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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.

(The thrust of this article, headlined in the Drudge report is that there is nothing Obama can do to demonstrate his “leadership” effectively before the November elections.  This is incorrect.  While the economy my offer no options for that, Iran does.  Strong action against Iran together with Israel will be supported by all Americans excepting fringe leftists.  If Obama concludes that action is necessary, doing it by September could well save the house from going Republican and save his presidency from the “Jimmy Carter Syndrome” it is suffering from now.)

FT.com / US & Canada – Obama faces growing credibility crisis.

By Edward Luce in Washington

Published: July 13 2010 18:51 | Last updated: July 13 2010 18:51

Robert Gibbs, Barack Obama’s chief spokesman, got into hot water this week for daring to speak the truth – that the Democrats could lose control of the House of Representatives in November. But it could be even worse than that.

Contrary to pretty much every projection until now, Democratic control of the Senate is also starting to coming into question. While Mr Obama’s approval ratings have continued to fall, and now hover at dangerously close to 40 per cent according an ABC-Washington Post poll published on Tuesday, the fate of his former colleagues in the Senate looks even worse.

In the past few days polls have shown Republican challengers taking the lead over previously safe Democratic incumbents, such as Barbara Boxer in California and Russ Feingold in Wisconsin. Indeed, given the uniformly negative direction in the numbers, it is now quite possible the Republicans could win the Senate seats formerly held by both President Obama in Illinois, and Joe Biden, vice-president, in Delaware.

Add to that the continuing woes of Harry Reid, the Senate Democratic majority leader, in Nevada, where the Republican party’s recent nomination of Sharron Angle, a far-right and highly eccentric Tea Party supporter, appear to have had no positive effect on Mr Reid’s prospects, and the Grand Old party has a good shot at taking control of both houses of Congress. Worse for Mr Obama, political scientists say that at this stage in the calendar, there is almost nothing he can do about it.

“If you ask me where the silver lining is for President Obama, I have to say I cannot see one,” says Bill Galston, a former Clinton official, who has been predicting for months the Democrats could lose the House. “Just as BP’s failure to cap the well has been so damaging, Obama’s failure to cap unemployment will be his undoing. There is nothing he can do to affect the jobless rate before November.”

The direction of the data could hardly be worse. According to Democracy Corps, a group headed by Stanley Greenberg, a liberal pollster who is a close friend of Rahm Emanuel, Mr Obama’s chief of staff, a majority of US citizens see Mr Obama as “too liberal”.

Astonishingly, 55 per cent of citizens think Mr Obama is a “socialist” against only 39 per cent who do not share that diagnosis. The same poll shows 48 per cent support for Republicans against just 42 per cent for Democrats. The numbers are eerily similar to 2006, except that it was George W. Bush’s Republicans who were on the receiving end four years ago.

“The bottom line here is that Americans don’t believe in President Obama’s leadership,” says Rob Shapiro, another former Clinton official and a supporter of Mr Obama. “He has to find some way between now and November of demonstrating that he is a leader who can command confidence and, short of a 9/11 event or an Oklahoma City bombing, I can’t think of how he could do that.”

In private, informal advisors to Mr Obama are almost as negative. According to one, the US public’s loss of confidence in Mr Obama’s leadership is a factor above and beyond their dissatisfaction over the state of the real economy, which continues to slow as last year’s $787bn stimulus starts to run dry. The adviser, who asked to remain anonymous, said the public did not know what Mr Obama really believed. Examples include his lukewarm support last year for a public option in the healthcare bill and his equally lukewarm support today for a Senate bill that would extend unemployment insurance and aid state governments to keep teachers in their jobs.

In both cases, Mr Obama has offered only token, negotiable, support. “I never thought I would say this, but even I’m unsure what President Obama really believes,” says the adviser. “Instead of outsourcing decisions to Congress, he should spell out his bottom line. That is what leaders are for.”

Next week, Mr Obama is likely to sign a historic Wall Street re-regulation bill into law. Earlier this year he did the same for healthcare. But polls show the public either does not care, or even opposes these otherwise big reforms. “The longer this goes on, the more it looks like Obama wasted his first year on healthcare,” said the outside adviser. “It’s still the economy, stupid.”

Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2010. You may share using our article tools. Please don’t cut articles from FT.com and redistribute by email or post to the web.

Middle East Views | The Ambassador’s Talk on Attacking Iran!.

Abdul Rahman al-Rashed

I read the thirty page final statement of the stormy conference [that took place in Aspen, Colorado] during which the UAE Ambassador to the US, Yousef al-Otaiba, roused Iranian anger after he was quoted as saying that the benefits from attacking Iran today would outweigh the short-term consequences of this and the threat represented by a nuclear Iran tomorrow.

