WarSclerotic

Military brass contemplating idea of strike against Iran again | ….

For most of the George W. Bush and Obama administrations, the idea of a military strike against Iran’s nuclear facilities, while never formally taken off the table, has been dismissed as the worst possible option for halting Iran’s march towards nuclear weapons. Over the last few months, however, that worst possible option has risen to the status of a possible Plan B.

Defense Secretary Robert Gates, for instance, has gone from arguing “Another war in the Middle East is the last thing we need” in 2008 to saying “I don’t think we’re prepared to even talk about containing a nuclear Iran” in an interview with Fox News last month.

According to Joe Klein, writing in Time, U.S. military leaders have come around to considering the possibility of military action after the failure of some very good negotiated deals.

Klein quotes a recently retired U.S. military official with extensive knowledge of the Iranian issue as saying, “I started to rethink this last November. We offered the Iranians a really generous deal, which their negotiators accepted,” referring to an offer to exchange Iran’s 1.2 tons of low-enriched uranium (3.5% pure) for higher-enriched (20%) uranium for medical research and use. “When the leadership shot that down, I began to think, Well, we made the good-faith effort to engage. What do we do now?”

While negotiations and diplomacy remain the preferred course of action, Klein writes, the repeated rejection of negotiated deals by the Iranian leadership has pushed diplomatic and military leaders into a corner. Klein reports that U.S. military planners have moved well along the path towards planning targeted military strikes, even including the Israelis in the planning process as protection against a rogue strike by the government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Adding to the sudden resurfacing of a military option: the opinion of Sunni Muslim leaders in neighboring Persian Gulf states. Yousef al-Otaiba said on July 6 that he favors a military strike despite the economic and military damage it would likely cause his country, and Klein reports that Saudi officials have vigorously pressed the case for a strike to visiting American diplomats. Several states in the region, including Jordan and Egypt, have stated that if Iran goes nuclear, they will too, adding to the destabilizing threat posed by Iran’s nuclear ambitions.

For now, at least officially, military action against Iran remains unthinkable for the reasons Gates gave back in 2008: the attack would prompt retaliation against America and its allies, including Israel, from Iran and its proxy Hezbollah and infuriate the Russians and Chinese, who the U.S. has been assiduously cultivating as members of a unified front against a nuclear Iran. It could be, as Klein speculates in his article, that the saber-rattling is merely an effort to get Iran to negotiate in earnest, but the track record so far on such efforts suggests that the Iranian leadership remains unwilling to offer more than window dressing. In which case, the talk of military action might be real, and the world should prepare for the worst-case scenario.

Despite “rift,” U.S., Israel talking Iran attack – War Room – Salon.com.

We keep hearing that the governments of both countries are at odds. But apparently not when it comes to this issue

AP/Pablo Martinez Monsivais

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu meets with President Barack Obama in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington, Tuesday, July 6, 2010.

To hear most media tell it before last week’s meeting between Barack Obama and Benjamin Netanyahu, the only relevant question was whether a deep U.S.-Israel “rift” was temporary or permanent.

But the idea of some kind of substantive schism between the two countries has always been a bit comical. As Bloomberg put it in an underappreciated piece last month, “Obama’s Israel Policy Showing No Difference With Clinton-Bush.”

The latest evidence of the non-rift comes in this new Time story in which Joe Klein passes on spin he’s getting from unnamed U.S. and Israeli government sources about the chances of a U.S. attack on Iran supposedly rising (emphasis ours):

Other intelligence sources say that the U.S. Army’s Central Command, which is in charge of organizing military operations in the Middle East, has made some real progress in planning targeted air strikes — aided, in large part, by the vastly improved human-intelligence operations in the region. “There really wasn’t a military option a year ago,” an Israeli military source told me. “But they’ve gotten serious about the planning, and the option is real now.” Israel has been brought into the planning process, I’m told, because U.S. officials are frightened by the possibility that the right-wing Netanyahu government might go rogue and try to whack the Iranians on its own.

Hard to know what to make of this, especially as Klein opts not to let us in on which side is feeding him this information. But high-level military cooperation is a useful reminder that talk of a “rift” between the Obama and Netanyahu is pretty much bunk.

Justin Elliott is a Salon reporter.

Is Russia’s Backing of Iran Sanctions Starting to Fray? – TIME.

