WarSclerotic

Column One: Weathering the approaching storm.

By CAROLINE B. GLICK
06/18/2010 16:38

Israel is endangered today as it has never been before.

Israel is endangered today as it has never been before. The Turkish-Hamas flotilla two weeks ago precipitated a number of dangerous developments. Rather than attend to all of them, Israel’s leadership is devoting itself almost exclusively to contending with the least dangerous among them while ignoring the emerging threats with the potential to lead us to great calamities.

Since the Navy’s lethal takeover of the Mavi Marmara, Israel has been stood before an international diplomatic firing squad led by the UN and Europe and supported by the Obama administration. Firmly backed by European and largely unopposed by Washington, the UN is moving swiftly towards setting up a new Goldstone- style anti-Israel kangaroo court. That canned tribunal will rule that Israel has no right to defend itself and attempt to force Israel to end its lawful naval blockade of Hamas-controlled Gaza.

Fearing this outcome, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu bowed to US President Barack Obama’s demand that Israel set up an Israeli inquest of the Mavi Marmara takeover and permit foreigners to oversee its proceedings.

Netanyahu also agreed to scale back Israel’s blockade significantly, and allow international bodies to have a role in its far more lax enforcement. Netanyahu has made these concessions with the full knowledge that they will strengthen Hamas in the hopes that they would weaken the international onslaught against Israel.

Unfortunately, it took no time at all to see that his hopes were misplaced. Even before Netanyahu announced these concessions, UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon already announced that they make no difference to him or to his friends in Washington and Brussels.

They will move ahead with their plans to appoint a new kangaroo court charged with asserting that Israel has no right to defend itself.

AS BAD as all of this is, in truth, it is unimportant relative to the other consequences of the flotilla incident. The impact of the diplomatic campaign now being waged against Israel will be felt in the medium and long term. In the immediate term, Israel is facing two threats that dwarf what it faces from the UN.

Recent statements by the leaders of Iran, Turkey, Syria, Hamas and Hizbullah make clear that the members of the Iranian axis view the Mavi Marmara episode as a strategic victory in their ongoing campaign against Israel. The international stampede against Israel at the UN, the White House and throughout Europe exposed Israel’s Achilles heel. The Mavi Marmara demonstrated that on the one hand the IDF cannot enforce its blockade of Gaza without the use of force. On the other hands it taught Israel’s enemies that by forcing Israel to use force, Iran, Turkey and their allies incited a UN-EU-US lynch mob against Israel.

Iran, Turkey, Syria, Hamas and Hizbullah are moving rapidly to exploit their new discovery.

In the very near future, Israel will face off against Iranian, Lebanese and Turkish ships complemented by ships full of Israel-hating German Jews and other Jewish and non-Jewish Hamas supporters.

The Mavi Marmara showed Iran and its allies that they can win strategic victories against Israel by giving the IDF no option other than using force against them. This means that Israel can bank on the prospect that all the ships they are dispatching will be populated by suicide protesters. Indeed the Iranians have openly admitted this. Mohammad Ali Nouraee is one of the regime officials involved in dispatching the Iranian ships to the Gaza coast. In an interview this week with Iran’s official IRNA news agency, Nouraee said that the passengers aboard the ships “are willing to become martyred in this way.”

The Lebanese ships are being organized by Hizbullah-affiliated individuals and the Turkish ships are being organized by the IHH terror group that organized the Mavi Marmara.

Hizbullah’s penchant for dispatching suicide squads is of course well known. And the IHH showed its devotion to suicide protests on the Mavi Marmara. So it is fairly clear that the passengers aboard the ships from both countries intend to force the IDF to kill them.

The intensification of the suicide protest campaign against Israel is dangerous for two reasons.

First, it is a model that can be and in all likelihood will be replicated on air and land and it can be replicated anywhere. Israel can and should expect mobs of suicide protesters marching on Gaza to force Israel to surrender control over its borders. Israel can expect mobs of suicide protesters marching on Israeli embassies and other government installations around the world in an attempt to increase its diplomatic isolation.

In the air, Israel can expect charter flights to take off from airports around the world with a few dozen kamikaze protesters who will force the IAF to shoot them down as they approach Israeli airspace.

Iran and its allies have found a weak chink in Israel’s armor. They will use it any way they can.

Israel needs to quickly develop tactics and strategies for contending with this.

THE SECOND and far more dangerous implication of Israel’s enemies’ aggressive adoption of suicide protests is that by ensuring violence will be used, they increase the chances of war.

Indeed, Iran and its allies clearly believe that suicide protests are a vehicle for initiating a fullscale war against Israel on what they view as favorable footing. According to Bahrain’s Al Wasat press service, Hussain Amir, Iran’s ambassador to Bahrain, threatened this week that, “If the [Zionist] entity dares to direct any aggressive attack [against the Iranian ships], then it is certain that [Israel] will be met by a much stronger and firm blow.”

