WarSclerotic

Iran’s Nuclear Progress – WSJ.com.

Even the U.N. now says Iran has enough fuel for two weapons.

Any day now, the U.N. Security Council will take up sanctions on Iran, which the Obama Administration considers a culmination of its year-plus-long diplomatic game plan. Alas in the real world beyond Turtle Bay, Iran moves ever closer to building an atomic bomb, and neither the U.S. nor its allies appear to possess any ideas, much less a serious strategy, to stop it.

Iran’s nuclear progress comes through clearly in the latest report by the International Atomic Energy Agency. Released Monday ahead of the sanctions vote, the U.N. agency reports that Iran now has produced enough nuclear fuel to make two atomic weapons. As the U.S. was trying to extend a hand to Tehran and engage in talks in the past year, the Iranians nearly doubled their stock of 5%-enriched uranium to 5,300 pounds. The IAEA also says Iran has started to enrich small but growing amounts of uranium up to 20%, installing new centrifuges for that purpose.

These steps take Iran closer to the nuclear brink. Enriching fuel from 20% to the 90% or so needed for a Hiroshima-style atomic bomb would take only a few weeks. Based on these numbers, some analysts estimate Iran could get the bomb in as little as 18 months. So much for that infamous December 2007 U.S. intelligence estimate that Iran had ceased work on an atomic weapon.

The IAEA reports that an important piece of lab equipment which could be used to extract plutonium for a bomb went missing from a research facility. The Iranians were conducting so-called pyro-processing experiments to remove impurities from uranium metal, thus opening another route for the mullahs to build a nuclear device. The IAEA complains as well that Iran blocked access to scientists and files and didn’t provide information about plans to build 10 new enrichment plants. As if Iran has ever made a good-faith effort to come clean about its intentions.

According to a certain sort of conventional wisdom, the IAEA report will “bolster” the Obama Administration’s case for sanctions at the U.N. To us, this is merely the latest indictment of years of diplomatic half-measures by the U.S. and Europe that has provided Iran with the cover to press ahead with its illicit program without fear of grave repercussions.

The coming sanctions are the fourth set put before the Security Council. During the Bush Administration, the previous three passed without any opposition but also with little impact. The Iranians refused to suspend enrichment, which was—before George W. Bush changed policy at the urging of Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice toward the end of his second term—the prerequisite even for any direct talks with Tehran.

The latest sanctions would ban Iran from pursuing “any activity related to ballistic missiles capable of delivering nuclear weapons,” freeze the assets of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard and other companies related to the program, and prohibit Iran from buying several categories of heavy weapons—except, notably, the surface-to-air S-300 missiles Iran bought from Russia, and still wants to have delivered. Washington threw in this bribe to win over Moscow.

The U.S. also watered down provisions on financial and energy-related sanctions to win over the Russians and Chinese. But Turkey and Brazil, which are pushing their own nuclear deal with Iran struck last month, oppose the measure, as does Lebanon. Their dissent will deprive the U.S. of the image of diplomatic unity on Iran, which had been so central to the Obama strategy.

If passed, the sanctions may bite the bottom lines of some Revolutionary Guard brass and force Iran to be even more creative about developing its atomic bomb and the missiles needed to deliver it. But Iran has gotten around similarly toothless U.N. measures in the past decade without much trouble, and nothing suggests this time will be different.

From Bush to Obama, the U.S. strategy toward Iran has oscillated between naive and unserious. We now stand months from Iran reaching a nuclear breakout capability. Unless credible options to stop Iran are put on the table, the risk of violent confrontation with Tehran—instigated by Israel or not—rises with each day.

American Thinker Blog: Israel = Iran?.

Peter Wilson

Daniel Henninger: Beating Up on Israel – WSJ.com.

The world’s powers find it easier to denounce small nations like Israel than take on large and difficult problems like Iran or North Korea.

The ease with which the world’s governments condemned Israel over the flotilla incident has been something to behold. The Jerusalem-based correspondent for the Toronto Globe and Mail could not help but notice: “The speed and intensity with which governments around the world condemned the Israeli behavior appear unprecedented.” Why?

