterattack would only create acceptable damage. Mr. Rafsanjani’s point was that the Israel’s smallness makes it vulnerable to total destruction, whereas Iran’s huge size would deem an Israeli attack as only partly successful.

The real issue is not rooted in the impact of bombing by one side or the other. While an Iranian bombing of Israel might indeed devastate the Jewish State, it would not destroy it. An Israeli counterpunch could do a much greater damage to Iran than anticipated by Mr. Rafsanjani.

But let us assume that the Israeli Air Force attacked the nuclear facilities spread throughout Iran, and damaged or destroyed its capacity to produce a bomb for at least 3-5 years. It would certainly give Israel a respite and partial relief to its existential anxieties.

What Israel cannot eliminate by attacking the Iranian nuclear facilities is the know-how acquired by Iranian scientists, and it would become just a matter of time before the Iranians restore their nuclear capacity.

The consequences of an Israeli attack would doubtless be wide condemnation of the Jewish State in international forums and the U.N. in particular. More importantly, however, such a strike would solidify the mullahs’ control of Iran by appealing to the patriotism of all Iranians. It would force reformers and democrats who seek change to close ranks with the despised authoritarian regime.

As long as the Ayatollah Khamenei and Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s regime remains in tact, bombing and destroying most of Iran’s nuclear facilities is, at best, temporary relief. The cost of such bombing, however, might be too prohibitive. Iran would, undoubtedly, unleash its dependencies: Syria, Hezbollah and Hamas against Israel’s population centers with much greater damage to Israel civilian population than caused during the Second Lebanon War of 2006.

Israel and the U.S. must focus on eliminating the current Iranian regime. The regime change should be undertaken by the oppressed minority groups within Iran, who are currently combating the regime and its Revolutionary Guards. The persecuted and disaffected Iranian minorities (at least 55 percent of Iran’s population) — some of them experiencing ethnic cleansing, such as Ahwazi Arabs in the oil rich Khuzestan region of southwestern Iran, are ready to fight and die for their cause.

Military and financial support to the Ahwazi Arabs rebels would increase the chances for the disablement of Iran’s oil producing capacity. Since oil is the primary source of revenue for Iran, it would create a tremendous hardship for all Iranians-Persians included.

This would cause domestic discontent and expedite a regime change from within.

The largely Sunni-Muslim Kurds have been fighting the oppressive regime of the Ayatollahs for years, and they have made huge sacrifices in lives and property in seeking to attain at least cultural and religious rights. The Kurds, who number 7-10 million strong out of Iran’s 70 million people, have inflicted significant damage on the Tehran regime. Moreover, the Kurdish area is also oil rich … providing the Kurdish rebels with weapons, training and funds would result in a serious challenge to the Revolutionary Guards and to the regime’s survivability.

Last July, the Iranian theocracy hung 13 Baluchi students. The Sunni-Muslim Baluch minority in Iran (4-5 million strong), much like the Kurds, seek self determination for their people. The Kurds and Baluch are the only large nations in the Middle East without a sovereign national homeland. Like the Kurds, spread through Iraq, Iran, Syria, and Turkey, the Baluch people demand an independent Baluchistan as the homeland for their people in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iran.

The Baluchis, Kurds, and Arab Ahwazis are determined to bring change into Iran, and their rebellion won’t subside anytime soon. The recent fraudulent elections in Iran, and the huge anti-regime demonstration made the minority groups even more convinced that time is on their side.

Azeris comprise the largest minority group, numbering over 20 million or one third of Iran’s population. Their mother tongue is Turkish, and they aspire to unite with their much better off brethrens in Azerbaijan. The Azeris, too, have been fighting the Tehran regime at a minimum for cultural autonomy.

Once the fire is lit by coordinated attacks coming from all corners of Iran: in the north and northwest by Kurds and Azeris, in the South and the southeast by Baluchis and Ahwazi Arabs, supported by America and Israel, it would provide a backwind for the Persian democrats seeking a democratic, free, and fair Iran. Only in coordination with such a collective uprising against the mullah regime, would the bombing of Iran’s nuclear facilities be effective and complete.

America’s Meddling in Israel’s Affairs May Lead to a New War in the Region.

Hillary Clinton’s scolding of Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu was inappropriate and inflamed an already volatile situation

By Gerard Group Friday, March 19, 2010

– Ilana Freedman

For Israel to embarrass Vice President Joe Biden during his recent visit to Jerusalem was diplomatically stupid. The issue was the announcement that the Jerusalem municipality had approved construction of 1,600 new apartments (not 1,600 settlements as some have reported) in an existing neighborhood in an already densely populated part of Jewish Jerusalem (not on land occupied by Arab residents, as was widely reported).

The announcement was badly timed. But it should hardly have been the trigger for such a massive verbal and diplomatic assault on Israel’s government. For the US to seize on this event and escalate the situation to its current hysteria is a measure of how far off the path of sound foreign policy we have strayed.

When the administration simultaneously gives lip service to “our special relationship with Israel”, while blasting its leadership and micromanaging such issues as neighborhood growth, the weakness of our leadership becomes a matter of concern.

Being the ‘leader’ of the free world comes with responsibility. The role of our government should be to mediate and calm the frazzled nerves of our allies, not inflame them. Israel has been in a state of war for nearly 63 years, living with neighbors who attack its citizens at will in the heart of its population centers and across its borders.