Syrian President Bashar Assad told the BBC Wednesday that the region is moving towards war. And the Turkish government is continuing to escalate its assaults on Israel. On Thursday Turkey threatened to cut off diplomatic relations with Israel if Israel does not issue a formal apology for its takeover of the Mavi Marmara and pay restitution to the families of the terrorists killed on board the ship.

Obviously the most disturbing aspect of the war threats is the specter of Turkish naval vessels attacking the Israel Navy. If Turkey – a NATO member – participates in a war against Israel, the repercussions for Israel’s relations with NATO member states, including the US, as well as the EU, are liable to be unprecedented.

While going to war against Israel would be a major gamble for Turkey, in recent years it has not shied away from high stakes challenges to its NATO allies. Indeed, one of Turkey’s ruling AKP party’s first actions upon taking power in 2003 was to deny the US military the right to invade Iraq from its territory. The deleterious impact of Turkey’s refusal to come to the aid of its NATO ally at the time has been felt by US forces in Iraq ever since.

IN THE days and weeks to come, Israel’s political and military leaders must move resolutely to prepare to withstand these new threats that have arisen in the aftermath of the Mavi Marmara episode. To meet the expected deluge of suicide protesters on sea, land and air, Israel must immediately acquire non-lethal means to disperse these protests. This involves purchasing and producing tear gas, water cannons, rubber bullets and other non-lethal weaponry.

These non-lethal weapons must be rapidly distributed to IDF units deployed along the frontier with Gaza and to the navy. They must also be supplied to Israeli security teams tasked with protecting government installations worldwide.

Forces must undergo intense and immediate training in crowd control and mob dispersal to be ready to meet what is clearly on the way.

Diplomatically, Israel needs to hold its new line on the Gaza blockade. Netanyahu’s buckling to US-EU-UN pressure has encouraged them to redouble their assault on Israel. The new line must be held at all costs. Otherwise, Israel will have no diplomatic line of defense as the approaching threats become reality.

Strategically, our leaders need to consider what our aims will be in the coming war. For instance, as far as Turkey is concerned, Israel’s aim will be to end the war as quickly as possible.

Here the tools of diplomacy with NATO members and public diplomacy with the American people will be crucial to convincing Turkey to stand down. They must be aggressively and energetically utilized without delay.

From a military perspective, evasion is preferable to confrontation. This understanding must guide naval operations towards Turkish forces.

As for Iran, Israel’s aim must be to prolong the war as long as necessary to secure its strategic objective of denying Iran nuclear weapons.

Moreover, it is important to use both kinetic and non-kinetic means to change the relative power balance between the Iranian people and the Iranian regime. While in all likelihood today the Iranian opposition green movement is unable to overthrow the regime, if Iran initiates a war against Israel, Israel must use the opportunity the war affords to change that balance of power.

Once Israel’s political and military leaders determine the strategic goals of a regional war, they must move swiftly to outfit and train the IDF to fight it. This war will certainly be different from its predecessors and Israel’s strategic goals – and the clear strategic and tactical preferences of its enemies – dictate the training that the IDF must initiate immediately.

The longer-term lesson of the Mavi Marmara incident, and the threats that emerged in its wake, is that war is too serious a subject to leave to generals. The IDF and the Defense Ministry clearly misunderstood the nature of the threat posed by the Turkish-Hamas flotilla.

Indeed, recent reports that until the Mavi Marmara Israel wasn’t even collecting intelligence on Turkey despite its obvious, multiyear transformation from ally to enemy underlines the fact that the IDF is woefully incapable of assessing, understanding and preparing for the threats Israel faces.

In light of the IDF’s failure to understand Turkey’s transformation from ally to enemy in a timely manner, its incompetent planning for the Mavi Marmara takeover and its problematic performance in both Operation Cast Lead and the Second Lebanon War, Netanyahu must create an external body empowered to assess and dictate the means for preparing for emerging threats. This body can either be a new department in the Prime Minister’s Bureau or the National Security Council can be empowered to perform this function. While this is not the most urgent matter on the national agenda, the establishment of such a body should be a central mission of the government.

The Iranian ships are already en route, and the ships from Lebanon could appear at any moment. The mass demonstrations against Israel throughout the world and the threatened violence from the Hamas-supporting Israeli Arab leadership indicate that mobs of suicide protesters could appear anywhere with no prior warning.

Time is of the essence. No, Israel does not want another Goldstone kangaroo court. But right now, kangaroo courts are not our biggest problem.

DEBKAfile, Political Analysis, Espionage, Terrorism, Security.

Iran’s Shahab-3

US defense secretary Robert Gates reported to a senate hearing Thursday, June 17 that the US had overhauled its missile defense plans following intelligence that Iran could fire “scores or hundreds” of missiles against Europe -in salvoes rather than one or two at a time. The new US program, designed to protect NATO allies in the region against short- and medium-range missiles, uses sea and land-based interceptors.

debkafile‘s military sources confirm that in addition to the thousands of ballistic missiles in Iran’s arsenal, there are certainly many hundred that could be fired in salvoes. While referring to NATO allies, Gates did not mention Israel, which is located still closer to those missiles and far more prey to the devastation promised by Tehran.