For starters, denouncing Israel for something like this is convenient for leaders who have failed repeatedly to do anything about more important and difficult problems such as Iran, North Korea or sovereign debt. Also, lesser nations learn by example: The Obama administration’s unrestrained criticism of the Israeli government in March over East Jerusalem settlements lowered the threshold for teeing off on Israel.

Still, I can’t think of any other nation, no matter how scummy and uncivilized its practices, that produces this response. Or any other event, such as testing a nuclear bomb.

Netanyahu to International Community: Stop the Hypocrisy | FrontPage Magazine.

The IDF has released two more videos from the incident Monday morning on theMavi Marmara, the largest in the Turkish-organized six-ship flotilla that challenged Israel’s blockade of Gaza, and the only one to prepare a violent ambush. One of these two videos is even more dramatic than the one released on Monday, now viewed by over a million on YouTube, that shows Mavi Marmara“peace activists” among other things beating the soldiers with iron bars.

The relatively less dramatic of the two newly released videos shows the “activists”—actually jihadists seeking “martyrdom”—attacking the soldiers with a stun grenade, a box of plates, and water hoses as they try to board the ship. The other newly released video is actually almost purely audial footage of a frenetic exchange between soldiers on the Mavi Marmara and the nearby IDF ship. The former, in a state of acute panic, shout that they need reinforcements, are being fired at from all directions, and have to be evacuated immediately. For a while the jihadists can be heard chanting something in the background.

The iron-bars video was released only late Monday afternoon after the “Israel kills peace activists” media-storm had already swept through the world for eight or nine hours, and some in Israel have bitterly charged that releasing it a good deal earlier, if not immediately, could have saved Israel much of the media and diplomatic damage. The reason for the delay was a concern for military morale: seeing soldiers of the Naval Commandos—one of the most legendary of all IDF units—being abjectly beaten, and in one case thrown over the side of the boat, is not the sort of imagery the IDF and Israel itself want to project of these fighters.

But if the iron-bars video is problematic in that regard, the new one in which the soldiers shout, in panic, for their lives is even more so. Why, then, was it released now, when the UN Security Council, with President Obama’s acquiescence, has already condemned Israel over the incident, the UN Human Rights Council is preparing another Goldstone-type “investigation,” and Israel has generally been dragged through another worldwide round of condemnation? This new video proves beyond a doubt to any reasonable human being that the soldiers finally opened fired, killing nine of their attackers, solely to save their own lives. But what good could it do at this point?

The answer is that Israel realizes its troubles from this incident are not over and indeed are just beginning. Another ship, the Rachel Corrie (named after the young anti-Israeli activist accidentally killed by an IDF bulldozer in 2003), isalready on its way to Gaza from Malta; while carrying only fifteen activists, Irish prime minister Brian Cowen has described it as Irish-owned and is calling on Israel to let it through. A group called the European Campaign to End the Siege on Gaza claims to be planning a new, much larger flotilla than the one intercepted by Israel this week. Newly elected British prime minister David Cameron is calling on Israel to lift the Gaza blockade altogether.

In other words, the democratic world is now getting into the act too—with a vengeance. It was one thing for increasingly-Islamist, Iran- and Syria-friendly, Hamas-supporting Turkey to send the first flotilla. It is quite another thing—and well beyond the usual, de rigueur, but shameful cooperation with Arab-, Islamic-, and “nonaligned”-bloc calumny against Israel in the UN—for Western governments to start getting on this bandwagon as well.

It was in response to the increasingly alarming situation that Israeli prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu gave a brief, terse statement to the nation Wednesday night in which he said: “The state of Israel faces an attack of international hypocrisy. This is not the first time we have faced this; two years ago we faced a massive attack of missiles fired by Hamas who hid behind civilians. Israel went to great lengths to avoid civilian casualties; but whom did the UN condemn? It condemned Israel.”