Iran responded with a barrage of insults, despite the fact that the UAE Foreign Ministry said that the ambassador’s quote was not accurate and had been taken out of context.

So long as this storm is raging, there is nothing wrong with taking a closer look at the situation. Was it inappropriate for somebody in this ambassador’s position to say what he allegedly said? Was he wrong in his political understanding of the situation? More important, after the ambassador said what he said – whether we believe this is accurate or not – is this statement useful or harmful?

The fact is that we have gotten used to the officials and affiliates of the Iranian regime freely expressing their views and opinions, and indeed issuing insulting remarks against the Gulf States with or without provocation, and in fact these officials do not hesitate even to make threats, which is the worst and most dangerous thing that can take place through the media. Just two weeks ago, Iranian officials said that they plan to inspect vessels that are traveling to Arab Gulf States in response to a UN Security Council resolution to inspect vessels making port in Iran, if there are suspicions over its cargo. Iran did not dare threaten to inspect US or European or Russian vessels in the regions, of which there are many, however they did threaten the Gulf, even though they had nothing whatsoever do with this resolution and no Gulf State sits on the Security Council. Prior to this, Iranian officials announced that Iran would attack Gulf States in the event of any Israeli or US attack against them. In such a poisonous climate, it is natural for an Arab politician or diplomat to say that a nuclear Iran represents a threat to us. Speaking from a protocol standpoint, both parties must work together to avoid throwing rotten tomatoes at one another, or allowing everybody to do so.

Politically, what Ambassador Yousef al-Otaiba was eloquently quoted as saying is also true. He said that we are in trouble with regards to what Iran is doing in the region today, so just imagine what Tehran will do when it has nuclear capabilities! Indeed imagine Iran’s mentality and behavior after it gains nuclear capabilities and realizes that no country in the world is capable of entering a war with it. Therefore what is truly wrong is the reluctance of our politicians to express their opinions and concerns towards the most dangerous threat that is facing our region in a hundred years, not the opposite!

This answers the second question, for the ambassador’s words, even if they are beyond the bounds of [political] protocol, are politically correct. Therefore imagine for just one moment that Iran has nuclear capabilities; the Iranians will not attack Israel because the Israelis would respond by burying them with a hundred nuclear bombs, wiping them off the map, while still having an arsenal of hundreds of nuclear bombs. Iran will similarly not attack the US, because it is geographically too far away, and Washington would also respond by targeting Iran with a hundred nuclear bombs, while still having a remaining five thousand nuclear warheads in its arsenal. The Iranians may not attack the Gulf States with nuclear weapons, but it would certainly seek to dominate them, and perhaps takeover a number of Gulf States, in the knowledge that no major power in the world will dare to interfere as they are protected by their nuclear arms. Therefore, what’s the problem in a Gulf ambassador saying that attacking Iran today is cheaper than living with a nuclear Iran tomorrow?

Finally, I am not enthusiastic about being drawn into verbal conflict with Iran; however this conflict is present because the Iranians continue to throw rotten tomatoes at us. The ambassador’s words have an educational value, for the majority of people – including many of our intellectuals – only understand one viewpoint in the dispute over a nuclear Iran. Let them listen to another viewpoint this time!

* Published in the London-based ASHARQ ALAWSAT on July 13. Abdul Rahman Al-Rashed is the general manager of Al Arabiya television.

James Woolsey and Rebeccah Heinrichs: Iran and the Missile Defense Imperative – WSJ.com.

U.S. intelligence now sees Tehran developing intercontinental missiles by 2015. If we continue our current strategy, we will not be able to counter the threat.

By R. JAMES WOOLSEY AND REBECCAH HEINRICHS

In a June 27 interview on ABC’s “This Week,” CIA Director Leon Panetta warned that it could be a mere two years before Iran is able to threaten other states with nuclear warheads mounted on ballistic missiles. When discussing the new U.S. sanctions against Iran recently signed into law by President Barack Obama, Mr. Panetta said, “Will it deter them from their ambitions with regards to nuclear capability? Probably not.”

Three months ago the Defense Intelligence Agency reported that by 2015 Iran, with help from North Korea or Russia, could field an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) capable of reaching the East Coast of the United States. This is by no means far-fetched. In early 2009, the Iranians successfully launched their first homegrown satellite into orbit. In March of that same year, Gen. Michael Maples, then-director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, told a Senate panel that Iran’s successful satellite launch “shows progress in mastering the technology needed to produce ICBMs.” Earlier this year Iran successfully orbited a second satellite with an ICBM-class ballistic missile.

