WarSclerotic

DEBKAfile, Political Analysis, Espionage, Terrorism, Security.

Tags: Israel-Greece

Greek FM George Panadreou shows interest

Israel has finally moved on from its fractured relationship with Turkey – notwithstanding the impression conveyed by some US and Israeli circles that the damage is not beyond repair. This week, the Israeli Minister of Trade and Labor Minister, Binyamin Ben-Eliezer made last-ditch bid to save the relationship by initiating a meeting in Zurich with Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutolu. It went badly and was hotly debated at the Israeli cabinet meeting Sunday, July 4. Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu said he thought it was worth a try, but most ministers said that given Ankara’s harsh hostility, it should never have taken place.
Meanwhile, as Western and Turkish media outlets harped on Israel’s loss of its only Muslim ally in the Middle East, Jerusalem was busy acquiring a new strategic partner:  Greece, a NATO member like Turkey with plenty of Middle East interests, has shown interest in stepping into Turkey’s shoes and investing in stronger military and intelligence ties.
DEBKA-Net-Weekly 450 reported on June 25 from sources in Athens and Jerusalem that this development was not so much planned in Jerusalem as initiated by Greek Prime Minister George Papandreou, who boasts many Jewish and Israeli friends and business contacts, some of whom hold high political and intelligence positions in Israel. He saw Athens’ chance to slot into Ankara’s place in Jerusalem and transform their present diplomatic, economic, military and intelligence ties into a thriving strategic alliance, that would carry the same advantages to both sides as did Israel’s former relations with Turkey.
According to some sources, Papandreou also hopes this alliance will help ease some of his country’s financial woes. But most of all, he is looking to Israel for help in speeding the upgrade of his armed forces and helping transform them into the Christian mainstay of NATO in the Balkans and southern Europe – in place of the Muslim Turkish army.

This notion was not the direct outcome of Israel’s break with Turkey or the clash aboard the Turkish Mavi Marmara on May 31 between Israeli commandos and pro-Palestinian Turkish activists. It has been evolving for some time, first broached in the summer of 2008 when Papandreou allowed 100 Israeli F-15 and F-16 fighter-bombers to pass through Greek Mediterranean air space for practicing long flights and in-flight fueling.

The distance between Israel and Greece there and back is 1,900 kilometers, identical to the distance between Israel and Iran.

The Greek prime minister went out of his way to be of assistance, making available to the Israeli Air Force the crews and advanced S-300 PMU1interceptor missile batteries Athens purchased from Russia back in 2000. They were allowed to practice bombing sorties against these batteries, in case Moscow decided to sell them to Iran and Syria.

The severe financial crisis besetting Greece this year enhanced the friendly ties between Athens and Jerusalem. While European Union countries spent long months discussing whether to bail Greece out and save it from collapse (eventually granting a €110 billion package), Papandreou turned to Jewish financial titans in Europe and the United States for help to keep the Greek economy afloat.

DEBKAfile, Political Analysis, Espionage, Terrorism, Security.

Iran Air grounded by US sanctions

The new US sanctions covering the sale to Iran of refined oil products including gasoline and jet oil, which President Barak Obama signed into law Friday, July 2, have gone into action, debkafile‘s Iranian and military sources report. Monday, July 5, Mehdi Aliyari, secretary of Iranian Airlines Union, said airports in Britain, Germany, Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates had refused to refuel Iranian passenger planes. He said the cutoff affected the national carrier Iran Air and the biggest Iranian private airline Mahan Air, both of which operate several flights to Europe.

Following this announcement, a spokeswoman of the oil giant BPsaid “we will comply with any international sanctions that are imposed.  And that goes also for the new round of US sanctions following a decision by Congress.” Around Friday, BP sent faxes to its refueling operations in some European countries, including those owned with partners, ordering a ban on refueling for several Iranian airlines, including Iran Air.
BP is under US pressure over the Gulf of Mexico oil spill.
The fuel cutoff comes in the middle of the summer holiday rush to and from Iran, forcing holiday-makers to resort to the few foreign airlines putting into Tehran for their overseas flights.