Noting that “It is our right according to international law to prevent arms smuggling to Gaza and that is why the naval blockade was put in place,” Netanyahu pointed out that two ships intercepted by the Israeli navy in recent years—the Francop in 2009 and the Karine-A in 2002—were carrying hundreds of tons of Iranian-supplied weapons, and that while the smuggling of Iranian weapons into Gaza through tunnels continues, what can be delivered by sea is incomparably vaster and would result in an Iranian port in Gaza threatening not only Tel Aviv but also “other countries in the region.”

Turning finally to the uproar over the Mavi Marmara, Netanyahu, noting that he had talked personally with the wounded soldiers and heard firsthand accounts of how their lives were endangered, stated:

The soldiers defended their lives with incomparable restraint. What would any other country do?… I ask the international community, what would you do instead? We’ll continue to defend our citizens and assert our right to self-defense, which is my first duty as prime minister.

It is important that we stay united on this issue, which is a matter of life and death.

The questions Netanyahu raised are indeed very much open. It is no longer clear whether the international community, including its democratic component, is prepared to tolerate the soldiers of the Jewish state shooting back when shot at by a mob, and no longer clear whether it is prepared to countenance the Jewish state defending itself, or existing, at all. Israel, meanwhile, is still trying to make its case, hardly confident that it makes a difference

Israel bashing hits new peak | Mindelle Jacobs | Columnists | Comment | Calgary Sun.

It’s amazing how many people who don’t live next door to a terrorist state threatening their destruction jump on the propaganda bandwagon to delegitimize Israel.

These armchair critics can sleep quietly in their beds at night, safe in the knowledge they won’t have to dash into bomb shelters as rockets rain down on their heads from a few kilometres away.

Nor will they likely have to worry that a psychopath is going to blow himself up in a crowded downtown spot in an orgy of wanton blood lust.

Israel-bashing reached a new peak this week after nine activists were killed when Israeli navy commandos raided a Turkish ship trying to break Israel’s blockade of the Gaza Strip.

The spectre of mighty Israel going up against a boatload of peaceniks, with resulting bloodshed, has unleashed world outrage and condemnation of Israel, left the Jewish state’s relationship with Turkey in tatters and made Israel even more of a pariah.

It doesn’t matter that, as videos clearly show, the Israeli marines were acting in self-defence after being attacked by a mob wielding clubs and other weapons.

Apparently, it would have been better, from a public relations perspective, if the Israeli commandos had offered no resistance and the mob was allowed to kill them.

PR disaster

Instead, the marines had the temerity to fight back. They are alive, nine activists are tragically dead and Israel has a PR disaster on its hands.

Militarily, Israel may have won this latest skirmish but it lost another propaganda war in what has become a lengthy battle for public opinion.

Questions abound as to whether Israel had the right to stop the Gaza-bound flotilla in international waters.

There was no indication, after all, that Israel was under imminent attack. On the other hand, the Jerusalem Post reported a search of the boat unearthed a cache of bullet-proof vests, night-vision goggles and gas masks.

Strange peaceniks, these people.

One also has to wonder why the flotilla organizers didn’t dock in Israel or Egypt to permit Israeli or Egyptian officials to check for weapons.

Humanitarian goods could have then been transported by land to Gaza. (In fact, Israel routinely transfers humanitarian supplies, including food and medicine, to Gaza.) So the reason for the flotilla was not to get humanitarian goods to Gaza but to break the blockade and force Israel to respond.

Israel’s lengthy marine embargo of Gaza — to prevent the shipment of weapons — may be a terrible tactic because it does more harm than good by further blackening Israel’s reputation.

Hamas happy

It’s a terrific strategy for Hamas supporters because the more people Israel kills — however reluctantly — the happier Hamas is.

Unfortunately, it puts Israel in the impossible situation of being the only country in the world not permitted to defend itself. If it retaliates against thousands of rockets, it’s condemned for unintended civilian casualties. But Hamas terrorists deliberately operate amid civilians, so innocents will die.