Gen. Maples is right. If you can launch a satellite into orbit you are very close to being able to hit a target half way around the world. That’s why the Soviet launch of Sputnik so shocked the U.S. intelligence community in 1957. When a country is the most active state sponsor of terrorism, and its leaders routinely endorse slogans like “Death to Israel” and “Death to America,” we should take it seriously when they pursue the capabilities to make their dreams a reality.

A December 2009 missile launch proved Iran has already obtained the ability to reach Israel. Given President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s and other Iranian leaders’ millenarian fanaticism, it would be most imprudent to rely on nuclear deterrence alone to protect us. If Tehran were to achieve a nuclear missile capability, it could hold American cities hostage—unless, that is, the U.S. builds a robust and comprehensive ballistic missile defense.

Our current missile shield will have 26 ground-based interceptors based in Alaska, in addition to the four based in California, by the end of this year. These are part of an initial defense architecture designed to protect against missiles launched from North Korea. These interceptors could provide some protection from missiles launched from Iran toward our East Coast, but the margin for error would be unacceptably small.

Moreover, once Tehran can build one or two functioning ICBMs, it can build many more. As Defense Secretary Robert Gates testified before a Senate panel on June 17, “If Iran were actually to launch a missile attack on Europe, it wouldn’t be just one or two missiles, or a handful.” We need a defensive system that has full coverage, especially of the U.S. homeland, and that can add interceptors easily to cope with an Iranian ICBM buildup.

That’s why the Bush administration proposed building a missile-defense site in Europe in addition to those already in place in Alaska and California. This would provide cities on the East Coast, our troops abroad, and our allies in Europe added protection from an Iranian missile attack.

But last September the Obama administration scrapped the Bush plan and replaced it with one called the Phased Adaptive Approach, which is less capable of dealing with threats against U.S. territory. This plan entails deploying mobile systems to Europe to intercept short-range missiles. The Defense Department would gradually upgrade these systems, but the plan offers no added protection for the U.S. until 2020. That’s almost certainly too little too late.

Our vulnerabilities don’t stop there. If Iran were to launch a nuclear-armed missile from a ship near one of our coasts—say a primitive SCUD from a fishing boat—we would have very little warning and no protection. Defending the homeland against this threat would require a substantial deployment in and near the U.S. of the type of mobile systems that the administration plans to deploy in Europe.

Further, if the Iranians were to detonate even a primitive nuclear warhead over the United States, it could send out an electromagnetic pulse (EMP) destroying the electric grid and electrical systems across a wide swath of U.S. territory. Iranian military writings show the mullahs recognize the potential of this kind of attack. Depending on where it occurred and how large the warhead was, an EMP attack could cause large-scale fatalities and unimaginable economic devastation. Defending against this kind of threat requires defensive systems that can intercept an attacking ballistic missile while it is still ascending. But the Obama administration has no specific plans to develop and deploy ascent-phase interceptors in Europe.

Given the growing Iranian threat, the Obama administration should re-evaluate its missile-defense strategy. The U.S. should deploy as many interceptors as possible in Alaska and should plan for an emergency deployment of a third site either in Europe or on the East Coast. Moreover, as Iran continues to improve its missiles, and the White House negotiates agreements to host radars and other missile-defense assets in Europe, the administration should make contingency plans for rapid deployment of mobile defenses, including ascent-phase interceptors, to protect us here at home.

Above all the Obama administration should clarify to the U.S. Senate and the Russian government that neither the new U.S.-Russian Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty nor commitments made during the negotiation process will in any way limit our ability to protect ourselves against an Iranian nuclear attack.

Mr. Woolsey is a former director of Central Intelligence and a board member at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, where Ms. Heinrichs, a former manager of the House Bipartisan Missile Defense Caucus, is an adjunct fellow.

Israel-Hezbollah War? Iran holds key–Benny Avni – NYPOST.com.

Four years after the last war between Israel and Hezbollah, the Middle East is rife with expectations of another round. “The July War Is Not Over” was yesterday’s headline In the pro-Hezbollah Lebanese newspaper al-Akhbar.

In fact, neither Israel nor Hezbollah wants to fight just now — but it’s Iran that holds the key.

That’s a big problem for the Obama administration, which has organized its Mideast efforts around the attempt to solve the Palestinian-Israeli dispute. War on Israel’s northern border would suspend (at best) those negotiations — thereby stalling US diplomacy in the region.