Israel’s powerful and sometimes savage response to ceaseless terrorism may not fit into our politically correct view of the world. But I would venture to say that we would do no less, were the terrorists on our border, flinging rockets at our cities, and attacking American families in their homes.

The list of diplomatic faux pas that the current administration has made during its first year has been embarrassing, from the gift of an I-pod to the Queen of England, to the President’s famous bow to the King of Saudi Arabia, to the return of a bust of Winston Churchill – given to the White House by then Prime Minister Tony Blair, and on and on. But the previous mistakes in diplomatic protocol were only embarrassing.

However, when our Secretary of State calls on the duly elected Prime Minister of a sovereign and berates him for 45 minutes, she crosses a host of diplomatic red lines. Hillary Clinton’s scolding of Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu was inappropriate and inflamed an already volatile situation.

When CENTCOM Commander General David Petraeus recently suggested that the West Bank and Gaza should be included in his area of command in order to change the negative impressions of the US currently held by Arabs in the region, he discarded his military objectivity and became a part of the political problem.

Although this idea was not a new one, as confirmed by former CENTCOM Commander Admiral William “Fox” Fallon, who said that talk about adding parts of Israel and the West Bank to his command was commonplace under his command, military intervention to impose “peace” within another sovereign state, when true partners to the peace process do not exist, is presumptuous and arrogant. It is also wrong.

In the case of the Queen’s I-pod, no lasting damage was done. But in this case, broken protocols may very well lead to war. The stakes are far too high for diplomatic incompetence to trump existential threat. Israel is a tiny country, the size of New Hampshire, surrounded by terrorist supporting states that would be happy to see her disappear.

The sad truth is that Israel stands alone. Her closest ally, the United States, is now taking significant steps to abandon their historic relationship. As we seek to appease those who openly seek our destruction, we are turning our backs on our true allies in the struggle against global terrorism. Instead, we are cozying up to America’s own fiercest enemies, including organizations like Hamas and nations like Iran and Venezuela.

The Obama administration’s new policy of hammering Israel is not acceptable. It is time for the American policy-makers to recognize the difference between our enemies and our friends. We need to assert our powerful (although swiftly diminishing) power in ways that are both constructive and honorable. Our current policy is leading us rapidly down the path to a global war in which our own existence as a free nation will be ultimately tested.

In the interest of maintaining an ongoing, if tenuous, stability in the region, Prime Minister Netanyahu should remember the principle on which he has expounded for many years: that only strong and courageous leadership can overcome the onslaught of tyrants and terrorism. He must now follow his own advice and stand firmly against the interference of American power-brokers masquerading as statesmen, so that he can protect his country from the next war.

That is the war that will be started by the impact of American interventions and power-broking in a region that cannot afford any more wars.

Ilana Freedman is a Senior Intelligence Analyst and CEO of Gerard Group International, Inc.

With friends like Obama, does Israel stand alone?.

Were The Munitions Delivered To Diego Garcia Meant For Israel All Along?

In a story yesterday titled United States readies attack on Iran, there has been speculation in some quarters that deliveries of bunker buster bombs to Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean have been to prepare the United States for an attack on the nuclear facilities infrastructure in Iran.

It now appears that these munitions may have been meant for delivery to Israel and were instead diverted by the Obama administration as punishment for the Israeli plan to build settlement houses in Jerusalem.

This is consistent with Obama administration treatment of all Israeli requests for military aid. Since President Obama entered the White House, most if not all Israeli requests for advanced weapons systems have been denied.

According to a congressional source, “This is really an embargo, but nobody talks about it publicly.”

Punishment For Settlement Houses Compromises The Security Of Our One True Friend In The Middle East

The Obama administration, unhappy over the announced plan to build settlement houses in East Jerusalem, is taking a wrong turn in the method of punishment. Denying Israel the ability to defend itself would be like dropping your child off in gang territory, wearing the colors of a rival gang, as punishment for staying out past curfew.

Given the speculation during the presidential campaign that now President Obama might not be the best friend of Israel, his actions, or lack thereof, speak volumes more than any words ever could.

DEBKA.

Binyamin Netanyahu

As this issue closed, DEBKA-Net-Weekly‘s Washington sources reported that President Barack Obama had reconsidered his position on the crisis with Israel and resolved to halt the downward spiral. The White House is working on a document for putting the friendly relations back on an even keel. Netanyahu has not yet decided whether to travel to Washington to address the AIPAC annual conference next Monday, March 22. But before he does, he will ascertain that the administration has withdrawn the threat to close its doors to him.
The White House also told the Palestinians it was time to stop their “over-the-top” utterances against Israel and street outbreaks and start cooperating with the US and Israel in their effort to restart peace talks.
Earlier, DEBKA-Net-Weekly ran the following Special Report:
For Israeli prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu, two big bones of contention with the Obama administration have been blown up by Washington into matters of life or death. They are the status of Jerusalem as Israel’s undivided capital and the vital need to eliminate Iran’s capacity for building a nuclear weapon. Netanyahu’s coalition government would not last long if he bent to Washington’s will on these two issues. Furthermore, his surrender would in itself spark a deadly chain of events.
Israeli intelligence chiefs put dire predictions of catastrophe before the seven members of Israel’s inner cabinet, which spent 96 hours this week reviewing the spiraling crisis in relations with Washington.
According to DEBKA-Net-Weekly‘s sources, they warned that if Israel let itself be bullied into submission by the Obama administration, it would become fair game for its enemies.
Iranian-backed Hizballah and the Palestinian extremist Hamas would take Israel’s loss of its senior ally, the US under president Barack Obama, as an open an invitation for an ever-expanding campaign of terror, thereby laying the ground for Tehran to consolidate its proxy’s grip on Beirut, and move in on the Gaza Strip and the West Bank.
Iran’s president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad already jumped in this week with this comment: “The Islamic revolution of Iran is a humane revolution reaching beyond the geographic boundaries of Iran. Our existence and our breathing space require that we expand our borders of conflict even closer to the command centers of the enemy. One who sits and waits for the enemy to approach… will be dressed in the robe of misery.”