For a couple of weeks in June, it seemed like Russia’s stance on Iran was finally coming into line with that of the U.S. President Barack Obama, in one of the biggest achievements so far of his foreign policy, had convinced Russia to support a new round of U.N. sanctions, approved on June 9, meant to stop Iran from building a nuclear bomb. There was a lot of back-patting at the U.N. Security Council, and on June 24, Obama’s political honeymoon with his Russian counterpart, Dmitri Medvedev, reached a high point when the two chowed down at Ray’s Hell Burger outside Washington, D.C., looking friendlier than ever. But this week, with the two presidents back in their respective capitals, Russia is changing its tone on Iran. The Kremlin appears once again to be playing both sides.

On Wednesday, Energy Minister Sergei Shmatko held a meeting in Moscow with Iranian Oil Minister Massoud Mir Kazemi, and afterwards Shmatko announced that Russia was ready to deliver fuel and oil products to Iran. “The sanctions cannot stop us,” he declared. And it is true: the latest round of U.N. sanctions does not forbid fuel sales to Iran, but the unilateral sanctions imposed by the U.S. and Europe do. Russia’s decision therefore still has a touch of defiance and seems aimed at demonstrating its independence from the West on the Iran dilemma. At the press conference, Kazemi made it clear that this effort was working. “Independent countries are truly cooperating with Iran,” he said. 

The following day, Russia took this initiative further by suggesting it might still sell S-300 missile systems to Iran under an existing contract. For years, Iran has been desperate to buy these rockets, which would make its nuclear installations practically invulnerable to attacks from the air. But the U.S. and Israel, who still consider airstrikes a last resort in dealing with Iran’s nuclear program, have pressured Russia not to complete the sale. On June 18, about a week after the U.N. sanctions were adopted, Russia appeared to concede. “Moscow believes that the sanctions resolution clearly forbids the sale of the S-300 system to Iran,” Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Denisov told Russia’s state news agency RIA Novosti that day. Later in June, experts from Russia’s Federal Service for Military and Technical Cooperation also concluded that these weapons could not be sold to Iran under the new U.N. sanctions. The Israelis and the U.S. breathed a sigh of relief.

But on Thursday, Sergei Chemezov, the head of Russia’s state weapons exporter and a long-time friend of Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, said the sale had not been frozen. “The final decision on signing or dropping the contract must be made by the President,” Chemezov said at a summit on Russian-German relations in the Russian city of Ekaterinburg.

This puts Medvedev in a very tough spot. Since the summer of 2008, when Obama announced his drive to move beyond Cold War rivalries and reset U.S.-Russian relations, he and his Russian counterpart have developed a personal rapport. Sitting in their shirtsleeves in Ray’s Hell Burger, they seemed the picture of camaraderie, and a few days earlier, Medvedev could hardly contain his glee as he toured Silicon Valley, the symbol of American ingenuity that he has staked his presidency on emulating at home.

But this relationship has always come with demands on Medvedev, with a strong stance against Iran near the top of the list. On this issue in particular, Medvedev has delivered on several occasions. Indeed, at the same summit on Thursday where Chemezov made his surprise comments about selling Iran the S-300s, Medvedev said at a separate press conference that Russia “was not indifferent” to the military components of Iran’s nuclear program. “Iran must find the courage to start full-fledged cooperation with the international community, even if it does not like some of the questions that are posed,” he said, sitting alongside German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who had flown in for the summit.

At the same time, Medvedev realizes that sidelining Iran would come at a serious price, not least of all for Russia’s budget. The S-300 contract is worth around $800 million, and if Russia fails to honor it, Iran has said it would impose a penalty that experts estimate at another $400 million. The Islamic Republic could also refuse to buy any more military products from Russia in the future, leading to an estimated loss of up to $500 million per year, according to an investigative report published on June 30 by the daily newspaper Nezavisimaya Gazeta. The report also noted that China, Russia’s emerging rival in the arms trade, would be happy to take its place.

On the security front, Moscow also has a lot to lose. Insurgents and advisers from Arab states are regularly caught in the mountains of the North Caucasus, the hub of the Muslim insurgency fighting to turn part of Russia into an Islamic caliphate. No evidence has ever surfaced of Iran financing these insurgents. But if it begins to count Russia as one of its enemies — as it had threatened to do in the lead-up to the June U.N. sanctions vote — experts say that Iran could throw its weight behind jihadis in Russia, just as it does in Israel for terrorist groups like Hezbollah and Hamas. Likewise in Central Asia, a patchwork of predominantly Muslim states, Iran could position itself against Russia as a rival for influence, particularly in Tajikistan, which shares strong cultural and linguistic ties with Iran.