Four years ago, Israel launched an air assault and limited ground attack in retaliation for a July 12, 2006, cross-border Hezbollah attack that killed three Israeli soldiers and left two missing in action. But airpower proved less effective than hoped — and Israel suffered an unprecedented attack on its civilian centers during that Second Lebanon War.

Also in that war, Israel’s enemies discovered a new and increasingly effective weapon, harnessing “international law” (war-governing treaties that are signed between states but don’t apply to militias) to accuse Israel of war “crimes.”

As it is yet to find an effective answer to such challenges, Jerusalem is very reluctant to relaunch hostilities now.

This, even though Hezbollah is stronger now than it was before. Its spokesmen increasingly boast of their shiny new weapons and their ability to hit undisclosed “target banks” inside Israel — targets that, unlike in 2006, include major cities in the center of the country.

Last week, the Israeli Defense Force released aerial photographs showing numerous missiles deployed near and in villages in southern Lebanon — that is, in areas where, under the UN Security Council resolution that ended the 2006 war, the only weapons should be those of the Lebanese Army and of UNIFIL, the international force that was deployed to enforce that resolution.

French troops operating as part of UNIFIL are regularly harassed. In recent weeks, “villagers” stoned several contingents of French soldiers and stole their vehicles; the “locals” have also prevented French forces from entering areas UNIFIL is supposed to inspect for illegal weapons.

(Why they bothered keeping UNIFIL out is another question, since the “inspectors” mostly turn their backs when they see any illegal Hezbollah activities.)

Last Friday, the UN Security Council issued a statement claiming that all 15 of its members “deplore” the attacks on the French UNIFIL troops. But (as always), the council failed to name the entity it deplored. The statement didn’t even mention Hezbollah, which everyone in the region knows is behind the attacks.

In other words, Hezbollah can expect to keep growing stronger without war — whereas it took a heavy beating in the open fighting. In particular, it’s built a stronger political position in Lebanon — but could lose it if it’s blamed for the nationwide destruction that a new war with Israel would bring.

Thus, for all its bravado (it celebrates the war as the greatest Arab “victory” ever over Israel), Hezbollah has little appetite for a repeat.

But it might be unable to say no if its benefactor and master, the Islamic Republic of Iran, demands action against Israel.

Right now, the Iranian regime fears it will soon begin to feel the pinch of various new sanctions imposed by the Security Council, the European Union and the United States. It might see a new Lebanese war as the best way to divert everyone’s attention away from its nuclear program.

Nor is Hezbollah the only proxy army available to Tehran: Founding and arming the Lebanese group worked so well at extending its influence over the region that Iran repeated the trick by becoming Hamas’ patron, too.

So Obama’s central Mideast goal (an Israeli-Palestinian deal) is at Iran’s mercy. Tehran, meanwhile, can aid its prime objective (going nuclear) by throwing a wrench into US diplomacy. And if it does go nuclear, it can use its proxies even more readily, with vastly reduced fear of retaliation.

Obama’s Middle East team should give up on the Palestinian “track” for now, and focus like a laser on Iran instead. Unless it’s defanged, no solution to any of the intractable regional disputes will be possible.

WPR Article | UAE Toughens Stance over Iran’s Nuclear Ambitions.

Tension between Iran and the United Arab Emirates is rising after the UAE became the first Gulf state to publicly signal endorsement of military force to prevent Iran from becoming a nuclear power, should peaceful efforts to resolve the standoff over Tehran’s nuclear program fail. The UAE also restricted Iran’s use of Dubai to imports goods sanctioned by the United Nations and the United States.

In a statement, the UAE Foreign Ministry described recorded remarks made by UAE ambassador to the United States, Yousef al-Otaiba, at a conference in Colorado as “inaccurate.” Nonetheless, the remarks offer a rare insight into the thinking behind closed doors of a key U.S. ally, and reflect mounting UAE frustration with Iran’s refusal to resolve a dispute over the Islamic Republic’s longstanding occupation of three strategic islands at the entrance of the Strait of Hormuz.

In his remarks, Otaiba described a nuclear-armed Iran as the foremost threat to the UAE, and one that needs to be neutralized at whatever cost. In doing so, he signaled growing recognition in the Gulf that the Obama administration was unlikely to resolve the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, something that many have argued would reduce regional tension and make Iran more amenable to a peaceful resolution of the nuclear standoff. King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia stressed the importance of the linkage during his visit to Washington last month.