No matter how few people Israel kills, it’s always described as a “massacre” in the Arab world. When Muslims slaughter many more Muslims, as in the murder of about 90 Ahmadi Muslims in mosques in Pakistan last Friday, the Arab street is silent.

The Muslim world is awash in internecine terrorism and the world takes no notice. But when a Jew kills a Muslim, Israel-bashers are apoplectic.

These anti-Semites conveniently gloss over the fact that Hamas wants Israel destroyed. That’s like the IRA demanding England as well, or the Tibetans wanting to overrun China or the Kurds vowing to take over Iraq, Iran, Syria and Turkey.

The mind boggles.

via Flotilla aid refused by Hamas.

Senior official: Israel’s decision to release cargo is “Deception.”

Hamas refused on Wednesday to allow the aid equipment that was captured by the IDF aboard the flotilla ships earlier this week to enter the Gaza Strip.
“We refuse to receive the humanitarian aid until all those who were detained aboard the ships are released,” said Ahmed Kurd, Minister for Social Welfare in the Hamas government said. “We also insist that the equipment be delivered in its entirety.”
Kurd said that Israel’s decision to allow a number of wheelchairs to be delivered to the Gaza Strip was a “deception,” claiming that the batteries that operate them had been removed, making them useless.
The Hamas minister said that Israel’s decision to send some of the aid that was seized aboard the ships to the Gaza Strip was designed to divert attention from the “massacre” that took place in the sea.
Calling for lifting the blockade on the Gaza Strip, Kurd welcomed Egypt’s decision to reopen the Rafah border crossing. He expressed hope that the terminal would remain opened on a permanent basis.
Taher a-Nunu, spokesman for the Hamas government, said that the issue of the humanitarian aid would be resolved only through consultations with the organizers of the convoy in Turkey.
He stressed that Hamas’s top priority now was to ensure the release of all those who were detained aboard the ships.
Egyptian authorities on Wednesday banned Hamas’s Minister of Health, Basem Naim, from travelling through the Rafah terminal.
Naim was on his way from the Gaza Strip to attend a conference of the Arab Physicians Union in Algeria when the Egyptians turned him away.
The Egyptians did not offer any explanation for their decision to ban Naim from crossing the Rafah terminal, which was reopened after the confrontation between the IDF and international activists aboard the flotilla aid ships

DEBKAfile, Political Analysis, Espionage, Terrorism, Security.

Tags: Pro-Hamas flotilla Israel-Turkey Rachel Corrie

Rachel Corrie – next blockade challenger

Five planes flew out of Israel Wednesday night, June 2, carrying hundreds of foreign passengers and nine bodies from the Turkish-led flotilla Israeli commandos raided and prevented from breaking the Gazablockade two days ago. After surrendering to Turkey’s ultimatum to release all the passengers, including the seven members of Islamist terrorist groups who assaulted the Israeli boarding party, DEBKAfilereports the Netanyahu government faced a fresh ultimatum from Ankara: Lift the Gaza blockade at once.
In his televised message to the nation Wednesday night , Netanyahu pledged “to continue to uphold our right to self-defense against terror,” but gave no specific undertaking to preserve the blockade.
Our counter-terror sources confirm that for the first time ever, the government in Jerusalem flouted legal and judicial opinion and sent out of Israel’s jurisdiction a pack of terrorists who were filmed attacking Israeli soldiers without trial, together with the bodies of unidentified assailants without giving the investigating authorities a chance to carry out autopsies and find out if they were wanted for security offensives.
After Israel gave way on this, the Erdogan government upped the pressure with further ultimatums.
After declaring it was vital to prevent hundreds of Iranian ships reaching Gaza with thousands of heavy ballistic missiles for Hamas, Netanyahu faced a fresh Turkish demand to lift the blockade on Gaza without delay.
Furthermore, the Irish vessel Rachel Corrie, which was left out of the flotilla after it developed technical trouble, was discovered to have changed course from a direct route to Gaza and headed for a stopover at a Turkish port. DEBKAfile‘s counter-terror sources disclose suspicions in the Israeli government and naval command that the Irish ship would take aboard a new batch of trained Turkish IHH terrorists and head for the Gaza Strip. They might even be the same IHH activists who attacked Israeli commandos on the Marmara and were deported Wednesday.
Erdogan has resolved that this group which he personally sponsored will reach Gaza Port by hook or by crook. It is also feared in Jerusalem that he may attach an escort of Turkish warships and air force jets to accompany the Rachel Corrie and make sure the ship breaks through the blockade to its destination.