Tehranis particularly put out by the refusal of the United Arab Emirates’ international airport in Dubai to provide fueling services. It is a transit hub for the many of millions of Iranians who fly to Persian Gulf and Middle East destinations. So central is this facility to Iran’s international air connections that it has two terminals, one for ordinary traffic and one just for Iranian flights.
Pervez Sorouri, a lawmaker and member of Iranian parliament’s committee on foreign policy and national security, warned Tehran would take retaliatory action for these sanctions, especially towards the United Arab Emirates. An Abu Dhabi Airports Company spokeswoman later denied it had stopped supplying Iranian jets with fuel.
The UK’s Civil Aviation Authority reacted to the Iranian statement by saying this move would be down to individual fuel companies and Germany’s Transport Ministry would not comment on whether individual providers were refusing to fuel Iranian aircraft.

Both commented that US sanctions prohibit the sale to Iran of refined petroleum products worth more than $5 million over a year and were being careful not to exceed this amount.
But all three were clearly prompted by the Iranian threat of retaliation to issue equivocal statements about their actions.
According to debkafile, the Iranian man in the street will very soon feel the rough edge of the new American measures. The cost of foreign air travel will very shortly shoot up, along with domestic flights which are the lifeline of business activity in the country. The rising price of gasoline is bound to affect food prices; so too will soaring insurance rates for shipping fuel and other merchandize to the Islamic Republic.
Since Friday, Iranian leaders have been telling the public that the new US sanctions will not affect their lives and their government has set up alternative arrangements to bypass them. But they will now have a hard time explaining away penalties that affect the life of every individual and family.
Saturday, after learning its passenger flights would be denied fuel, Iran’s leaders held an emergency conference to decide how to react. When President Obama signed the new sanctions Friday, our Iranian sources reported that Tehran was bound to retaliate – either against oil shipping bound for the US, Europe and the Far East from Saudi Arabia and the Persian Gulf – with immediate effect on world oil prices – or some other means.
For debkafile‘s report on the first Iranian threats in response to the new US sanctions, click here

Diplomatic Memo – Nudge on Arms Further Divides U.S. and Israel – NYTimes.com.

WASHINGTON — It was only one paragraph buried deep in the most plain-vanilla kind of diplomatic document, 40 pages of dry language committing 189 nations to a world free of nuclear weapons. But it has become the latest source of friction between Israel and the United States in a relationship that has lurched from crisis to crisis over the last few months.

At a meeting to review the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty in May, the United States yielded to demands by Arab nations that the final document urge Israel to sign the treaty — a way of spotlighting its historically undeclared nuclear weapons.

Israel believed it had assurances from the Obama administration that it would reject efforts to include such a reference, an Israeli official said, and it saw this as another sign of unreliability by its most important ally. In a recent visit to Washington, Israel’s defense minister, Ehud Barak, raised the issue in meetings with senior American officials.

With Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu scheduled to meet President Obama on Tuesday at the White House, the flap may introduce a discordant note into a meeting that both sides are eager to portray as a chance for Israel and the United States to turn the page after a rocky period.

Other things have changed notably for the better in American-Israeli relations since Mr. Netanyahu called off his last visit to the White House to rush home to deal with the crisis after Israel’s deadly attack on a humanitarian aid flotilla sailing to Gaza in late May. His agreement to ease the land blockade on Gaza, which came at the request of the United States, has helped thaw the chill between the governments, American and Israeli officials said.

Meanwhile, the raft of new sanctions against Iran over its nuclear program, after the passage of the United Nations resolution, has reassured Israelis, who viewed Mr. Obama’s attempts to engage Iran with unease. Mr. Obama signed the American sanctions into law on Thursday.

“The overall tone is more of a feel-good visit than we’ve seen in the past,” said David Makovsky, director of the Project on the Middle East Peace Process at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, a research group. “It has been more focused on making sure that the Ides of March have passed.”