Otaiba’s remarks also indicated a preference between two perceived evils — a U.S. or an Israeli strike — should military action become a reality. Gulf officials fear that an Israeli strike would inflame popular emotions, particularly among Shiites, far more than a U.S. operation and would therefore put their regimes in a more precarious position. Ironically, Saudi Arabia last month denied reports that it would allow Israeli warplanes access to Saudi airspace in case of an Israeli pre-emptive attack.

Asked at the Colorado conference whether he would favor U.S. force to stop the Iranian nuclear program, Otaiba described the UAE as the country most threatened by Iran. Contrasting the threat against the UAE with the danger a nuclear-armed Iran would pose to the U.S., Otaiba said that a nuclear Iran would “threaten the peace process, it will threaten balance of power, it will threaten everything else, but it will not threaten you. . . . Our military . . . wakes up, dreams, breathes, eats, sleeps the Iranian threat. It’s the only conventional military threat our military plans for, trains for, equips for. . . . There’s no country in the region that is a threat to the UAE [besides] Iran.”

Otaiba’s remarks followed the disclosure via satellite imagery of Iranian military installations on Abu Musa, the largest of the three occupied islands. The installations included three missile launch pads, an elaborate underground market, and a sports field with the words “Persian Gulf” emblazoned on it — a provocative reminder of Iran’s hegemonic view of a region the Gulf states describe as the Arab Gulf. UAE Foreign Minister Sheikh Abdullah Bin Zayed Al Nahyan last month stopped short of comparing Iran’s occupation of the islands to Israel’s occupation of Palestinian territory. “Iran refuses to allow us to send teachers, doctors and nurses. I am not comparing Iran to Israel, but Iran should be more careful than others,” Al Nahayan said.

The UAE has worked to ensure that its security is closely linked to U.S. and European security interests. In May, French President Nicolas Sarkozy inaugurated France’s first military base in the region, in Abu Dhabi. The base, which comprises three sites on the banks of the Strait of Hormuz, houses a naval and air base as well as a training camp, and is home to 500 French troops. Alongside other smaller Gulf states, the UAE has also agreed to the deployment of U.S. anti-missile batteries on its territory. The UAE and Saudi Arabia are expected to spend up to $100 billion on arms procurement in the next five years.

Despite their differences over the pace of economic integration among the six members of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), the UAE and Saudi Arabia have adopted a tougher stance toward Iran than fellow member states Kuwait, Bahrain, Oman and Qatar, some of whom have had recent problems of their own with the Islamic republic. Kuwait disclosed in May that it had dismantled an Iranian espionage group. By contrast, Bahrain, with a majority Shiite population, is believed to be close to signing a deal for the import of Iranian gas.

With his remarks, Otaiba signaled further that the UAE was willing to pay a price for stopping Iranian nuclear proliferation, and could afford to do so now that Abu Dhabi had cemented its predominance among the UAE emirates following last year’s financial crisis in Dubai. Iran has threatened retaliatory steps in response to the recent freezing by the UAE central bank of accounts of 40 entities and an individual blacklisted by the U.N. for assisting Iran’s nuclear and missile programs. There have also been contradictory reports recently that UAE airports had refused to refuel flights by the Iranian airlines, Iran Air and Mahan Air. Iran does $12 billion a year worth of trade with the UAE, and relies on freewheeling Dubai, as well as Ras al Khaimah, another UAE emirate, for the import of goods, many of which fall under U.N. or U.S. sanctions.

“There will be backlash, and there will be problems with people protesting and rioting and [being] very unhappy that there is an outside force attacking a Muslim country,” Otaiba was quoted as saying in Colorado. “That is going to happen no matter what.”

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.”

James M. Dorsey, a former Wall Street Journal foreign correspondent, writes about ethnic and religious conflict.

Photo: Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad touring Iran’s uranium enrichment facility in Natanz, Iran, 2008 (Photo by the Web site of the president of Iran).

Our World: A war on whose terms?

We are entering troubling times. The conviction that war is upon us grows with each passing day. What remains to be determined is who will dictate the terms of that war – Iran or Israel.

Iran has good reason to go to war today. The regime is teetering on the brink of collapse. Last week, the bellwether of Iranian politics and the commercial center of the country – the bazaar – abandoned the regime. In 1979, it was only after the bazaar merchants abandoned the shah that the ayatollahs gained the necessary momentum to overthrow the regime.

Last Tuesday the merchants at the all-important Teheran bazaar closed their shops to protest the government’s plan to raise their taxes by 70 percent. Merchants in Tabriz and Isfahan quickly joined the protest. According to the Associated Press, the regime caved in to the merchants demands and cancelled the tax hike. And yet the strike continued.