“So if it wants, Iran has many ways of inflicting damage on Russia, of shifting the security landscape in Central Asia and the Caucasus in a way that could destabilize the region,” says Fyodor Lukyanov, political analyst and editor of the journal Russia in Global Affairs. “It has not yet done that, but if there is a radical change in relations with Russia, it can.” Lukyanov says that Russia has already gone as far as it can in alienating Iran to please the U.S, and Obama will need to offer Russia some major rewards if he wants an even tougher stand on the nuclear issue. But with Russia now appearing to backpedal on its support for sanctions, such rewards might be necessary just to get the Kremlin to keep the promises it’s already made.

Palestinians ‘preparing’ for Israeli strike on Iran.

By Aaron Klein
© 2010 WorldNetDaily

JERUSALEM – The Palestinian Authority has told its intelligence and security agencies to study the consequences of an Israeli strike against Iran’s nuclear facilities, WND has learned.

The PA directed its intelligence agencies to prepare a study detailing the affect an Israeli strike on Iran would have on so-called Palestinian refugees in Iraq, Lebanon and Syria, according to Palestinian security sources.

The sources said PA agencies also were told to prepare a security contingency plan for dealing with Iranian retaliation against Israel that would include Hamas and other Islamic groups launching attacks against Israel from both the Gaza Strip and PA-patrolled West Bank.

“Among other things, the PA is studying how to get refugees out of Lebanon if Israel retaliates there against Hezbollah,” said one security source.

Israel has long feared that any strike on Iran would result in counter-attacks against the Israeli home front by Iranian proxies, including Hezbollah to the north and Hamas in Gaza toward the south.

Also, there is concern Syria could get involved in any such conflict. Syria is in a military alliance with Iran, although the Obama administration has been trying to woo Syria away from the Iranian axis with little progress.

Syria has advanced missiles and rockets that can blanket every part of Israel, while Hezbollah has rearmed itself with tens of thousands of rockets and missiles since Israel’s 2006 war that targeted Hezbollah in Lebanon.

The news of the PA preparing a response to a possible Israeli strike on Iran came as Hezbollah’s second-in-command, Naim Kassem, claimed in an interview published yesterday that his group has a “large and precise” list of Israeli targets to attack if a war breaks out.

“We now hold a large and precise bank of Israeli targets, and Israel will have to pay the price for any step it takes,” Kassem said to the An-Nahar newspaper, according to Agence-France Presse.

“Hezbollah has worked to develop its readiness to rise to the challenge should it arise, and we can safely say that in the past four years we have prepared ourselves far more than Israel has,” he said.

Kassem denied Hezbollah is seeking a fight.

“That does not mean that war is near,” he said.

An Attack on Iran: Back on the Table – TIME.

In late 2006, George W. Bush met with the Joint Chiefs of Staff at the Pentagon and asked if military action against Iran’s nuclear program was feasible. The unanimous answer was no. Air strikes could take out some of Iran’s nuclear facilities, but there was no way to eliminate all of them. Some of the nuclear labs were located in heavily populated areas; others were deep underground. And Iran’s ability to strike back by unconventional means, especially through its Hizballah terrorist network, was formidable. The military option was never officially taken off the table. At least, that’s what U.S. officials always said. But the emphasis was on the implausibility of a military strike. “Another war in the Middle East is the last thing we need,” Secretary of Defense Robert Gates wrote in 2008. It would be “disastrous on a number of levels.” (See pictures of President Bush in the Middle East.)

Gates is sounding more belligerent these days. “I don’t think we’re prepared to even talk about containing a nuclear Iran,” he told Fox News on June 20. “We do not accept the idea of Iran having nuclear weapons.” In fact, Gates was reflecting a new reality in the military and intelligence communities. Diplomacy and economic pressure remain the preferred means to force Iran to negotiate a nuclear deal, but there isn’t much hope that’s going to happen. “Will [sanctions] deter them from their ambitions with regards to nuclear capability?” CIA Director Leon Panetta told ABC News on June 27. “Probably not.” So the military option is very much back on the table.