Gates’s new evaluation breaks away sharply from the propositions American military chiefs have been advancing in their strategic deliberations with Gulf and Israeli leaders. Until now, they made a point of playing down the missile menace posed from Iran claiming that it consisted of no more than a few score ballistic missiles and far less launchers.

The new intelligence assessment Gates now unveils means that the balance of strength has dramatically shifted in favor of Iran and against Israel.

When the “scores or hundreds” of Iranian missiles are topped up by 800 Scud Ds, which Syria managed in the last two months to position close to the Lebanese border and the 1,000 Iranian and Syrian medium-range missiles transferred to Hizballah in Lebanon, Israel is confronted with an daunting array of 3,000 missiles capable of striking every corner of the country.

debkafile‘s military sources, which have published these figures more than once in recent months, ask why it was left to the US defense secretary to lay the facts out on the table – and why now?

True, Republican Senator Saxby Chambliss asked Gates if he supported deploying missile defenses including plans for an upgraded SM-3 missile by 2020 in Europe – even if Russia objected. He answered in the affirmative. But he must also have had at the back of his mind the heightened US military preparations taking place in the Middle East and Mediterranean – apparently in readiness for the type of Iranian missile salvo he mentioned.

After all, Iran has not so far reacted to the new sanctions for its nuclear program imposed first by the UN Security Council, then the United States and Europe. Washington takes it for granted that the new penalties will not go by without some sort of reprisal from Tehran.

Rihyad Gives OK To Israeli Attack On Iran – Auburn Journal.

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Saudi Arabia has given its go-ahead to Israel to attack Iran’s nuclear facilities, according to the 12 June edition of the Times UK.

As the UN Security Council imposes stronger sanctions on Iran, Saudi military sources announced that Riyadh has agreed to allow Israeli attack planes to fly over Saudi airspace that they may shorten the distance for an attack on Iran.

According to a US diplomat, “They [the Saudis] have already done tests to make sure their own jets aren’t scrambled and no one gets shot down. This has all been done with the agreement of the [US] State Department.”

Riyadh has already carried out tests to make certain Saudi military interceptors are not scrambled, and missile defense systems are not activated, during an Israeli mission. Once the Israelis are past Saudi airspace, the Kingdom’s air defense systems will default to full alert. “The Saudis have given their permission for the Israelis to pass over – and they will look the other way,” confirmed a US military source in the region.

Despite tensions between Israel and Saudi Arabia, they both share a mutual loathing of the Ahmadinejad regime and both fear Iran’s nuclear potential. “We all know this. We will let them [the Israelis] through – and see nothing,” said one anonymous source.

The four main targets for any raid on Iran would be the uranium enrichment facilities at Natanz and Qom, the gas storage development at Isfahan and the heavy-water reactor at Arak.

Secondary targets include the lightwater reactor at Bushehr, which could possibly produce weapons-grade plutonium when complete.

The targets lie as far as 1,400 miles (2,250km) from Israel; the outer limits of their bombers’ range, even with aerial refueling. An open corridor across northern Saudi Arabia would significantly shorten the distance.

An Israeli air strike would involve multiple waves of bombers, possibly crossing Jordan, northern Saudi Arabia and Iraq. Aircraft attacking Bushehr, on the Gulf coast, could swing beneath Kuwait to strike from the southwest.

Passing over Iraq would require permission from Washington DC. So far, the Obama Administration has refused to give its approval as it pursues a diplomatic solution to curbing Iran’s nuclear ambitions.

Military analysts say Israel has held back only because of this failure to secure consensus from America and Arab states. Military analysts doubt that an airstrike alone would be sufficient to knock out the key nuclear facilities, which are heavily fortified and deep underground or within mountains.

But if the latest UN sanctions prove ineffective, the pressure from the Israelis on the USA to approve Jewish military action will intensify.

Israeli officials refused to comment yesterday on details for a attack on Iran, which Netanyahu has refused to deny.

In 2007, Israel was reported to have used Turkish air space to attack a rumored nuclear reactor being built by Iran’s main regional ally, Syria. Although Turkey publicly protested against the “violation” of its air space, it is thought to have turned a blind eye in what many saw as a dry run for a strike on Iran’s far more substantial and better-defended nuclear sites.

Israeli intelligence experts say that Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and Jordan are at least as worried as themselves and the West about an Iranian nuclear arsenal. Each also worries about Israel’s extensive nuclear arsenal and its willingness to employ it against neighboring countries

Israel has sent missile cruisers and at least one Israeli nuclear missile submarine through the Suez to be deployed into the Red Sea, possibly to attack Iran.