According to The Los Angeles Times, to hide the fact that the merchants remain on strike, on Sunday the regime announced that the bazaar was officially closed due to the excessive heat. The Times also reported that the head of the fabric traders union in the Teheran bazaar was arrested for organizing an anti-regime protest. The protest was joined by students. Regime goons attacked the protesters with tear gas and arrested and beat a student caught recording the event.

Crucially, the Times reported that by last Thursday the bazaar strike had in many cases become openly revolutionary. Citing an opposition activist, it claimed, “By Thursday, hundreds of students and merchants had gathered in the shoemakers’ quarter of the old bazaar, chanting slogans [such] as, “Death to Ahmadinejad,” “Victory is God’s,” “Victory is near” and “Death to this deceptive government.”

The merchants’ strike is just one indication of the regime’s economic woes. According to AP, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is under pressure to carry out his pledge to cut government subsidies for food and fuel. Although he supports the move, he fears the mass protests that would certainly follow its implementation.

FrontPage Magazine’s Ryan Mauro noted earlier this week that there is growing disaffection with the regime in the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps itself. A recent documentary produced by the Guardian featured four IRGC defectors speaking of the discord in the ranks. The regime is so frightened of defection among the IRGC that it has removed many older members and replaced them with poor young men from the countryside.

The regime’s fear of its opposition has caused it to crack down on domestic liberties. Last week the regime issued hairstyle guidelines for men. Spiked hair and ponytails are officially banned as decadent.

On Sunday Mohammed Boniadi, the deputy head of Teheran’s school system, announced that starting in the fall, a thousand clerics will descend on the schools to purge Western influence from the halls of learning. As he put it, the clerics’ job will be to make students aware of “opposition plots and arrogance.”

These moves to weaken Western influence on Iranian society are of a piece with the regime’s new boycott against “Zionist” products. Late last month Ahmadinejad signed a law outlawing the use of products from such Zionist companies as Intel, Coca Cola, Nestle and IBM.

ALL OF these moves expose a hysterical fear of the Iranian people on the part of their unelected leaders. Regime strongmen themselves acknowledge that they have never faced a greater threat. For instance, the Guardian quoted IRGC commander Maj.-Gen. Mohammad Ali Jafari saying recently, “Although last year’s sedition did not last more than around eight months, it was much more dangerous than the [Iran-Iraq] war.” As is its wont, the regime has chosen to defend itself against this threat by repressing its internal enemies and attacking its external enemies. In an article last month in Forbes, Reza Kahlili, a former CIA spy in the IRGC who maintains connections inside the regime, claimed that the IRGC has set up concentration camps throughout the country in anticipation of mass arrests in any future opposition campaign against the regime.

As for the outside world, Iran is ratcheting up both its nuclear brinksmanship and its preparations for yet another round of regional war. In an announcement on Sunday, Iran’s atomic chief Ali Akbar Salehi told the Iranian news agency ISNA that Iran has produced 20 kilograms of uranium enriched to 20 percent. Salehi also said that Iran is building fuel plates to operate a nuclear reactor.

Iran’s nuclear progress has frightened the Arab world so much that for the first time, Arab leaders are giving public voice to the concerns they have expressed behind closed doors. In public remarks last week, UAE Ambassador to the US Youssef al-Otaiba made a series of statements whose bluntness was unprecedented. Otaiba said that the Arab states of the Persian Gulf cannot live with a nuclear Iran, that he supports military strikes against Iran’s nuclear facilities and that if the US fails to prevent Iran from becoming a nuclear power, the Arab states of the Gulf will abandon their alliances with the US in order to appease Iran. Otaiba rejected the notion that a nuclear-armed Iran can be contained stating, “Talk of containment and deterrence really concerns me and makes me very nervous.”

Otaiba’s concerns were echoed last Friday by Kahlili in a public lecture at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. He asserted that if Iran develops a nuclear arsenal it will use it to attack Israel, the Gulf states and Europe.

IRAN IS seeking to divert international attention away from its internal troubles and limit the possibility of a strike against its nuclear installations by inciting war with Israel. On Sunday the regime announced that Ahmadinejad will soon visit Beirut. Recent activities by Iran’s Hizbullah proxy in Lebanon indicate that if his visit goes through – and even if it doesn’t – the announcement signals that Iran intends to fight another proxy war against Israel through Hizbullah.

As the IDF announced in a press briefing last Wednesday, Iran has tightened its control over Hizbullah forces. It recently sent Hossein Mahadavi, commander of the IRGC’s Jerusalem Force, to Beirut to take over Hizbullah’s operations.