The Irish ship was first scheduled to anchor Saturday, June 5, but its detour to Turkey will delay its arrival by a couple of days.

Turkey is turning its back on Europe | SNS | Sagitarius News.

Turkey has harshly criticised Israel for its military assault on a flotilla carrying international aid in the Mediterranean. The Turkish reaction is based on double standards, the press writes, and fears that the country is turning away from Europe and the West.

Turkey’s double standards

Turkey’s comments on Israel’s military attack against an aid flotilla in the Mediterranean betray its double standards, writes the daily Lietuvos Rytas: “Does Ankara have the right to call the Israelis pirates and bandits? Why don’t Turkey and the EU use such terms to describe Egypt, which also blockades the Gaza Strip with military means? And how should we describe Turkey’s war against its own Kurdish citizens who are striving for greater autonomy? Forty thousand people have died in the conflict which has lasted for decades. And how to describe Turkey’s categoric refusal to acknowledge its genocide of the Armenians? Yes, Israel’s leadership has behaved disgracefully, and that must be condemned. … But questioning Israel’s legitimacy and its right to defend itself as the Turkish foreign minister has done testifies to nothing other than hypocrisy and double standards.” (Lietuvos Rytas – Lithuania | 02/06/2010)
Farewell to the West

Turkey is moving further and further away from the West and causing a geopolitical shift within the Atlantic alliance, writes liberal daily La Stampa: “After just under 60 years of economic, political and even military alliance relations between Israel and Turkey have deteriorated dramatically. Yet this is not the beginning but rather the climax of a negative development that has been going on for some time in Ankara’s relations not only with its neighbour Israel but also with the West as a whole. The deadly incident in international waters has triggered a major shift, a geopolitical cataclysm: the breaking away from the Atlantic alliance zone of a country which with 80 million citizens … was a Nato bulwark for decades . … We are facing a profound crisis in the once solid and fruitful relations between Turkey and the West.” (La Stampa – Italy | 02/06/2010)

Ankara must decide

Turkey is acting against Europe’s interests and needs to be clear about its future development, writes the conservative daily ABC commenting on the support for the Gaza Strip aid flotilla and Turkey’s mediating role in the conflict with Iran: “It’s true that Turkey is a large country with an imperial past that can’t be ignored. As an independent nation it has every right to choose its priorities in foreign policy, but as an aspirer to join the European family it should not ignore that there are certain values and interests it cannot afford to neglect. If its objective is to become a regional power in line with its Ottoman past it will have to decide which of its two essences it prefers: being oriented towards Europe or towards the past.” (ABC – Spain | 02/06/2010)

Anchor accuses own network of ‘embarrassing’ bias in Israel coverage | The Daily Caller – Breaking News, Opinion, Research, and Entertainment.

By Anchorman – The Daily Caller | Published: 06/02/10 at 1:10 PM

Israeli students demonstrate in support of Israel, following a deadly raid by Israel’s navy on an aid flotilla bound for the blockaded Gaza Strip, outside Tel Aviv University, in Tel Aviv, Israel Wednesday, June 2, 2010. Israel on Wednesday was deporting the last of the nearly 700 foreign activists detained in a deadly raid on an aid flotilla bound for Palestinians in the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip. (AP Photo/Ariel Schalit)

What you’ re about to read is perfectly true.  I came within a butterfly fart of firing this memo off to my boss this morning in a fit of real rage. But my wife, yet again, intervened.

“You’ve been whining like this for ten years. Just go get a new job,” she said.