Israeli newspapers reported last year that high-ranking officials, including former Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, met with their Saudi counterparts. Meir Dagan, the head of Mossad, also met with Saudi intelligence for their assurance that Riyadh would turn a blind eye to Israeli jets violating Saudi airspace en route to an attack against Iran.

Both governments now deny the report.

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Al-Ahram Weekly | Region | Beyond engagement.

Click to view caption

Ahmadinejad attends a news conference at the Shanghai World Expo; and the United Nations Security Council approved new sanctions against Iran over its suspect nuclear programme

Barack Obama paraded the sanctions passed by the United Nations Security Council on 9 June as the “toughest ever” against Iran’s nuclear programme. He also said the international community had voted “overwhelmingly” in their favor. Both statements were triumphs of spin over substance.

In fact, this was the least supported of the four sanctions resolutions adopted since the UNSC first called on Iran to halt enriching uranium in December 2006. Two of the three sets of sanctions under George W Bush’s watch were passed unanimously; the third, in 2008, earned one abstention from Indonesia.

For the first time this resolution received negative votes from Brazil and Turkey, as well as an abstention from Lebanon, exacted under considerable United States pressure and despite a split cabinet in Beirut.

Brazil and Turkey’s opposition was not tactical. Both countries openly challenged an America-led strategy against Iran’s alleged pursuit of nuclear weapons which, for all its talk of engagement, still privileged coercion over diplomacy.

“By adopting sanctions, the Council is actually opting for one of the two tracks (pressure and negotiations) that were supposed to run in parallel. In our opinion, the wrong one,” said Maria Luiza Ribeiro Viotti, Brazil’s UN ambassador.

Nor were these “the toughest sanctions ever faced by the Iranian government”, as charged by Obama. They pale in comparison to the economic blockade Tehran suffered — and survived — during the eight-year war with Iraq. And they fall short of those sought originally by the United States, Britain, France and Germany.

All had wanted “crippling” sanctions against Iran’s energy sector, the lifeblood of the Islamic Republic’s economy and source of billions in oil revenues. Russia and China ruled them out, partly because they would harm the Iranian people but also because such penalties would inflict damage on their investments in Iran. They also vetoed curbs on Iran’s access to international banking, commercial trade and capital markets.

The binding sanctions in the new resolution are an extension of an existing arms embargo, maritime checks of suspect Iranian cargoes and a ban on overseas investment by Tehran in uranium mining and enrichment. Penalties are also mandatory against one company and 14 subsidiaries “owned” by the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, seen as by the US as “overseer” of the nuclear programme.

The rest of the sanctions — like financial curbs on transactions with Iranian individuals and businesses — are voluntary. The hope expressed by Obama and the three other western states is that national sanctions by the US Treasury, Congress and European Union will supply the bite to fill out the UNSC’s bark. This belies hope over experience.

Many among the EU 27 nations won’t back sanctions that harm Iran’s energy sector or people or close the door on negotiations. And while Congressional sanctions against foreign companies that trade with Iran can hurt, it doubtful they would deter a country like China, whose hunger for energy is ravenous.

“The US is not going to get anything approaching universal compliance with these ‘optional’ sanctions,” predict Flynt and Hillary Leverett, former CIA officials and “Iran specialists” in the Clinton and Bush administrations. “The net effect will be to accelerate the reallocation of business opportunities in the Islamic Republic from the Western states to China and other non-Western powers”.

It was against this prospect of failure — as well as the legacy of past sanctions that have so far only caused Iran to enrich uranium to ever higher levels and build ever larger stockpiles — that Brazil and Turkey proffered an alternative.

Last month they negotiated a deal with Tehran to send half of its low-enriched uranium to Turkey in exchange for access to refined nuclear fuel for a medical reactor. It was seen as a confidence building measure that could lead to more comprehensive negotiations between Iran and western states, including the US.

Obama supported the so-called Tehran Declaration only to then bury it under pressure from Congress. Instead he rushed through a fourth round of UNSC sanctions. Already angered by Washington’s failure to condemn Israel for its deadly assault on the flotilla, Turkey once more saw the US sacrifice regional goals for domestic ones.

With the Tehran Declaration “we have the slightest window of opportunity,” said a Turkish diplomat on 9 June. “Why not give it a chance? Why kill it with sanctions? If the resolution is adopted, we’ll lose Iran and lose diplomatic engagement”.

The Obama administration mislaid engagement a while back. It also quietly concedes sanctions are unlikely to do anything than slow Iran’s sprawling nuclear programme. Instead it seems to be pursuing an Iran policy that goes beyond sanctions but is less than war or explicit regime change.

According to US media reports, it consists of shoring up the missile defense systems of the US Arab allies in the Persian Gulf to “contain” Iran; a CIA “brain drain” project to encourage the defection of Iran nuclear scientists; and deepening covert actions to sabotage the nuclear programme. Where all else fails, the threat of an Israeli military threat is invoked, as it has been in US consultations with states to back sanctions.