As for Hizbullah, it is poised to launch a witch-hunt against its domestic opponents.

Hizbullah MP Muhammad Ra’ad said earlier this month that the proxy army will “hunt down,” collaborators. As MP Sami Gemayel noted in an interview with LBC translated by MEMRI, this that means is that Hizbullah is poised to conduct mass extrajudicial arrests and wholesale terrorization of Lebanese civilians.

Likewise, Hizbullah-allied former Lebanese minister Wiam Wahhab effectively called for armed attacks against UNIFIL forces in south Lebanon in a recent television interview translated by MEMRI. His remarks followed some 20 Hizbullahordered assaults on UNIFIL forces in Shi’ite villages in recent days. French forces were the victim of two of those assaults and Lebanese Prime Minister Saad Hariri travelled to Paris last week in the hopes of convincing the French government not to remove French forces from the country.

And of course, all of these provocations are being carried out as Hizbullah deploys its forces south of the Litani River.

According to the IDF briefing last week, those forces have some 40,000 short- and medium-range missiles at their disposal.

Those missiles have been augmented by hundreds of guided long-range missiles north of the Litani with warheads capable of bringing down skyscrapers in Tel Aviv.

Moreover, they are further augmented by Syria’s massive Scud missile and artillery arsenals and by a frightening potential fifth column among Israeli Arabs in the Galilee. Sunday’s assault on police forces operating in the Syrian-allied Druse village of Majdal Shams on the Golan Heights is a mild indicator of what is liable to transpire in Israeli Arab villages in the North in the next war.

For its part, the IDF is seeking to deter such an attack. Wednesday’s briefing, in which the IDF made clear that it knows where Hizbullah has hidden its missiles, was aimed at deterring war.

Unfortunately, the IDF’s warnings will likely have no effect on Hizbullah. If Hizbullah goes to war, it will do so not to advance its own interests, but to protect Iran. Here of course, there is nothing new.

Four years ago this week Hizbullah launched its war against Israel and not because doing so served its interests.

Hizbullah launched its war against Israel because Iran ordered it to do so. Then as now, Iran sought a war with Israel in Lebanon to divert international attention from its nuclear weapons program. And now, with the Iranian regime besieged by its own people as never before, and with just a short period required for it to cross the nuclear threshold, Iran has more reason than ever to seek a distraction in Lebanon to buy time for itself.

Four years ago, Israel was taken in by Iran’s Lebanese proxy war. Rather than keeping its eye on Teheran, it swallowed Hizbullah’s bait and waged a war against hapless Lebanon while leaving Iran and its Syrian toady immune from attack. The results were predictably poor and strategically disastrous.

Defense Minister Ehud Barak has given Iran every reason to believe that Israel will respond in an identical manner if Hizbullah strikes again today. In repeated statements over the past several months, he has maintained that Israel will blame Lebanon – not Iran or Syria – for any Hizbullah action against it.

Four years ago, Israel was reined in by the Bush administration. Secretary of state Condoleezza Rice ordered Israel not to attack Syria despite the fact that without Syrian support for Hizbullah, there could have been no war. Israel obliged her both because its leaders lacked the strategic sense to recognize the folly of Rice’s demands and because the Bush administration was Israel’s firm ally.

Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu just returned from yet another visit with US President Barack Obama. Although the background music was cheerful, from statements by both men it is clear that Obama is not a credible ally. He does not understand or accept the strategic logic behind the US alliance with Israel and will not support Israel in future armed conflicts.

Indeed, in the face of the growing Iranian menace, Obama insists on limiting his interests to the irrelevant faux peace process with Fatah while allowing Iran and its proxies to run wild.

What this means is that for better or for worse, under Obama the US is far less relevant than it was four years ago. And this frees Netanyahu to fight the coming war on Israel’s terms. Iran’s domestic troubles and the Arab world’s genuine fear of a nuclear armed Iran provide Israel with a rare opportunity to radically shift the balance of power in the region for the better. It is time for Netanyahu to lead.

Russia: Iran moving closer to nuclear weapons, sanctions could work – Haaretz Daily Newspaper | Israel News.

Medvedev’s remarks reveal growing Russian impatience with its longtime ally Iran in its dispute with the international community over its nuclear program.

Russian President Dmitry Medvedev said on Monday Iran was gaining the ability to build a nuclear bomb, remarks welcomed in Washington as a sign of growing international unity behind a tough line toward Tehran.

Medvedev’s comments were the strongest criticism of Iran’s nuclear program to emerge from the Kremlin under either Medvedev or his predecessor, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin.