“Don’t send that memo!”

She’s right.

I agreed not to push the send button, but only if she let me send the memo to The Daily Caller, minus the names.  I hate writing anonymously. Readers who’ve criticized me for it are totally justified. One of these days I’ll reveal myself to readers of The Daily Caller, but until that new job comes, or I’m fired, which is increasingly likely,  I don’t want to have to pull my kids out of college because of their father’s selfishness. Here’s the memo that I want to send but – under great duress – can’t.

Dear XXXX,

I’m writing for some clarification about how we are supposed to cover the Gaza flotilla story. If we, as a news organization, are supposed to be acting as a public relations arm of Hamas, or Hezbollah, both internationally recognized terrorist organizations,  or if we are supposed to be  jumping on the bandwagon of 1930’s style anti-Semitism that’s presently sweeping much of the world, then we are doing a fine job. If we are supposed to be acting as a news organization that covers the story objectively, then our coverage is a travesty and an embarrassment.

I just finished watching XXXX’s  piece on yesterday’s 5pm newscast, so I could better understand the grotesquely distorted and biased voice-over that ran on this morning’s show.  XXXX interviewed former diplomat Edward Peck, who was onboard the “Gaza Flotilla,” without describing his views on the Middle East. Some perspective would have helped. Among other things, Peck spoke these words, later famously used by the Rev. Jeremiah Wright:”We bombed Hiroshima, we bombed Nagasaki, and we nuked far more than the thousands in New York and the Pentagon, and we never batted an eye…and now we are indignant, because the stuff we have done overseas is now brought back into our own front yards.”

Peck is deeply controversial in other ways. But no mention was made  in XXXX’s story of anything that might cast the slightest doubt on Pecks political motivations.

In addition, remarkably, her piece made no mention  – absolutely none — of the Israeli perspective in this story. For example:

The widely aired (though not here) video that clearly shows an IDF soldier being tossed over a railing, and others being beaten with sticks, was omitted.

The fact that  bullet proof vests and night vision goggles were found among the “humanitarian aid” on the ship was omitted.

IDF video of confiscated knives and metal bars that were apparently used as weapons was omitted.

Information that Israeli soldiers were also wounded and injured was omitted.

Moreover, her piece included no background whatsoever on why Israel’s interception (“attack” as we called it ) of the flotilla would likely have passed muster in any court outside the thug-ridden United Nations.

Nor did viewers get any background about the three-year-old blockade of Gaza, facts such as:

It’s purpose, which is to prevent the shipment of longer-range, more powerful missiles that only ships can carry. Thousands of Hamas rockets are presently pointed at various Israeli cities, towns and schoolyards; the Israeli government estimates that Hamas continues to smuggle tons of explosives per month into Gaza, mostly through tunnels. In the last few years, more than 2,700 rockets have rained down from Gaza on the civilian population of southern Israel.

In 2005, Israel ordered about 8,500 Jewish settlers to evacuate 21 settlements in Gaza, land occupied since the Six-Day War of 1967. Reluctant and emotionally-torn IDF soldiers had to literally pry people from their family homes.  That same land in the year 2010, is now occupied by Hamas training camps.

Gaza is a strategically located port, control of which would complete the encirclement of Israel by it’s sworn enemies, including Hamas and Hezbollah – the latter, of course, being a client of Iran, which is close to acquiring nuclear capability and has threatened repeatedly to wipe Israel off the map.

These are among the perspectives  that were left out of our story.

With all due respect XXXX,  I find our coverage of this an abomination. I feel like I want to wash the slime off me when I get off work.  I’m embarrassed by our coverage.  I take this job and my reputation seriously. But that’s nearly impossible with coverage like this. I hope you’ll respond.

Anchorman

Read more: http://dailycaller.com/2010/06/02/anchor-accuses-own-network-of-embarrassing-bias-in-israel-coverage/#ixzz0plleh14s

YouTube – 2/3 *UPDATE* Netanyahu Speaks about Israeli Flotilla Raid (6.2.10).