But what happens if the invoked cannon, becomes a loose one. On 8 June the New York Times reported how an Israeli delegation to China in February made the case for tougher measures to “stop Iran assembling a nuclear weapon”. It quoted an unnamed Israeli official:

‘”The Chinese didn’t seem too surprised about the classified evidence we showed them (about Iran’s alleged atomic ambitions). But they really sat up in their chairs when we described what a preemptive attack would do to the region and the oil supplies they have come to rely on”.

Egypt refuses to stop Iranian flotillas.

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Photo by: ASSOCIATED PRESS

By JPOST.COM STAFF
06/18/2010 12:16

Cairo paper reports: Israel asks Egypt to block Iranian aid ships.

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Cairo newspaper “A-Dar” reported Friday that Israel issued a request to Egypt to prevent aid ships from Iran reaching Gaza via the Suez Canal. Egyptian officials reported the request because “it contradicts the law.”

Egyptian authorities explained to the Cairo newspaper that Israel requested Egypt prevent any aid ships arriving from Iran passing through the Suez Canal claiming that Iran is aiding Hamas to work against Egypt.

The newspaper added that Egypt refused the Israeli demands because it is not possible to prevent the passage of any ship through the canal because of international laws. Egyptians explained that they are not able to stand against the intent of Arab states, the Muslim world and international organizations to provide aid to the residents of Gaza and to lift the blockade.

Sources at “A-Dar” reported that according to sources at the department for defending the interests of Iran in Cairo that Egypt approved the demands of hundreds of Iranians that will accompany the aid ships.

Not many good options remain to deal with Iran – Friday, June 18, 2010 2:02 a.m. – Las Vegas Sun.

Bob Jack, North Las Vegas

Friday, June 18, 2010 | 2:02 a.m.

What is missing from the debate on the Middle East is reality — a failure to look the problem straight in the face and accept the cold, harsh truth that no comfy solution is realizable.

The problem of achieving a peace deal in the Palestinian-Israeli conflict is like a puzzle in which molds for the crucial pieces were never made. As long as forces at work in Iran, Syria, Lebanon and in the Palestinian-occupied area seek the extermination of Israel, a peace deal is out of the question. Hamas, Hezbollah, Iran and Syria are joined in a partnership to undermine any real effort at a two-state solution.

Unfortunately, what’s even worse, time is not on the side of America and Israel. As history advances, Hamas and Hezbollah are strengthened by support from Iran and Syria, and the inevitable achievement of Iran’s nuclear threat goes forward without interference.

There are two possible outcomes — one is diplomatically unacceptable and the second is painfully untenable:

First, Israel and/or the U.S. could attack Iran and attempt to damage its nuclear assets, stalling the program for a time. The blowback from such an attack would unleash Iran’s surrogates and Iran itself, resulting in an all-out Middle East conflict. Nevertheless, this may be the best answer.

Second, Israel and America could grudgingly accept a nuclear-armed Iran, and erect a deterrence plan that would create “mutually assured destruction” for Iran and Israel. In the final analysis, one of these scenarios will prevail. Neither outcome will allow for a peace deal or the establishment of a two-state solution.

Diana West : How is Israel the Guilty Party? – Townhall.com.

We may not live in an Islamic world — yet — but we do live with an Islamic worldview. Witness the uniformly Islamicized consensus that met Israel’s successful if costly defense of its Gaza blockade.

The blockade, by the way, is a defensive measure that Israel devised after Hamas terrorists were elected to govern Israel-ceded Gaza in 2005 and — no surprise to any student of jihad — decided to continue their charter-commanded war on Israel, raining down nearly 10,000 rockets onto Israeli civilians.

The rocketing, of course, was OK with the Islamicized consensus. What wasn’t OK happened on the night of May 31 when Israeli commandos, lightly armed with paintball guns and emergency sidearms, unexpectedly battled aboard the Mavi Marmara against trained fighters with ties to the Turkish government, specifically to the ruling AKP party of Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan, to maintain Israel’s lawful blockade.

These hostile forces were organized by the Turkish terror-linked organization known as IHH (which purchased the boat from an AKP entity). They were armed with knives, axes, clubs, Molotov cocktails and more, and they formed a militant cadre barely camouflaged by the “humanitarian cargo” (including night vision goggles, bulletproof vests and nearly a million euros) and other “peace activists,” among whom were Muslim Brothers, Hamas partisans (at least one Hamas operative was later arrested), and members of the Turkish supremacist group BBP. At least five “passengers” publicly expressed their wish to become “shahids,” or Islamic martyrs. Three got their wish in the fighting that ensued after the ship refused to yield to the Israeli Navy. Some of the Israeli blockade-defenders were wounded, a few seriously; nine jihadist blockade-runners were killed.

An Islamicized world wrath came down on Israel. And with such force as to obliterate what remnants of the Western system — logic, morality, history – somehow still existed. Simultaneous to the instant apotheosis of blockade-running jihadis into ocean-going pacifists came an avalanche of rage so violent as to reverse the gravitational pull of global politics entirely. Or so it seems.