He was referring to the dispute during a visit to Israel by Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. in March, when Israel approved plans for Jewish housing in East Jerusalem. Mr. Obama was enraged by what he perceived as a slight to Mr. Biden, and when Mr. Netanyahu visited a few weeks later, the While House showed its displeasure by banning cameras from recording the visit.

But despite the better atmospherics, some analysts said the nuclear nonproliferation issue symbolizes why Israel remains insecure about the intentions of the Obama administration. In addition to singling out Israel, the document, which has captured relatively little public attention, calls for a regional conference in 2012 to lay the groundwork for a nuclear-free zone in the Middle East. Israel, whose nuclear arsenal is one of the world’s worst-kept secrets, would be on the hot seat at such a meeting.

At the last treaty review conference, in 2005, the Bush administration refused to go along with any references to Israel, one of several reasons the meeting ended in acrimony, without any statement.

This time, Israel believed the Obama administration would again take up its cause. As a non-signatory to the treaty, Israel did not attend the meeting. But American officials consulted the Israelis on a text in advance, which they found acceptable, a person familiar with those discussions said. That deepened their surprise at the end.

Administration officials said the United States negotiated for months with Egypt, on behalf of the Arab states, to leave out the reference to Israel. While the United States supports the goal of a nuclear-free Middle East, it stipulated that any conference would be only a discussion, not the beginning of a negotiation to compel Israel to sign on to the treaty.

The United States practices a policy of ambiguity with respect to Israel’s nuclear stockpile, neither publicly discussing it nor forcing the Israeli government to acknowledge its existence.

The United States, recognizing that the document would upset the Israelis, sought to distance itself even as it signed it.

In a statement released after the conference ended, the national security adviser, Gen. James L. Jones, said, “The United States deplores the decision to single out Israel in the Middle East section of the NPT document.” He said it was “equally deplorable” that the document did not single out Iran for its nuclear ambitions. Any conference on a nuclear-free Middle East, General Jones said, could only come after Israel and its neighbors had made peace.

The United States, American officials said, faced a hard choice: refusing to compromise with the Arab states on Israel would have sunk the entire review conference. Given the emphasis Mr. Obama has placed on nonproliferation, the United States could not accept such an outcome.

It also would complicate the administration’s attempts to build bridges to the Arab world, an effort that is at the heart of some of the disagreements between the United States and Israel.

Mr. Netanyahu and Mr. Obama will have plenty of other things to discuss this week. After several rounds of indirect talks, brokered by the administration’s special envoy, George J. Mitchell, the United States is pushing the Israelis and the Palestinians to begin direct negotiations.

A central question, analysts said, is whether Mr. Netanyahu will extend Israel’s self-imposed moratorium on new residential construction in West Bank settlements, which expires in September. He is unlikely to take such a step unless the Palestinians agree to face-to-face talks, they said.

For Mr. Obama and Mr. Netanyahu, the most basic priority may be establishing trust between them — which is why the flap over the nuclear conference, though small, is potentially troublesome.

“Most American presidents who end up being successful on Israel manage to create, even amid great mistrust and suspicion, a pretty good working relationship,” said Aaron David Miller, a longtime Middle East peace negotiator. “This has been a real crisis of confidence, which cuts to the core of how each leader sees his respective world.”

DEBKAfile, Political Analysis, Espionage, Terrorism, Security.

(If I were Israel, I would take out that radar NOW via cruise missile.  Nothing more.  Just take it OUT. – JW)

Tags: Iranian-Syrian radar Lebanon Mt. Sannine US intelligence

Iranian mobile radar, installed in Lebanon

Syria has posted the advanced early warning radar it received from Iran – not on its own soil but on the highest peak of neighboring Lebanon, according to debkafile‘s military and intelligence sources. From Mount Sannine in central Lebanon, the new facility provides early warning against a possible surprise Israeli missile or aerial attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities and extends the span of Iranian and Syrian electronic surveillance to include Israeli air space the south and the eastern-central Mediterranean to the west.
Friday, July 2, State Department spokesman Philip Crowley confirmed the Wall Street Journal’s disclosure that Iran had transfer of the high-tech radar to Syria. He said this move was of concern “due to Syria’s relationship with Hizballah,” adding “We don’t believe that Iran’s designs for the region are in Syria’s best interest.”
According to our sources, there is nothing new in this disclosure. The new radar was deployed on Mt. Sannine ten months ago, complete with Iranian and Syrian radar operators. Hizballah was made responsible for guarding the facility and keeping approach roads clear, as well as bringing supplies to the Iranian-Syrian crews on the mountain. Syria trained the Lebanese Shiite extremists in the use of the anti-air missile batteries for securing the site.