What has changed? “I started to rethink this last November,” a recently retired U.S. official with extensive knowledge of the issue told me. “We offered the Iranians a really generous deal, which their negotiators accepted,” he went on, referring to the offer to exchange Iran’s 1.2 tons of low-enriched uranium (3.5% pure) for higher-enriched (20%) uranium for medical research and use. “When the leadership shot that down, I began to think, Well, we made the good-faith effort to engage. What do we do now?” (See pictures of terror in Tehran.)

Other intelligence sources say that the U.S. Army’s Central Command, which is in charge of organizing military operations in the Middle East, has made some real progress in planning targeted air strikes — aided, in large part, by the vastly improved human-intelligence operations in the region. “There really wasn’t a military option a year ago,” an Israeli military source told me. “But they’ve gotten serious about the planning, and the option is real now.” Israel has been brought into the planning process, I’m told, because U.S. officials are frightened by the possibility that the right-wing Netanyahu government might go rogue and try to whack the Iranians on its own. (Comment on this story.)

One other factor has brought the military option to a low boil: Iran’s Sunni neighbors really want the U.S. to do it. When United Arab Emirates Ambassador Yousef al-Otaiba said on July 6 that he favored a military strike against Iran despite the economic and military consequences to his country, he was reflecting an increasingly adamant attitude in the region. Senior American officials who travel to the Gulf frequently say the Saudis, in particular, raise the issue with surprising ardor. Everyone from the Turks to the Egyptians to the Jordanians are threatening to go nuclear if Iran does. That is seen as a real problem in the most volatile region in the world: What happens, for example, if Saudi Arabia gets a bomb, and the deathless monarchy there is overthrown by Islamist radicals?

For the moment, the White House remains as skeptical as ever about a military strike. Most senior military leaders also believe Gates got it right the first time — even a targeted attack on Iran would be “disastrous on a number of levels.” It would unify the Iranian people against the latest in a long series of foreign interventions. It would also unify much of the world — including countries like Russia and China that we’ve worked hard to cultivate — against a recowboyfied U.S. There would certainly be an Iranian reaction — in Iraq, in Afghanistan, by Lebanese Hizballah against Israel and by the Hizballah network against the U.S. and Saudi homelands. A catastrophic regional war is not impossible. (See who’s who in Barack Obama’s White House.)

Of course, it is also possible that this low-key saber-rattling is simply a message the U.S. is trying to send the Iranians: it’s time to deal. There have been rumblings from Tehran about resuming negotiations, although the regime has very little credibility right now. The assumption — shared even by some of Iran’s former friends, like the Russians — is that any Iranian offer to talk is really an offer to stall. A specific, plausible Iranian concession may be needed to get the process back on track. But it is also possible that the saber-rattling is not a bluff, that the U.S. really won’t tolerate a nuclear Iran and is prepared to do something awful to stop it.

Persian Isolation: A Quiet Axis Forms Against Iran in the Middle East – SPIEGEL ONLINE – News – International.

Israel and the Arab states near the Persian Gulf recognize a common threat: the regime in Tehran. A regional diplomat has not even ruled out support by the Arab states for a military strike to end Iran’s nuclear ambitions.

It is early in the morning on the wharfs in Sharjah, just below the Museum of Islamic Civilization, where the heavy wooden ships known as dhows are being loaded with cargo. Pakistani laborers hoist engine blocks, plasma monitors and mineral oil into the ships’ holds. When asked where the dhows are headed, they say, matter-of-factly: “Iran.”

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Trade between the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and their neighbor across the Strait of Hormuz is an everyday occurrence that hardly deserves mention on the docks.

The same families are often on both shores. The business relationships between them have grown over generations and are more enduring than any war or embargo.

Of course, shipping engine blocks to the Iranian port city of Bandar-e Lengeh is not prohibited. But the busy import and export trade in the dhow ports of the emirates of Sharjah, Dubai and Ras al-Khaimah shows how difficult it is to isolate Tehran.

‘Astonishingly Honest’

This makes the words uttered last Tuesday by the UAE’s ambassador to the United States, Yousef Al Otaiba, in Aspen, Colorado, more than 12,500 kilometers to the west, all the more interesting. Otaiba was attending a forum at the Aspen Institute’s Ideas Festival, and the mood was relaxed, or at least it was too relaxed for diplomatic restraint.

The discussion revolved around the Middle East. When asked whether the UAE would support a possible Israeli air strike against the regime in Tehran, Ambassador Otaiba said: “A military attack on Iran by whomever would be a disaster, but Iran with a nuclear weapon would be a bigger disaster.”