Ahmadinejad issues battle cry for Israel’s weakened state

This was the Iranian president’s battle cry, a call to exploit the friction between Washington and Jerusalem for “expanding our borders of conflict” and making Israel the one “who sits and waits for the enemy to approach.” It was the first time an Iranian leader had openly articulated a frankly aggressive doctrine beyond the familiar Islamic Republic’s goal to “export of revolution” through terrorist surrogates.If Obama aimed at deterring Israel from attacking Iran, he misfired and achieved the reverse effect. His policy has brought the Iranian peril out in the open and forces Israel to hurry up and pre-empt it.
“Obama has decided to break Israel and scrap it as a factor in US-Iranian diplomacy,” said a senior minister to DEBKA-Net-Weekly this week. He refused to speak openly because the ministers were under Netanyahu’s orders to refrain from commenting on the crisis with Washington.
Another Israeli official said: “President Obama denies there is a crisis in the relations. He said [n an interview to Fox on March 17]: ‘Israel is one of our closest allies and that will not go away.’
“But let’s put the facts on the table,” said the Israeli source: “Not only is the crisis there, but we are dealing with an administration whose behavior is irrational – or that’s how it looks from here. The US president is willing to bend facts for the sake of bringing the Israeli government to its knees. That, we cannot accept.”
This Israeli comment, say our sources, referred to Vice President Joe Biden‘s angry remark to Netanyahu in Jerusalem on March 8: “What you are doing here undermines the security of our troops who are fighting in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan,” and Gen. David Petraeus‘ reply to a question from the Republican Senator Lindsey Graham of South California on the length of time available before Iran was able to build a nuclear weapon. The general said: “It has, thankfully, slid to the right a bit, and it is not this calendar year, I don’t think.”

Pummeling Israel does not benefit the United States

This answer, which is not borne out by intelligence data, was seen in Jerusalem and most other Middle East capitals as another US attempt to dodge the sanctions option and play for time to engage in more fruitless negotiations with Iran.
How does this benefit the United States? It doesn’t. On March 18, the day US secretary of state Hillary Clinton visited Moscow, prime minister Vladimir Putin administered a slap in the face to Washington by announcing the first unit of the Bushehr nuclear power plant in Iran, constructed by Russian experts, might be put into operation this summer – in direct breach of his pledges to the US and Israel.
Our Jerusalem sources stress that no Israeli government, right, center or left, will ever accept Washington’s attempt to link Jewish settlements to the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan or the Islamic Republic of Iran’s race for a nuclear weapon. This false theory was drummed up by the most anti-Israel elements in the West.
Its aim is to tie Israel down and strip it of the motivation and resources for withstanding the very real threats to its existence which Iran, Syria, Hizballah and Hamas do not trouble to conceal.
Binyamin Netanyahu feels he has leaned over backwards to meet Barack Obama’s demands and deeply resents the US president’s accusations of Israeli “unhelpfulness” to the peace process. He endorsed the US president’s two-state doctrine (Israel and Palestinian) living in peace and security, accepted a 10-month settlement construction moratorium and, in keeping with his Economic Peace Program, has made vital contributions to the West Bank’s current prosperity under the Palestinian Authority, as well as handing over West Bank cities to Palestinian rule.
Yet Washington insists that the improvements are solely due to Palestinian prime minister Salam Fayyad‘s successful leadership and ignore Israel’s initiative.

The bottomless pit of US demands

Now, Obama wants more Israeli incentives to coax the stubborn Mahmoud Abbas into gracing peace negotiations with his presence, while refusing to credit Israel with any previous contributions to the process. The feeling in Jerusalem is that Israel is being pushed toward a bottomless pit; Washington will not be satisfied until Israel unloads all its strategic assets to meet Obama’s insatiable demands.
This week, Israel’s leaders decided to draw the line, after he laid down three preconditions for restoring normal relations with Jerusalem:
1. The 10-month freeze on West Bank settlement construction must include East Jerusalem;
2. It must be renewed after running out in September for the duration of peace negotiations with the Palestinians;
3. More Israeli concessions are needed to tempt Mahmoud Abbas.
The Netanyahu government made the gesture of offering to halt Jewish purchases of land and property in, or add Jewish residents, to Arab neighborhoods in Jerusalem in the course of negotiations with the Palestinians.
DEBKA-Net-Weekly‘s Washington sources report that the White House rejected any form of compromise and wants Israel to comply with all three demands in full.

Asia Times Online :: Middle East News, Iraq, Iran current affairs.