On July 12, 2008, debkafile first revealed that Hizballah had just commandeered the 7,880- foot Mt. Sannine northeast of Beirut at the behest of Tehran and Damascus, followed by Mount Barukh, which is half the height and situated in the Chouf Mountains much closer to South Lebanon (and the Israeli border).
In late 2009, the radar position was put in there and Iranian mobile systems installed on Mt. Barukh – in line with the strategy agreed by Iran and Syria to extend their watch on Israel and the US Sixth Fleet.
Israel’s leaders held back from interfering with the Iranian-Syrian-Hizballah seizure of these strategic positions across its northern border and the installation of an advanced Iranian radar facility, just as they have since avoided blocking Hizballah’s massive armament with smuggled Iranian and Syrian ballistic missiles.

Washingtontoo turned a blind eye to this Iranian strategic outpost – until now. It was allowed to leak in the wake of the difficult conversation President Barack Obama had with Saudi King Abdullah at the White House Tuesday, June 29.
He taxed the king with recent reports about Riyadh’s willingness to provide an air corridor for Israeli bombers bound for attacks on Iran’s nuclear facilities. But Abdullah declined to confirm or deny them and waved the subject aside.
The belated disclosure of the Mt. Sannine facility was directed at the Saudi king, intended to warn him that Iran’s early warning electronic station in Lebanon had pre-empted the Israeli option of a surprise attack on its nuclear facilities. Riyadh would therefore be well advised to drop its plan to back an Israeli operation for disposing of their shared Iranian nuclear threat.

Ahmadinejad: New sanctions ‘pathetic’.

Mullen: Iran will continue to strive for nukes – Saturday, July 3, 2010 | 12:34 a.m. – Las Vegas Sun.

The Associated Press

Saturday, July 3, 2010 | 12:34 a.m.

Adm. Mike Mullen said Monday he believes Iran will continue to pursue nuclear weapons, even if sanctions against the country are increased.

Speaking at the Aspen Security Forum, the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff said it would be “incredibly dangerous” for Iran to achieve nuclear weapons, and that there’s “no reason to trust” Iran’s assurances that it is only pursuing a peaceful nuclear program, especially after the discovery of the secret nuclear facility in Qom.

But he said a military strike against Iran would be “incredibly destabilizing” to the region, and that he believed U.S. ally Israel understands that. The admiral was responding to questions about whether he shared the assessment of CIA Director Leon Panetta, who said on Sunday that Iran likely has enough nuclear material to make two weapons, but is at least a year away from being able to carry that out.

Mullen has just returned from a multination tour that included a stop in Tel Aviv, where he met with his Israeli military counterpart to discuss Iran’s continuing defiance of the international community over the nuclear issue.

The U.N. Security Council approved new sanctions against Iran earlier this month. Congress and the European Union followed with additional measures aimed at discouraging Iran from continuing its uranium enrichment program, which they fear could be used to produce a nuclear weapon.

Mullen said there was no reason to expect Iran to conform to international norms, given its past behavior, but he declined to describe what measures the U.S. was considering. He has often said that all options remain on the table.

He explained that the hardest part about trying to decide what to do about Iran is how much the U.S. does not know about the country’s nuclear progress.

When asked whether he thought Israel would give the United States time to see whether tougher sanctions or talks would produce more cooperation from Iran, he would only say that he believes the U.S. and Israel are “in synch” with their current policies.

UN: New Lebanon-Israel conflict possible.