These were unusually candid words. A military strike, the diplomat continued, would undoubtedly lead to a “backlash.” “There will be problems of people protesting and rioting and very unhappy that there is an outside force attacking a Muslim country,” he said.

But, he added, “if you are asking me, ‘Am I willing to live with that versus living with a nuclear Iran,’ my answer is still the same. We cannot live with a nuclear Iran. I am willing to absorb what takes place at the expense of the security of the U.A.E.”

Democratic Congresswoman Jane Harman said afterwards that she had never heard anything like it coming from an Arab government official. Otaiba, she added, was “astonishingly honest.”

Notwithstanding the shocking nature of his remarks, Otaiba was merely expressing, in a public forum, “the standard position of many Arab countries,” says Middle East expert Jeffrey Goldberg, a writer for The Atlantic Monthly who moderated the panel discussion in Aspen.

The fact that some Western politicians are unfamiliar with this position has to do with their own ignorance, and with the diplomatic skill with which the smaller Gulf states, in particular, have managed to hide their opposition to their powerful neighbor until now.

“The Jews and Arabs have been fighting for one hundred years. The Arabs and the Persians have been going at (it) for a thousand,” argues Goldberg on The Atlantic‘s Web site.

Almost all Arab neighbors have a hostile relationship with the Islamic Republic. Saudi Arabia suspects Iran of stirring up the Shiite minority in its eastern provinces. The Arab emirates accuse Iran of occupying three islands in the Persian Gulf. Egypt has not had regular diplomatic relations with Iran since a street in Tehran was named after the murderer of former Egyptian President Anwar el-Sadat.

Jordanian King Abdullah II warns against the establishment of a “Shiite crescent” between Iran and Lebanon. And Kuwait, fearing the Iranians, installed the Patriot air defense missile system in the spring.

Closely Aligned

Arab governments are concerned about a strong Iran, its nuclear program and the inflammatory speeches of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. They share these concerns with another government in the Middle East — Israel’s.

Never have the strategic interests of the Jewish and Arab states been so closely aligned as they are today. While European and American security experts consistently characterize a military strike against Iran as “a last option,” notable Arabs have long shared the views of Israel’s ultra-nationalist foreign minister, Avigdor Lieberman. If no one else takes it upon himself to bomb Iran, Saudi cleric Mohsen al-Awaji told SPIEGEL, Israel will have to do it. “Israel’s agenda has its limits,” he said, noting that it is mainly concerned with securing its national existence. “But Iran’s agenda is global.”

Sometimes that agenda leads to actions that are as absurd as they are typical. In February, for example, Tehran issued a landing ban on all airlines that used the phrase “Arab Gulf” instead of “Persian Gulf” in their on-board programming.

But Arab countries are pursuing a delicate seesaw policy. The UAE cannot afford to openly offend Iran, which explains why Ambassador Otaiba was promptly ordered to return home on Wednesday.

This caution only conceals the deep divide between the Arabs and the Persians. Despite their public expressions of outrage over Israeli behavior, such as the blockade of the Gaza Strip, Arab countries in the region continue to pursue their pragmatic course. On June 12, The Times in London wrote that Saudi Arabia had recently “conducted tests to stand down its air defenses to enable Israeli jets to make a bombing raid on Iran’s nuclear facilities” — in the event of an attack on the nuclear power plant in Bushehr. In March, Western intelligence agencies reported that there were signs of secret negotiations between Jerusalem and Riyadh to discuss the possibility.

“We are aligned (with the United States) on every policy issue there is in the Middle East,” Ambassador Otaiba said in Aspen.

Pragmatism and Shifting Alliances

“The UAE has chosen to side with the camp of those who apply to the letter the new United Nations resolution of June 9,” wrote French philosopher Bernard-Henri Lévy, noting that it was “truly a blow to the regime” in Iran. For Lévy, the “union sacrée” of Muslim countries against the “Zionist enemy” is a fantasy. The countries that feel threatened by Tehran, he added, now have the opportunity to form an alliance of convenience.

Next to Jordan, the UAE is the only Arab country with soldiers deployed in Afghanistan — fighting on the side of the United States. Abu Dhabi, the richest of the seven emirates, has reportedly been pressuring Dubai to keep closer tabs on the many influential Iranians living there.