By Nicholas Noe BEIRUT – Almost five years after the George W Bush administration was handed a potentially game-changing opportunity to peacefully declaw the militant Shi’ite movement Hezbollah, Washington is finally waking up to the grim reality of its ill-conceived “Cedar Revolution” policy in Lebanon: the prospect of a renewed war involving a sophisticated actor whose hybrid military power has only grown exponentially. Setting aside, for the moment, the contentious argument over who is indeed responsible for these developments – which, it should be noted, quickly followed the forced exit of Syrian troops in April 2005 – the truly pressing issue for concerned policymakers and citizens alike is that both opposing axes, but especially the “resistance axis” of Iran-Syria-Hezbollah-Hamas, now seem to believe that the next war can and should be the last one between Israel and its enemies. Unfortunately, this ideological certainty only helps to further grease the wheels of conflict – since the perception is that there will (finally) be no more “winning by not losing” or “winning, but the loser as “we know him’ remains” – while virtually guaranteeing that, should war come to pass, the costs will be truly awful for all those touched by it. Interestingly, from Hezbollah’s perspective, which has been increasingly uniform across private discussions and public rhetoric, there is relatively little concern or extended analysis about exactly when, or even whether, war will happen. The central reason for this seems to be that with either a war or a confrontational ceasefire with Israel, it perceives victory. The real questions being asked, then, concern the mechanics of how this victory will come about, and, more remotely, whether the “hardware” and “software” of the US-Israeli negotiating position(s) will change just enough to avoid the end of Zionism. For the party, which now publicly appears to be the least doubtful actor among its allies, this represents a dramatic shift in strategic thinking – a shift that needs to be fully appreciated by those who believe further violence is either wrong and/or will ultimately serve no one’s interests. The transformation in Hezbollah’s outlook was evident as early as September 2006, in the wake of what the Lebanese call “the July War”. For much of the Western media the change only came into focus in the past month – that is, following the recent “resistance axis summit” in Damascus and Hezbollah secretary general Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah’s mid-February speech threatening the wide devastation of Israel should it pre-emptively attack. Aspects of this movement had been apparent before, most notably following the collapse of peace negotiations between Israel and Syria and the unilateral Israeli withdrawal from south Lebanon in early 2000, after which point Nasrallah famously declared Israel was “weaker than a spider’s web”. But it was the July War (vigorously encouraged by the Bush administration), the February 2008 assassination of Hezbollah commander Imad Mughniyeah and then the May 2008 street violence between the opposition and the majority “March 14” forces that really crystallized what Nasrallah now publicly views as the impending, “divine” telos of history. “Arab armies and peoples,” Nasrallah told the war-weary crowd of over a million one month after the August 14, 2006 ceasefire, are “not only able to liberate Gaza and the West Bank and East Jerusalem, they are simply capable of regaining Palestine from sea to river by one small decision and with some determination”. “This is the equation,” Nasrallah declared. “Today, your resistance broke the image of Israel. We have done away with the invincible army. We have also done away with the invincible state. Indeed, we have done away with it. I am not exaggerating or voicing slogans.” With this, Nasrallah had decisively broken through the greatest barrier in his own thinking, in that of the leadership and, crucially, in the hearts of his supporters: Israel could be defeated, once and for all, and, more to the point, it could be done with relative ease. By the time Mughniyeah was assassinated in Damascus in February 2008, Nasrallah felt certain enough to declare that Israel would collapse, not in 10 or 20 years, but in the “coming few years”. “In the aftermath of the 2000 withdrawal,” Nasrallah explained, “The only remaining question [is]: Can this entity [Israel] cease to exist? Well, before the year 2000 this was impossible. Before the Lebanese resistance and the first and second Palestinian Intifada, this talk was merely a legend and madness … I can say that after 2006 this question was undoubtedly answered … there was a new answer … Could Israel be wiped out of existence? Yes, and a thousand times yes, Israel can be wiped out of existence.” Soon after his declaration of impending victory, Nasrallah laid out eight, detailed points as to why he believed the Jewish state of Israel was finished. Not surprisingly, as is Hezbollah’s custom, the points borrowed heavily from analyses laid out by leading Israelis themselves concerning the inner, long-term dangers facing their state – including demography, emigration amid fear, corruption and mounting miscalculations in conducting international relations and international conflict. Nasrallah did not, however, address exactly how the Israelis would react in the event of an impending collapse, whether such a reaction might entail mutual destruction or whether most Lebanese thought such a process worth it in the first place. Always the careful purveyor of cost-benefit calculations, the secretary general had unbound his normal economy of rhetoric and cast aside exactly the question he had long said should be paramount for any resistance movement: will self-sacrifice lead to a reasonable outcome? No matter. Avenging Mughniyeah’s death had become a critical lever in accelerating the effective end of such questions: for it had become permanent. “As for retaliation,” Nasrallah explained, “It will