Thus, Islamicized international pressure weighs on Israel’s Netanyahu to justify, to apologize — and not Turkey’s Erdogan, who supports the jihadist outlaws. Outrage boils over at the defense of a lawful blockade to protect civilians from terrorist attack, and not at the Hamas attackers, or at the Turks and others who aid them — and, again, with the Turkish head of state’s support. While Israelis have reason to re-examine the efficiency of their strategy to maintain the blockade, the only so-called “impartial” international investigation required is not, as demanded, into Israel’s line of defense, but rather into Turkey’s destabilizing culpability in the aggression.

Pure and simple, this was an act of jihadist provocation, even an act of war. If the Western system were still functional, it would be Turkey called to account in the international arena, not Israel; it would be Turkey pressured to unmask itself as a fomenter of global jihad — not Israel for defending itself against it.

If.

But the Western system no longer functions; it takes its lead from “peace activists.” And so — and this is the tragedy of Western collapse – it is Turkey that the West appeases. There is no logic to this; there is fear. There’s no morality here; only dhimmitude. History, meanwhile, is ignored. We hide from the gravity of resurgent jihad in the Ottoman land of the last caliphate, deaf to the declarations of cultural and religious war that Erdogan, for one, has always made, from the 1970s, when he engaged in anti-Semitic agitprop with a play he wrote, directed and acted in known as “Mas-kom-Ya,” an acronym for Mason, komunist (communist), and Yahudi (Jew); to the 1990s, when he invoked jihad with the lines, “the mosques are our barracks, the domes our helmets, the minarets our bayonets and the faithful our soldiers”; to today, as he exhorts Turks in Europe to cultural conquest, declaring, “Assimilation is a crime against humanity.”

Sounds like the call of the marauder to me. But the United States, pondering “Who lost Turkey?” plugs its ears and scapegoats Israel, or, just as fantastic, blames Europe for a vestigial self-preservation instinct that prevents it from committing demographic suicide by admitting 78 million Muslims into the union.

Anything for “peace.”

If global jihad isn’t the enemy, what is?.

By BOAZ GANOR
06/16/2010 21:31

The Obama administration refuses to acknowledge the need to contend with an extremist interpretation of Islam.

Russia ‘schizophrenic’ on Iran, says U.S. defense secretary – Haaretz Daily Newspaper | Israel News.

U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates tells congressional commitee that Russia is balancing the security threat posed by Iran against commercial interests.

By Reuters

Russia’s approach to Iran has been “schizophrenic,” pursuing commercial ties while acknowledging that a nuclear-armed Tehran would pose a major security threat, the U.S. defense secretary said on Thursday.

Russia voted in favor of a fourth round of UN sanctions against Tehran because of its nuclear program this month. But Moscow signaled on Thursday its support had limits, criticizing the United States and the European Union for imposing additional sanctions beyond those approved by the UN Security Council.

U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates, testifying before a congressional committee, acknowledged one lawmaker’s concerns about Russia’s long-standing commercial links to Tehran.

“You’ve just put your finger on a kind of schizophrenic Russian approach to this,” Gates told the Senate Armed Services Committee.

	U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates
	Photo by: AP

“When I was in Moscow three years ago, then-President Putin told me that he considered Iran Russia’s greatest national security threat … and yet they have these commercial interests in Iran that go back more than 20 years.”

During a 1992 trip to Moscow, Gates as then-head of the CIA, said he raised questions about Russia’s support for an Iranian nuclear reactor. Gates said his Russian counterpart at the time replied: “It’s all about the money.”

“So I think that it is this balancing act. And Russia, they recognize the security threat that Iran presents,” Gates said. “But then there are these commercial opportunities, which, frankly, are not unique to them and Europe.”

Earlier in the same hearing, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said she was pleased about a Russian decision to freeze delivery of S-300 missiles to Iran, announced earlier this month.

The United States and Israel have long fiercely opposed a sale of the defensive missile system because it could give Iran the means to withstand air strikes aimed at knocking out its nuclear sites.

Clinton said she was not sure if Russia had officially canceled the contract.

“What they said is that they would not deliver the system. So, is that cancellation? Or is that an indefinite suspension? Either way, it’s good news because they will not deliver the system,” Clinton said.

DEBKA.

Works on New Bloc Segregated from America’s Influence

Abdullah Gul

Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Recep Erdogan‘s relentless drive to lead Turkey to superpower status in the Middle East for the second time in two centuries has brought him to the threshold of a threefold historic dilemma, DEBKA-Net-Weekly reports.
1. To achieve this status, he must lead a group of nations which defer to Ankara. So where to start? Should he try and whip the Arab nations of Egypt, Syria and the Palestinians into line behind Turkey, or go for the extremist Iran, Syria, the Lebanese Hizballah and the Palestinian Hamas in Gaza?
Both would be ranged against the United States and intrinsically anti-Israel. In either case, they would be introduced to the world at first as economic associations.
2. Erdogan has set his face finally to jettisoning Turkey’s diplomatic ties with Israel, but has still to fix a date. The cutoff of bilateral ties has begun and promises to be comprehensive, casting aside economic, shipping, economic, tourist relations and ditching the last remnants of the military cooperation built up in decades of friendship. Wednesday, Ankara announced 16 bilateral agreements had been shelved. Turkish President Abdullah Gul disclosed that a plan for further sanctions was in the works and would be implemented in stages.
(More about this in HOT POINTS of June 17 below)
Diplomatic severance appears to have been left to the last stage, depending on which Muslim bloc Ankara decides to promote.