‘Scud reports add to tensions’.

Sharmine Narwani: The U.S. Military ‘Mainstreams’ Hezbollah and Hamas.

(If this article is at all correct it means the US policymakers are beginning to actually believe their own wishful thinking.  God help the US, Israel and the civilized world…)

Hezbollah and Hamas just went mainstream. According to Foreign Policy magazine’s Mark Perry, in a recent US military report “senior CENTCOM intelligence officers question the current U.S. policy of isolating and marginalizing the two movements” and encourage a “mix of strategies that would integrate the two organizations into their respective political mainstreams.”

The groundbreaking report is a product of CENTCOM’s “Red Team,” a group formed in 2006 to “think outside of the box and offer contrarian thinking” on critical issues for the benefit of senior military officials. The whole point of the Red Team, according to CENTCOM spokesman Major John Redfield, is that “it is meant to sharpen the reasoning and force intellectual rigor on these issues so that we can ultimately produce more informed decision making.”

The extraordinary five-page report entitled “Managing Hezbollah and Hamas” produces some critical conclusions and recommendations — Perry highlights some of these key points in his article:

– The report recognizes Hezbollah and Hamas as “pragmatic and opportunistic,” a nuanced distinction that is a world away from the current one-dimensional U.S. position that simplistically characterizes these groups as “terrorists.”

– The report recommends the integration of Hezbollah and Hamas into their national security forces and governing entities, recognizing that the existing political bodies “represent only a part of the Lebanese and Palestinian populace respectively.”

– The report downplays the view relentlessly promoted by Israel that Hezbollah is merely a proxy for Iran, instead claiming that the Lebanese resistance group’s “activities increasingly reflect the movement’s needs and aspirations in Lebanon.” Tellingly, Foreign Policy magazine also published an interview this week with Israeli Ambassador to Washington Michael Oren, in which he warns that Iran may use Hezbollah and Hamas to start a new Middle East war.

– The report draws parallels between the IRA’s gradual participation in peace talks and the possibility of taking a similar tack to integrate Hezbollah into the Lebanese Armed Forces. Citing a meeting between British Ambassador to Lebanon Frances Guy and Hezbollah in 2009, the report urges the British to pursue further talks with “vigor.”

In a twist I couldn’t possibly make up, an hour before reading Perry’s article, I was meeting with the very same Ambassador Guy, a universally-respected senior diplomat who speaks fluent Arabic and knows her terrain well. In a conversation about the peace process deadlock, I asked about her views on engaging Hamas, which is currently excluded from the talks.

Pointing to Russia’s recent statements advocating for Hamas’ inclusion in direct talks, Ambassador Guy volunteered an increasingly familiar refrain heard in Western policy circles: “You are not going to have peace without Hamas, obviously. They are going to have to be involved eventually.”

-The report, and the officials quoted by Perry, frequently question Israel’s policies and behaviors in regard to both Hezbollah and Hamas, citing the four-year siege of Gaza and 2006 attack on Lebanon as examples of failed initiatives. Perry, an experienced military analyst and author of eight books, says “the CENTCOM team directly repudiates Israel’s publicly stated view — that the two movements are incapable of change and must be confronted with force.” The report underlines this fact: “failing to recognize their separate grievances and objectives will result in continued failure in moderating their behavior.”

“Putting Hizballah, Hamas, the Muslim Brotherhood and al Qaeda in the same sentence, as if they are all the same, is just stupid,” says one of Perry’s military sources. “I don’t know any intelligence officer at CENTCOM who buys that.”

This is not a new theme. In January 2009, then-British Foreign Secretary David Miliband lashed out at the “War on Terror,” arguing that lumping these groups together was counterproductive and played “into the hands of those seeking to unify groups with little in common.”

Unknowingly prescient, Miliband follows that statement with this observation: “The ‘war on terror’ also implied that the correct response was primarily military. But as General Petraeus said to me and others in Iraq, the coalition there could not kill its way out of the problems of insurgency and civil strife.”