always be in front of us” – a statement suggesting that rather than one spectacular operation, payback for the assassination is to come in war or peace as the total collapse of Israel Mughniyeah’s revenge is therefore to be delivered in war or peace as the collapse of Israel, not merely via one spectacular operation. And what of the likely destruction in Lebanon and perhaps beyond, given Israel’s capabilities? “Our adversaries,” Nasrallah assured, “cannot comprehend that this battle has entered a totally different stage. This new stage’s motive, title, and incentive are the belief in God, trust in God, content in God, dependence on God, and hope to win God’s reward whatever the worldly results were. “In such cases,” he added, in an uncanny parallel to the threat that lies at the heart of Israel’s nuclear program (codename: Samson), “the ability to bear calamities and to stand the loss of the beloved, the dear, the children, money and wealth becomes something else.” More than one-and-a-half years on from these statements, Hezbollah’s strategic thinking on the conflict with Israel has only expanded further along the mutually reinforcing tracks of analytical certainty and war and has gone beyond mere public posturing to deter an Israeli attack. As Nasrallah recently explained, Hezbollah “craves war but we do not want it. We do not want it but we crave it.” The statement, evidently a contradiction, captures the essence of Hezbollah’s primary conviction that Israel cannot tolerate the repeated crossing of successive military “red lines” – something the Israelis and Washington are now stating often and openly. As the party crosses these lines (with air defense weapons but one example), fear increases and military preemption by Israel becomes ever more impossible. If, therefore, Israel fails to reprise its spectacular 1982 air assault in the Bekaa that knocked out Syria’s air defense capability (or for that matter, fails to hit the Iranian nuclear program a la Osirak in 1981), then the fate of Zionism is sealed, Hezbollah seems to believe. In this “rosy” scenario, war is avoided, but the crescent of resistance now partially surrounding Israel steadily locks its inhabitants into either a negotiated settlement with the kind of far reaching Israeli concessions that talks have so far failed to produce, or, as the Hezbollah prefers, an outright one-state solution. The real scenario, though, that Nasrallah and party leaders appear to be gambling on – or “craving” – is an outright Israeli “miscalculation”; a rush to a war that the Israeli Defense Forces and the political echelon do not fully understand and for which it’s army and home front are not really prepared (the Iron Dome anti-missile system, gas masks, perpetual American assistance – these things, Nasrallah said recently, only offer illusory protection in the near to medium term). “Syria is getting stronger with time,” Nasrallah claims. “Iran is getting stronger with time, Hezbollah is getting stronger with time. The Palestinian resistance factions are getting stronger with time:” The arc of history is on the side of the resistance axis. An Israeli miscalculation, the party believes, will realize Nasrallah’s promise of a Zionist collapse in the next “few years” – rather than the somewhat longer and perhaps less certain timetable of a relatively peaceful implosion. What options remain, then, to disrupt these scenarios and calculations? If one accepts that the war option – or the “war unbound” option as some in Israel and among ex-Bush administration adherents favor – is a bad option, playing into the hands of the resistance axis, then what is left are familiar avenues that have hitherto produced little substantive movement: 1. Bolstering the settlement option, a course that has been blocked even in the best of times. 2. Containment of the growing military (and possibly nuclear) power of the resistance axis, which will be difficult given Israeli and some Arab regime concerns that the prevention of a steady strangulation by the resistance axis’s power through technology, sanctions and targeted assassinations is neither guaranteed nor an adequate response in the near to medium term. 3. A renewed, Machiavellian effort to stoke domestic and sectarian discord in the region, something that has proven difficult to manage and exacerbate. 4. A more radical strategy that would obliquely undermine critical points of grievance among resistance axis members and their constituents – essentially a policy of “pre-emptive concessions” by an alliance of hegemonic powers that aims at dramatically undercutting (or wedging) their desire and ability to exercise violence. Unfortunately, the reality seems to be that this last approach, like the settlement option, is also blocked since it is most likely too radical to sustain politically in either the US, Israel or among Sunni Arab states where the default setting remains, for the most part, the archaic, racist notion that Middle Easterners only understand force (or, somewhat differently, only favor “strong horses”). What is left, then, is a policy of staving off conflict for as long as possible in the hope that the balance of power will change in an as yet unknown way to finally unlock old options and present completely new ones. In the absence of concrete investment in specific remedies for at least some of what deeply ails the Middle East, such a strategy appears dangerously like a credit card debtor who, instead of paying off his mounting balance, opens another line of funds so he and his friends can remain, just a bit longer, the masters of a situation they know is deadly, but which they just can’t bring themselves to end. Nicholas Noe is author of the 2008 Century Foundation White Paper entitled “Re-Imagining the Lebanon Track: Towards a New US policy” and is the editor of Voice of Hezbollah: The Statements of Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah (Verso, 2007). He is also a co-founder of the Beirut-based media monitoring service Mideastwire.com.