Campaign against Israel as key to sway over Muslim world

Many circles in Ankara, including military leaders, are strongly opposed to the rupture of ties with Israel which have brought benefits to Turkey in many fields, but DEBKA-Net-Weekly’s sources in Ankara confirm that Erdogan’s mind is made up. Judging from his past behavior, opposition does not put him off and he will make good on his decisions even if he has to go it alone – especially with regard to Israel. He sees his antagonism towards the Jewish state as the key to sway over the Muslim community of nations.
3. Theoretically, there is, of course, a third way. For years, the Turkish prime minister has coveted the role of bridge between the various Middle Eastern peoples, such as Arab and Iranian, as well as East and West, Europe and the United States, Christendom and Islam. This task he sees as conferring great influence and high prestige.
Our Mideast sources call option No.3 “theoretical” for, despite Erdogan’s efforts, the role of mediator and bridge builder has mostly eluded him and, according to their information, he is impatient to move on from talk to decisions.
Ankara discounts Turkey’s membership of NATO as a factor in judging the first two options. For the third, it might be marginally beneficial.

Wheeling and dealing for Cairo’s auspices

Erdogan’s secret envoys have spent the past week in Egypt trying to talk its leaders round into convening an early Turkish-Arab summit with the promise of a broad and glittering attendance that would include Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah, Syrian President Bashar Assad, Jordan’s King Abdullah, and all the Palestinian leaders – Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas, his bitter rival Hamas political secretary Khaled Meshal and Islamic Jihad leader Ramadan Abdullah Salah.
The minor Arab rulers would be swept up in their train.
Erdogan’s messengers offer Cairo three arguments:

A. In the current international climate of condemnation for Israel, the pro-Turkish, pro-Arab elements in the Obama administration and Europe will prevail over the pro-Israeli lobbies and persuade Washington and Brussels to welcome a vibrant new Middle East entity dedicated to opposing Israel.
B. “We and the Arabs are a hundred times more important than Israel,” the Turks explain “and the US and Europe will be forced to deal with us on our terms.”
C. Assad’s participation in this summit, to which Iran will not be invited, will mark the first crack in the Damascus-Tehran alliance, thus restoring Egypt to its proper position in the region and at the head of diplomacy for resolving the Palestinian question.
The fourth argument was unspoken but well understood, say DEBKA-Net-Weekly‘s Middle East sources. Turkey does not want to see Iran attain a nuclear bomb any more than Egypt and the rest of the Arab world. But since nothing is happening to stop the Islamic Republic’s inexorable drive toward this objective, Erdogan maintains that the Arab-Sunni Muslim world’s best defense against a nuclear-armed Iran would be a strong Arab alliance led by Turkey and Egypt.

Checking the options in Damascus

While one group of Erdogan’s envoys lobbies Egyptian leaders, a second is busy in Damascus.
According to DEBKA-Net-Weekly‘s intelligence sources, this second group is charged with exploring with Assad and the Lebanese Hizballah secretary general Hassan Nasrallah – and through them with Tehran – the chances of establishing a Turkish-Arab-Iranian lineup as an alternative to the Turkish-Egyptian-led formation.
There, too, a theatrical summit is under discussion. It would bring Turkish, Arab, Iranian and Palestinian leaders together in the Syrian capital.
Should the Damascus track beat out the Cairo option, our Middle East analysts conclude, it would bring Erdogan back to the Iranian-Syrian fold. Since the flotilla incident of May 31, the Turkish prime minister and his spokesman have made great play of Iran’s ineffectiveness on the Palestinian front compared with Ankara’s activism. There was a suggestion that relations of rivalry were developing between Ankara and Tehran.
Before then, the Syrian ruler gained prominence by leading a Third World front against the American initiative for tough UN sanctions against Iran.
The two alternative postures indicate that the Turkish prime minister is at a critical crossroads. Whichever course he chooses, their most striking common factor is the zero value he attaches to the United States, Saudi Arabia and Israel as players in his schemes. Ankara, Cairo, Damascus and Tehran are putting their heads together as though the United States counts for very little in the region and Israel for even less.
(Separate articles in this issue discuss the impact of Obama’s muscle-flexing moves in the region and Israeli leaders’ heedlessness of happenings in its neighborhood).