A major goal of U.S. President Barack Obama’s “reset” of relations with Moscow has been winning Russian backing for a tougher international line toward Iran.

“It is obvious that Iran is moving closer to possessing the potential which in principle could be used for the creation of nuclear weapons,” Medvedev told a meeting of Russia’s ambassadors in Moscow.

“Iran is not acting in the best way,” Medvedev said. He called on Tehran to “show openness and cooperate” with the U.N. nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency.

The United States, major European Union powers and Israel say they suspect that Iran is trying to build atomic weapons under the cover of its civilian nuclear program. Iran denies this and says it has a right to nuclear power.

“This is about as blunt as Medvedev has ever been about Iran’s nuclear program and should be taken as a good sign of increased international unity on Iran’s nuclear program,” an Obama administration official said in Washington.

Urged on by the Obama administration, Russia voted for a United Nations Security Council resolution on June 9 to impose new sanctions on Iran over its nuclear program. Medvedev said he was still sceptical of sanctions but they could prod diplomacy.

“I have said before that sanctions as a rule do not have the desired results. Their role is to send a signal, to stimulate the negotiating process,” Medvedev said.

Moscow has been Tehran’s main nuclear partner, building Iran’s first nuclear power plant near the city of Bushehr, which is set to begin operations later this year. Russia was also swift to congratulate Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on a disputed election victory last year.

But Russia has been dismayed by Iran’s failure to disclose full details of its nuclear work and Medvedev has expressed growing concern in recent months about Tehran’s nuclear aims.

Kremlin officials were furious when the Iranian leader admonished Medvedev in May for bowing to what Ahmadinejad said was U.S. pressure to agree sanctions.

The Kremlin chief, who diplomats say still defers to Putin on major policy issues such as Iran, said last month he was alarmed by U.S. assertions that Iran had enough fuel for a nuclear weapon.

Resolution of the Iranian nuclear issue would involve a great deal of patience and energy, but the consequences of failure to deal with it would be grave, Medvedev said.

“At the moment, patience is demanded and the speediest resumption of productive dialogue with Tehran,” Medvedev said.

“If diplomats let this chance go, then this will become a collective failure for the entire international community.”

	Russian President Dmitry Medvedev
	P

DEBKAfile, Political Analysis, Espionage, Terrorism, Security.

Ahmadinehad ready for his first close-up to Lebanese-Israel border

Feverish preparations are afoot in Tehran for President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s first visit to the Lebanese capital. Reporting this, debkafile‘s Iranian sources define the trip’s purpose as a confrontational exercise to warn the US and Israel that full implementation of the tough new UN, US and European sanctions will provoke an Iranian war on Israel – waged from Lebanon.
Iran’s rulers came up with this plan in their marathon consultations last week, prompted by the realization that the US embargo on gasoline and other refined oil products were for real. Combined with the Obama administration’s partial success in closing the US banking system and markets to Iranian firms and the UAE’s consent to close its ports to Iranian traffic, the new measures have the potential for throwing a large spanner into the Islamic Republic’s normal economic activity.
The planning for Ahmadinejad’s trip to Lebanon – probably towards the end of July or early August – went into high gear after Syrian president Bashar Assad and the Qatari ruler Shiekh Hamad Bin Khalif Al Thani (who engineered the power-sharing accord for setting up the Lebanese government coalition in 2009) reacted positively to the notion of the threesome landing in Beirut aboard the same plane or in convoy, at the invitation of Lebanese president Michel Suleiman.

This procedure was advised to insure the Iranian president against a possible Israel attempt on his life and also that of Hizballah leader Hassan Nasrallah, who would be on hand in the welcoming party headed by the Lebanese president.

Sunday, July 11, debkafile reported that Hizballah had massed 20,000 armed men along the border with Israel, while Israeli Defense Forces had ranged tank and armored divisions on the other side of the border.

The broad outline of the visit was laid down by Lebanese Shiite lawmaker Nabih Beri and Alaedin Boroujerdi, Chairman of the Majlis foreign affairs and security committee, who was in Beirut last week to attend the funeral of the Shiite cleric Ayatollah Hassan Fadlallah.
It was decided to use the occasion for the Iranian, Syrian, Qatari and Lebanese leaders to hold a war conference, essentially to plot moves for ramping up the Arab-Israeli conflict. They have already decided in principle to lay the groundwork for a high-tension crisis to erupt between Israel and Lebanon some time in September or October, by which time Tehran will be able to gauge in full how much the new sanctions are hurting Iran.