The American Spectator : Thinking About Bombing Iran.

By George H. Wittman on 3.19.10 @ 6:07AM

According to an article in the Financial Times, “Do Not Even Think About Bombing Iran” by Michael O’Hanlon and Bruce Riedel, both of the Brookings Institution, “the strike option” on Iranian nuclear facilities “lacks credibility.” The authors believe that this is so because of “Iran’s ability to retaliate against the U.S. in Iraq and Afghanistan…” This logic, like much else in this anti-war polemic posing as analysis, just doesn’t withstand scrutiny.

It would have been far better if O’Hanlon/Riedel admitted from the beginning that they, like the Obama Administration, have no stomach for an attack on a murderous, ambition-crazed, self-perpetuating and self-justifying theocracy in the Middle East that seeks to dominate the region. Instead the authors prefer to present unsupported arguments such as, “… even a massive strike would not slow Iran’s progress toward a bomb for long.”

What militarily and technically inaccurate pap! For some reason O’Hanlon/Riedel seem to believe that operational nuclear weapon and development sites are actually capable of being hidden from counteraction. They present as evidence the fact that the media discovered a new nuclear development site in Qom last year. Digging in the middle of a major city can’t be seen on the ground or by satellite, eh?

Obviously these authors — and other liberal Washington pundits — are thinking only in conventional weapon terms in relation to any attack on Iranian nuclear weapon facilities. There is no reason for such a limitation. There are a panoply of classified exotic systems currently available to disrupt and destroy any and all Iranian attack modes, nuclear or not. The claim that O’Hanlon/Riedel make that “Iran can rebuild fairly fast…” is again based on a perception that only conventional weapons would be available for use in the current international political context.

The FT column argues that President Obama would not militarily attack Iran because he is bound by “his effort to recast the U.S. as a country playing by international legal norms.” Here is where O’Hanlon/Riedel may be completely correct. Obama has shown very little stomach for directly countering military threats. He certainly will stretch out as long as possible the program of sanctions along with diplomatic threats.

A key point in the O’Hanlon/Riedel argument is that Iran has already supported terrorist attacks and proxy wars on Israel and the United States. They contend that the danger of Iranian nuclear weapon buildup is lessened by the fact that Tehran has done quite well in its efforts at conventional and irregular warfare. Suggesting that Iran shouldn’t waste time pursuing nuclear weapons when it’s already doing so well with terrorists and surrogate forces doesn’t seem to hold much potential.

The O’Hanlon/Riedel commentary neglects to consider Israel’s unilateral capability to defend itself whenever it perceives imminent danger from Iran. The article offers the suggestion: “We should also pledge to provide a nuclear umbrella over Israel and other threatened states.” The authors ignore this protection has been implicit in the Middle East, and elsewhere, for decades.

It is also possible, however, to consider the use of the currently highly classified weapons mentioned earlier. Certain of these weapons are already available and could be utilized at a point when Iran is seen to have created its first nuclear-armed missile or just before. These capabilities should be emphasized more. The perspective would be improved.

Among the best known would be the electro-magnetic pulse (EMP) weapon that might be detonated at an altitude up to 400km in salvos above a central Iranian target set. This action effectively would disable all electricity-dependent instruments from automobiles to home appliances and on to missile batteries and even deep underground facilities (as discovered by the Russians years ago in their own test firings).

Ultimately all power grids throughout the targeted areas in Iran would be shorted out for hundreds of miles. There would be no need for selective targeting other than to avoid “spill-over” into non-Iranian border regions. The details of such range and target control mechanisms remain some of the most highly sensitive and thus of the strictest classification.

To compliment and supplement the EMP barrage there would be a massive computer hacking effort before and during the attack. This cyber offensive pulverizing Tehran’s tactical command and control systems reportedly has been gamed successfully on several occasions — again highly classified. The combination of the two attacks is believed to be able effectively to bring Iran to a standstill.

Defense consultant Chet Nagle, U.S. Naval Academy graduate and author of the acclaimed work, Iran Covenant, characterized the overall effect: “In fact, if the strike [EMP] was at noon on a sunny day, the people below would not know it happened except their lights would go out, cars would stop, fridges die, power line transformers short out, oil refineries shut down, and those uranium enrichment centrifuges in caverns would stop spinning.”

Such an action would immobilize Iran and allow conventional U.S. sea and air forces time to attack the already degraded Iranian coastal defense, thus preventing the closing of the Straits of Hormuz. Such a scenario supports the fact that the issue is not whether Iran can be shut down, but whether the Obama Administration would have the will to do so.

The Iranians and O’Hanlon/Riedel are betting against American will. The Israelis may agree with them, but such a view only further insures an Israeli preemptive strike. So perhaps it might be better if we did talk about — “bombing” Iran!

No way to treat a friend – latimes.com.

Opinion

Why is the Obama administration so hard on Israel — the most liberal and pro-American country in the Middle East — when it’s so soft on its despotic neighbors?

It is nice to see a real display of emotion from the normally dispassionate Obama administration. Unfortunately, if predictably, its ire is directed not against America’s enemies but against one of our closest friends.

Vice President Joe Biden, in Israel on March 9, publicly “condemned” the announcement by the Israeli government that another 1,600 homes would be built in East Jerusalem. He claimed the decision undermined “the trust that we need right now in order to . . . have profitable negotiations.” Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton piled on, phoning Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to personally chew him out about this “deeply negative signal.” Even the White House politico, David Axelrod, joined in, calling what happened “an affront” and “an insult.”

If the White House has expressed similar outrage about other “affronts” and “insults,” I missed it. For example, there was the Axis of Evil summit in Damascus on Feb. 26 featuring Bashar Assad of Syria, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran, Sheik Hassan Nasrallah of Hezbollah and Khaled Meshaal of Hamas. They called for a Middle East “without Zionists and without colonialists,” mocked U.S. attempts to separate Syria from Iran and demanded that Americans “pack their bags and leave” the region.

Considering the amount of effort the Obama administration has expended on wooing both Syria and Iran, those statements were a public slap in the face. Especially coming less than a week after Undersecretary of State William Burns had visited Damascus “to convey President Obama’s continuing interest in building better relations with Syria based upon mutual interest and mutual respect.” Yet the administration is not reaming out Syria. That, no doubt, would be considered counterproductive.