Irony of ironies. The US military is the architect of cutting-edge diplomatic initiatives, and the civilian-run federal government advocates the flexing of military might to address conflict.

There is no reason to suspect that General Petraeus himself does not buy into the Red Team’s conclusions on Hezbollah and Hamas. In March, the CENTCOM commander testified: “the enduring hostilities between Israel and some of its neighbors present distinct challenges to our ability to advance our interests in the AOR [Area of Responsibility of Centcom]. The conflict foments anti-American sentiment, due to a perception of U.S. favoritism for Israel,” which in turn “limits the strength and depth of U.S. partnerships” in the region.

A US military official familiar with the Red Team report strongly reconfirmed that viewpoint with me: “This issue permeates the entire Middle East. The Israel-Palestine problem is the key issue in the whole region.”

Ironically, Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories are the one area in the entire Middle East that is not under CENTCOM’s 20-nation jurisdiction. Yet this is the theater which most seems to affect their ability to perform their duties elsewhere in the region.

The official added that “labeling” Hezbollah and Hamas as terrorist groups was “pretty unhelpful” in addressing this issue and managed only to “water down the term.”

Changing the US position on Hezbollah and Hamas — resistance groups that have participated as political parties in fair elections and are favored by sizeable populations internally and throughout the Arab world — will almost certainly alter regional perceptions about the US’s willingness to engage realistically in brokering peace.

Hezbollah official Ibrahim Moussawi cautions, however, that perceptions are not enough:

People in the region are waiting for a change in action, not words, of US policymakers. Here is the Palestinian issue, here are the refugees and their right to return, here is the Jerusalem issue. They can show us some actions here first. The region wants to see tangible change and concrete actions first.

Timing and Intent

The timing of the disclosure of the Red Group report is intriguing. The U.S. Senate unanimously confirmed General Petraeus as the new commander of US and NATO forces in Afghanistan on the same day as the Foreign Policy story dropped online. His popularity and prestige are at a peak. And importantly, Petraeus demonstrated some serious invincibility in Washington when he emerged unscathed after linking Arab-Israeli peace failure to CENTCOM’s difficulties in the Iraq-Afghanistan military theater.

It is surely unlikely that this report, and the accompanying plugs by military intelligence officials, were leaked without the knowledge of some administration officials. Not this soon after the very public dismissal of Petraeus’ predecessor General Stanley McChrystal for criticizing, with his aides, senior administration officials in a Rolling Stone article.

I believe this “new” thinking on Hezbollah and Hamas has been percolating for some time within this very administration. I reference an article I wrote last November pointing to evolving views on Hezbollah within the White House and State Department. The view on Hamas has been tackled even more proactively — even before Obama became president, he was being urged to take a more pragmatic approach to the Palestinian resistance group by a broad array of former senior US officials, Republicans and Democrats alike.

Interestingly, the leak comes just days before Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu — an unwavering foe of Hezbollah and Hamas — is due in Washington for talks with President Obama. Netanyahu isn’t much liked by this administration, and CENTCOM’s last leak opened up an unprecedented debate on whether Israel was a strategic liability for the United States.

Conjecture, facts, and anecdotes aside, this report is long overdue, and as one military official pointed out to me, it may have proven it’s worth already:

The timeline on the May 7 Red Team report predates the Israeli attack on the Gaza-bound Freedom Flotillas and the subsequent international scrutiny over Israel’s illegal blockade. Perry claims that the report’s authors were uneasy with “Israel’s anti-Hamas policies,” and felt that the siege on Gaza keeps “the area on the verge of a perpetual humanitarian collapse,” thereby “radicalizing more people.”

Post-flotilla, these are the same conclusions arrived at by many Western governments, whose first order of business was to diffuse tensions by pushing Israel to “ease” its siege.

The Red Team has passed an important credibility test at this first hurdle. With nothing but a failed peace process to stare at, this US administration would be wise to embrace the report’s daring recommendations and welcome Hezbollah and Hamas as full participants in any Mideast solution.

‘Big losses’ if Russia halts Iran’s S-300s – UPI.com.