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In late June, the UAE’s central bank froze 41 accounts, some of which could be directly linked to Iran’s Revolutionary Guard. The accounts were allegedly being used to conduct transactions tied to the smuggling of materials listed under the embargo against Iran.

Before that, the UAE had announced tighter controls on ships in the Dubai free trade zone. “Security forces have interdicted scores of ships suspected of carrying illicit cargo,” said Hamad Al Kaabi, the UAE’s permanent representative to the International Atomic Energy Agency.

The Arab nations on the Gulf are pursuing realpolitik in their dealings with Iran. When in doubt, they come down on the side of the Americans, but they prefer to pursue the route of negotiation and trade. The ruler of a Gulf emirate recently told a delegation of senior European politicians: “The best way to handle the Iranians is to trade with them.”

Translated from the German by Christopher Sultan

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Moscow pledges Tehran oil products – against US embargo

July 15, 2010

DEBKAfile, Political Analysis, Espionage, Terrorism, Security.

DEBKAfile Special Report July 15, 2010, 11:16 AM (GMT+02:00)

Tags: energy deal Russia-Iran US sanctions for Iran

Sergei Shmatko opens Russian energy lifeline for Iran

Countering the new US embargo on petroleum and oil distillates embargo on Iran, Russian Energy Minister Sergei Shmatko and Iranian Oil Minister Masud Mir-Kazemi Wednesday, July 14 signed a series of far-reaching energy-related agreements, including a deal to sell Tehran Russian petroleum products and petrochemicals.

debkafile‘s Moscow sources report that the pacts aim squarely at the law signed by President Barack Obama on July 2 to hit Iran’s Revolutionary Guards Corps’ prime source of income, imported refined oil products including gasoline. The Russian and Iranian energy ministers contracted specifically to “increase cooperation in transit, swaps and marketing of natural gas as well as sales of petroleum products and petrochemicals.”
The accords also set up “a joint bank to help fund bilateral energy projects.”

This latter provision bypasses the US ban on the banks and insurance companies involved in funding refined oil supplies to Iran by creating a shared banking instrument for handling the funding of fuel purchases. Russian insurance firms connected with the new joint bank may insure shipments.
By this step, Moscow moved to offset the penalties America imposed on Iran in the wake of UN Security Council sanctions of June 9 and challenged the United States to blacklist Russian firms by invoking the new US law closing American markets to companies and banks doing energy business with Iran.

Important multinationals have already complied with this US edict, including two oil giants, the American-British BP and the French Total – which have ordered their vast networks of partners and subsidiaries to deny fuel to Iranian consumers – and Lloyds insurance as well as the United Arab Emirates.

But punishing Russian breakers of the US sanction could trigger a serious crisis in relations with Russia.
Sources on Moscow do not believe Obama will find upsetting his newly “reset” ties with Russian President Dmitry Medvedev and Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin worth the candle, especially in the light of the new joint mechanisms and bank for conducting their business.
At the same time, debkafile sources predict that US inaction against the Russian sanctions-busting transactions with Iran will encourage other countries and international business interests, particularly in the Caucasus and Central Asia which share borders with Iran, to follow their lead and defy the US embargo.
According to the latest rumors flying around the oil markets, China and Turkey are willing to help Iran evade the fuel sanctions. Pictures have appeared in some Western media showing long convoys of hundreds of fuel tankers standing by on the Iraqi Kurdistan border and waiting to cross into Iran to deliver tons of petroleum.
Even the heavy presence of US and Iraqi troops nearby appears to pose no deterrent to the prospective traffic – much less its absence on Iran’s other borders.

An important factor too is Putin’s personal and active support – disclosed here by debkafile‘s Moscow sources – for the mechanisms to break Obama’s anti-Iran fuel embargo.

These mechanisms could not have been set up overnight; they required time and attention. So they must have been completed by Monday, July 12, when President Medvedev commented that Iran was closer than ever to building a nuclear weapon, knowing that the US maneuver for deterring Iran from making the last leap in its race for a nuke was about to be sabotaged by his own government.

As for the impact on Israel, debkafile‘s sources note that the Russian step has demolished the last remnant of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s strategy which, during all his eighteen months in office, relied on Tehran being held back from attaining a nuclear weapon by expanded international sanctions harsh enough to hurt its economy. He trusted Obama’s new energy sanctions to be the ultimate preventative – until Wednesday, when Moscow stepped in to pull their punch.

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