Another rogue state actually received a public apology from State Department spokesman Philip J. Crowley. On Feb. 26, he had the temerity to assert that Libyan strongman Moammar Kadafi didn’t make “a lot of sense” when he called for a “jihad” against Switzerland. After the Libyans threatened nasty repercussions, Crowley had to backtrack: “I made an offhand comment last Friday regarding statements from Libya. It was not intended to be a personal attack.”

Why is the administration so hard on Israel — the most liberal and pro-American country in the region — when it’s so soft on its despotic neighbors?

Granted, Israel blundered by announcing the new housing while Biden was visiting, but Netanyahu has repeatedly apologized for what he said was an inadvertent slight. In November, Netanyahu agreed to a 10-month moratorium on construction in the West Bank but pointedly excluded East Jerusalem. That was hailed by U.S. special envoy George Mitchell as a “positive development.” Now it’s an insult. Again: Why?

Two press leaks may illuminate administration thinking. First, in July 2009, President Obama reportedly told Jewish leaders at the White House that it was important to put some “space” between the U.S. and Israel to “change the way the Arabs see us.” Then an Israeli newspaper claimed that in a private meeting, Biden told Netanyahu that Israeli settlements were “dangerous for us”: “What you’re doing here undermines the security of our troops who are fighting in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan. That endangers us and it endangers regional peace.”

I can’t vouch for the authenticity of those quotes (the second one has been denied by the administration). But in spirit they ring true. They indicate a mind-set that holds that Israeli settlements are the primary obstacle to peace and that an Israeli-Palestinian accord is necessary to defeat the broader terrorist movement.

Neither proposition is terribly convincing. If Israeli “occupation” is such a big problem, then how to explain the aftermath of Israel’s pullout from the Gaza Strip in 2005? Instead of spurring concessions, that led to rocket attacks by Hamas. The Israeli public has understandably concluded that more territorial concessions won’t be productive until the Palestinians prove willing and able to suppress extremists who will never accept the “Zionist entity.” That hasn’t happened so far, yet the administration remains silent about Palestinian affronts such as the recent renaming of a West Bank square after Dalal Mughrabi, leader of the 1978 “Coastal Road massacre” that killed 37 Israeli civilians and one American.

What about the second claim — that progress in the peace process is necessary to quell terrorism? That only makes sense if you think that bombs are being set off in Baghdad, Islamabad or Kabul because of what happens in the West Bank. Most of the victims aren’t even Americans. They’re local Muslims. It is hard to see how their deaths have anything to do with Israel. But such attacks make perfect sense if seen as part of an intra-Muslim civil war pitting modernizers against the medieval ideologues of Al Qaeda and tied groups.

Suicide bombers are not going to be converted into McDonald’s franchisees by an Israeli-Palestinian peace process. Even if a deal were reached with the Palestinian Authority, it would be denounced as illegitimate by radical Muslims. They can only be defeated by changing the poisonous dynamic of the societies that breed them. That is what President Bush began to do, however clumsily, in Afghanistan and Iraq. If Obama is serious about reducing the threat against the U.S., he should do more to support peaceful opposition groups in Syria and Iran — states that actually help to kill American troops. Instead, he’s picking on the only state in the region that’s consistently on our side.

Max Boot is a contributing editor to Opinion, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and the author of “War Made New: Technology, Warfare, and the Course of History, 1500 to Today.”

Netanyahu, Clinton Talk: Israeli Leader Calls Clinton, Plans Meeting Next Week.

MOSCOW — Hoping to defuse a fight between friends, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton agreed Thursday to meet next week in Washington to confront an embarrassing dispute over Israeli land claims.

The Obama administration’s special envoy for Mideast peace, George Mitchell, prepared to return to the region for talks with Israeli and Palestinian leaders.

Netanyahu called Clinton on Thursday. State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley declined to provide details of the conversation, which he described as the Israeli prime minister’s response to Clinton’s call last week in which she harshly criticized Israel’s announcement of additional Jewish settlement housing in east Jerusalem.

“They discussed specific actions that might be taken to improve the atmosphere for progress toward peace,” the department said in a statement released by Clinton’s traveling party.

Crowley said U.S. officials will review Netanyahu’s response and “continue our discussions with both sides to keep proximity talks moving forward.”

Netanyahu’s office said the prime minister clarified Israeli policy in the call with Clinton and suggested “mutual confidence-building measures” by Israel and the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank.

Netanyahu planned to be in Washington next week for the annual gathering of the premier pro-Israel lobby, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee. Clinton was scheduled to speak to the group on Monday.

Crowley said Mitchell will fly to the Mideast this weekend and hold separate talks with Netanyahu and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas.

The U.S. wants Israel to roll back plans for new Jewish houses on land claimed by the Palestinians. Crowley would not say whether Netanyahu offered to take that action in his call to Clinton.

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Announcement of the housing plan embarrassed Vice President Joe Biden while he was visiting Israel last week and led to an unusual breach in diplomatic relations.

In public comments Thursday while in Moscow for talks on a range of international issues, Clinton appeared to be seeking to calm U.S. relations with Israel, saying the U.S. has not changed its approach to championing an Israeli-Palestinian peace process.

Last week Clinton denounced the Israeli housing announcement. The Israeli move was seen by the Obama administration as an insult and a repudiation of U.S. efforts to get Israel to halt construction of additional Jewish settlements.