Middle East Rulers Are Unimpressed by America’s Show of Muscle

Political Paralysis Shackles US Military Might

USS Harry S Truman

For five days, from Sunday June 6 through Thursday June 10, the USS Harry S. Truman Carrier Strike Group carried out naval and aerial war exercises with live ammunition from a spot 50 miles off Israel’s southwestern coast – not far from where Israeli naval commandos raided the Turkish MV Mavi Marmara on May 31 precipitating a clash which dropped the Middle East into a new crisis.
The Truman‘s sixty F/A-18E/F Super Hornet fighter bombers took off day and night to bomb targets set up by the Israeli Air Force at its firing range on the Nevatim Base-28, one of Israel’s three principal air force bases, which is located in the Negev desert southeast of Be’er Sheva.
The exercise had 16 American F-16 fighter jets taking off from bases in Germany and Romania, landing at Israeli Air Force facilities, refueling and taking off against with Israeli Air Force combat squadrons. Together, they practiced long-range bombing missions over the Red Sea and the Mediterranean, drilling air-to-air combat along the way.
Both Washington and Jerusalem withheld public exposure of this US-Israeli aerial exercise, which was dubbed Juniper Stallion 2010, because it was a lot closer to the real thing than previous joint war games in the Juniper series. In fact, on instructions from President Barack Obama, all US missile interceptors in the Middle East were on full war alert, including the batteries on US Sixth Fleet vessels on the Mediterranean and the US Fifth Fleet in the Persian Gulf.

The Truman stands by for rising naval-military crisis curve

Israel’s missile shield was also on war alert.
The two anti-missile missile systems jointly drilled their ability to repel Iranian, Syrian, and Hizballah missile attacks on US Middle East targets and on Israel.
On Wednesday, June 16, debkafile‘s military and Washington sources reported exclusively that the USS Harry S. Truman Carrier Strike Group, which was supposed to depart the Mediterranean after the exercise and head out to the Persian Gulf, was ordered to remain in the Mediterranean for now. Intelligence had reached Washington of an expected high curve in naval and military tensions involving Turkey, Iran and possibly Hizballah, against Israel over the Gaza blockade.
Fueling the tensions are Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan‘s preparations to launch a fresh wave of flotillas for Gaza with Iranian participation and subject Israel to broad sanctions and a worldwide boycott campaign. Ankara is suspending bilateral cooperation with Israel in all fields.
On Wednesday, June 16, Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman issued a grim warning. He said Israel could no longer treat the next convoys for Gaza as humanitarian aid operations because they were sent with hostile intent by Israel’s enemies.
A few hours after Lieberman’s comment, Tehran issued a blanket threat against Israel – and implicitly the United States: Iranian Parliament Speaker Ali Larijani said that if Israel or any other party interfered with the Iranian ships destined for Gaza, Tehran would retaliate militarily against unspecified shipping in the Mediterranean and in the Persian Gulf.

Gulf rulers omit US from their defenses against a nuclear-armed Iran

Most strikingly, DEBKA-Net-Weekly‘s Middle East analysts note, the joint US-Israel show of military might produced none of its desired effects: It failed to stem the rocketing military tensions besetting the region since the Israel-Turkish clash on May 31 over Ankara’s Gaza-bound flotilla; nor did it restrain Turkey’s headlong drive for domination or ease the political volatility set up by this drive (as outlined in the second article in this issue: Turkey Aims to Displace US in Middle East: Works on New Bloc Segregated from America’s Influence).
America’s waning military fortunes in Afghanistan and powerlessness to halt Iran’s nuclear program are taking a heavy toll on its influence in the Middle East and Persian Gulf.
This was evident from a new working paper presented to five oil emirates (excepting only Oman) by former Kuwaiti National Security Adviser and ex-lawmaker Abdullah Ali Nafisi.
The Persian Gulf states will not be able to withstand the Iranian nuclear threat and Iranian political pressure, he writes, if they continue to operate as six separate states, each with its own small army.
The GCC (Gulf Cooperation Council) has lost its effectiveness and is not capable of dealing with the Iranian threat, says Al Nafisi. Therefore, the very survival of the GCC states can only be assured if the six independent countries integrate into a single political entity, making the Saudi city of Medina its capital.
The Gulf States would have to merge their armies, says the Kuwait strategist. Only a single large army that controls everything that goes on in the Arabian Peninsula and the Persian Gulf would be able to deter Iran.
The most prominent feature of this working paper is its omission of the United States, as though its traditional role of protector of the emirates in times of danger is forgotten, its military might ignored as a non-factor.
DEBKA-Net-Weekly‘s sources in the Persian Gulf stress the Kuwaiti writer would not have released his paper without the nod of royal circles close to King Abdullah.
It was therefore not surprising to hear approving echoes in Riyadh this week, a cautious yet clear Saudi response to the latest Turkish and Iranian Middle East initiatives. As we went to press, our sources report that President Obama has urgently invited the Saudi king for talks. His visit to Washington has been scheduled for June 28.