“Our goals remain the same,” Clinton said Thursday during a joint news conference with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov. “It is to relaunch negotiations between the Israelis and the Palestinians on a path that will lead to a two-state solution. Nothing has happened that in any way affects our commitment to pursuing that.”

Why is US gov’t thwarting Iran sanctions bill?.

Photo by: AP

By MICHAEL M. ROSEN
18/03/2010 00:18

The US government is stalling on one of the few remaining mechanisms for peacefully resolving the impasse with the Islamic Republic.

In today’s Washington, it’s rare for any legislation to pass with bipartisan support, even rarer for such a bill to pass with massive bipartisan backing, and rarer still for such legislation to lie around gathering dust.

But not when it comes to Israel and Iran. Unfortunately, congressional leaders have bottled up a hugely popular Iran sanctions bill that passed both houses with overwhelming support. At precisely the moment that the Islamic Republic is expanding and perfecting its nuclear
capabilities, the highest levels of the US government have stalled on one of the few remaining mechanisms for peacefully resolving the impasse, and thus have abdicated their responsibilities to Israel, the subjugated Iranian people, and the rest of the free world.

In December, amid endless delays and deception by the mullahs rivaled in their intensity only by the Obama administration’s zeal for a “negotiated solution” to the crisis, members of Congress finally decided to take real action. The House of Representatives passed the Iran Refined Petroleum Sanctions Act by a 412-12 vote, signaling the body’s prodigious bipartisan resolve to stifle Iran’s nuclear progress.

The bill would bolster the White House’s power to sanction any company assisting Iran in importing or refining petroleum; despite its vast natural gas and oil reserves, the Teheran regime imports up to 40 percent of its gasoline. Severe sanctions such as these can be
expected to bring the Iranian economy to a screeching halt.

House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Howard Berman (D-CA), one of the measure’s sponsors, said with admirable vigor and forthrightness that “the big question is how soon will the international community conclude that without rigorous sanctions, the diplomatic approach gets nowhere.”

AIPAC declared that the bill “sends a strong message to Iran, and to our friends in the international community, that the United States has the will to act to prevent Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapons capability.”

Even J Street praised its passage.

Berman’s counterparts in the Senate carried the ball forward not long afterward, passing a very similar measure in January by unanimous voice vote.

“The Iranian regime has engaged in serious human rights abuses against its own citizens, funded terrorist activity throughout the Middle East, and pursued illicit nuclear activities posing a serious threat to the security of the United States and our allies,” thundered Democratic Sen. Chris Dodd of Connecticut, who co-sponsored the measure with Republican Richard Shelby of Alabama. “With passage of this bill, we make it clear that there will be appropriate
consequences if these actions continue.”

MAINSTREAM ELECTED officials and pundits from across the political spectrum lauded Senate passage of the legislation. The National Jewish Democratic Council “enthusiastically applaud[ed]” the bill, as did the Republican Jewish Coalition.

All that remained for Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, a Nevada Democrat, and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, a California Democrat, to make the bill a law was to “reconcile” the slightly different language in the separate Senate and House versions into a single piece of
legislation.

But instead, Reid and Pelosi have bottled up the measure and refused to allow a blending of the bills. Why? Because the Obama administration asked them to.

According to a reporter for Foreign Policy magazine, reconciliation of the Senate and House bills is “not expected until after the administration pursues a new UN resolution on Iran.”

That would be the same resolution the White House has been discussing ever since Obama took office some 14 months ago, but has still made no headway in obtaining.

Recall that Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has sought to impose “crippling” sanctions on the Islamic Republic for as long as she’s resided in Foggy Bottom. But when Congress finally served up those crippling sanctions on a platter, she sent them back to the kitchen.

In deadening diplo-speak, a State Department spokesman claimed that the White House is trying to “make sure the president has sufficient flexibility to be able to work with other countries effectively for our shared goal of finding ways to put appropriate pressure on Iran to
change course.”

But the Obama administration’s much vaunted knack at promoting international harmony has hit yet another dead end, as China, among other countries, appears to be dead-set against another round of UN-sponsored sanctions.

In response, according to the Washington Post, the White House has urged congressional leaders to shred the petroleum sanctions bill by labeling China a “cooperating country” and carving out a gigantic exception for Chinese companies doing business with Teheran.

Congressional supporters of the sanctions act expressed predictable outrage at the maneuver.

“Given the Chinese-Iranian relationship, it’s hard to imagine a meaningful cooperating country exemption that China would fall into,” one aide commented.

Our foreign allies were even more perturbed. “We’re absolutely flabbergasted,” a senior official from a foreign country friendly to the United States told the Washington Post. “Tell me what exactly have the Chinese done to deserve this?”

Viewed from this perspective, and in light of the Obama administration’s recent pummeling of the Israeli government for building homes in Jerusalem, the White House’s reluctance to punish Teheran and its willingness to coddle Beijing begin to make sense. Obama and his foreign policy advisors have consistently shown themselves to be more solicitous of  America’s enemies than its allies, more willing to provoke our friends than to challenge our foes. And so far, this approach has succeeded only in emboldening opponents of the United States while alienating its trusted partners.

As the nuclear clock continues to tick, let’s hope the administration begins to appreciate the consequences of its actions and omissions.