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Archive for August 7, 2010
Survey: Arabs lose faith in Obama – Focus – Al Jazeera English
August 7, 2010Survey: Arabs lose faith in Obama – Focus – Al Jazeera English.
Arab opinion of the United States and its president Barack Obama has dimmed in the past year, while the popularity of Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the Turkish prime minister, has skyrocketed, according to an annual survey released by the US-based Brookings Institution on Thursday. The survey found that a majority of Arabs continue to believe that peace between Israel and the Palestinians will never happen and that – unlike in past years – a larger number are identifying as Muslims, rather than as Arabs or citizens of a particular country. The poll of nearly 4,000 people, done in conjunction with Zogby International,was conducted between June 29 and July 20 in six Middle Eastern countries: Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Morocco, Lebanon, Jordan and the United Arab Emirates (UAE). Lost opportunity Of those surveyed, 62 per cent said they had a negative view of Obama, compared with 23 per cent a year ago.
Only 20 per cent said they had a positive view of him, a drop from the 45 per cent who said they felt positively about Obama in 2009. The precipitous decline in Obama’s popularity, though expected by many Middle East analysts and already documented in a Pew survey of global opinion,has naturally captured the headlines,given the president’s promise to pursue rapprochement with Arabs and Muslims during his campaign and the early months of his presidency. Arabs’ attitudes toward US foreign policy have turned negative even more rapidly than their opinion of Obama himself. This year, 63 per cent of those surveyed said they were “discouraged” by the administration’s Middle East policy, a massive increase from the 15 per cent who said so in 2009. The number of Arabs who said they felt “hopeful” shrunk from 51 per cent to 16 per cent. Obama’s June 2009 speech to the Muslim world was meant to mark a definitive break from the antipathy generated by the preceding Bush administration’s “war on terror”. In his address, Obama identified America’s post-September 11 campaign against “violent extremists” and the resulting wars in Iraq and Afghanistan as the primary source of tension between the US and the Muslim world. But the large majority of Arabs in the Brookings survey – 61 per cent – said they were most disappointed with Obama’s handling of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The continued US presence in Iraq came in second, rating as the most disappointing US policy for 27 per cent of those surveyed, while Afghanistan came in fourth, ranking as the most disappointing for only 4 per cent. Warming to peace? Though the survey work began just one month after a highly controversial and deadly Israeli raidon a civilian ship attempting to break the blockade of the Gaza Strip, Arab attitudes about forging a peace agreement with Israel actually seem to have warmed over the past two years.
While 54 per cent of those surveyed said they do not believe a lasting peace between Israel and the Palestinians will ever happen – a number that has basically remained unchanged since 2008 – the vast majority of Arabs surveyed, 86 per cent, said they were prepared for peace if Israel was willing to return all the territory it has occupied since the 1967 Six Day War, including East Jerusalem. In past years, only 73 per cent of those surveyed said they were prepared for peace. The number of Arabs prone to continued belligerence with Israel has also declined: only 12 per cent said they “should continue to fight” even if Israel returns all post-1967 territory, compared with 25 per cent in 2009. Mahmoud Abbas, the president of the Palestinian Authority, has put the pre-condition of a return to the 1967 borders as necessary for any negotiations with Israel to begin. He was also rated the second-most popular Palestinian leader among those surveyed, after Khalid Meshaal, the Hamas leader-in-exile. Turkey rising Erdogan, the Turkish prime minister, shot into the lead spot as the most popular world leader among the Arab population, with 20 per cent of those surveyed saying they admired him most. Shibley Telhami, a University of Maryland professor and Brookings fellow, told Asia Timesthat Erdogan’s rise in Arab esteem – he was not mentioned in 2008 and was barely noticed last year – comes as a result of the Turkish role in supporting the flotilla that attempted to break the Gaza siege. Erdogan’s outspoken criticism of the Israeli raid on the flotilla also raised his popularity. Arab opinion on Iran also remained divided. Though the number of Arabs who believe Iran wants peaceful nuclear power has shrunk, an increasing majority still believe Tehran has the right to pursue a nuclear programme, even if the country is seeking weapons.
Egyptians and Moroccans who believe Iran is pursuing nuclear weapons were the most inclined to also say that Iran has the right to do so. Saudis were evenly split on the issue, while the majority of Jordanians, Lebanese and citizens of the UAE said Iran should be pressured to stop its nuclear programme if weapons are its goal. For the first time in the past two years, more Arabs surveyed said they identified as Muslim rather than as citizens of their country. The feeling was strongest in Morocco, where 61 per cent identified primarily as Muslim, and in Saudi Arabia, where 47 per cent did. Egyptians were more inclined to identify as Muslims than people living in the UAE, even though the Gulf has usually been thought of as the home of the most conservative schools of Islam. Islamic identification was weakest in Lebanon, where only eight per cent of those surveyed said they identified primarily as Muslim, and Jordan, where 16 per cent said so. No empathy for Israel After Erdogan, those who topped the Arab popularity chart included Hugo Chavez, the Venezuelan leader, Nicolas Sarkozy, the French president and Osama bin Laden, the al-Qaeda leader, who came in seventh. Despite warming views of peace with the Israel, those surveyed displayed extreme lack of empathy towards its citizens. Fifty-nine per cent said they “resent” watching movies or programmes about the Holocaust because they “feel it brings sympathy toward Israel and Jews at the expense of Palestinians and Arabs”. Only three per cent said they “empathise with the Jews who suffered under the Nazis” when watching such media. This feeling was particularly strong in the UAE, where 99 per cent of those surveyed felt only resentment when viewing the material. In Morocco, 85 per cent felt resentment, 15 per cent had mixed feelings, and none felt empathy. Asked to rate two feelings that best described their reaction to seeing Israeli civilian casualties, the most widely experienced emotions among Arabs by a large margin were that the “Israelis brought it upon themselves” and that such deaths were “revenge for the Palestinians”. |
When the next war comes
August 7, 2010
‘No, no, no, no, no,” said Matan Vilna’i – to make sure I’d got the point. Then he added, “Absolutely not,” in case I was still missing it.
I’d asked him whether Israel was on the brink of another war – what with the renewed Kassam fire from Gaza, a spate of briefings at which senior officers have warned of the expanded Hizbullah and Syrian missile capacity, and the recent highly unusual IDF decision to reveal the specifics of Hizbullah’s military deployment in the “human shield” villages of southern Lebanon.
“Go back over the years,” urged the deputy defense minister.
“Every spring for generations, there are war threats.
They’re meaningless. They’re right about once every few decades.”
The fact is, he continued, “There is no Arab interest in a war. No Israel interest. After a war, we’d all be back exactly where we were before.”
We were speaking on Sunday, a day before the missile barrage at Eilat and Aqaba, and two days before battalion commander Dov Harari was killed and company commander Ezra Lakia badly injured in the worst incident at the northern border since the Second Lebanon War four years ago.
Those flare-ups underlined the perpetually incendiary tensions on Israel’s frontiers. They also underlined the imperative – despite Vilna’i’s “no, no, no, no, no” assurances – to constantly prepare for the worst.
And that is precisely what the former deputy chief of the General Staff is currently doing: assiduously preparing this country for war – just in case.
Preparing Israel for the new kind of war we get dragged into these days. Wars where the home front is the front line, where civilians are prime targets, and where, Vilna’i added in our interview, we can currently expect precious little international sympathy.
From his office high in the Kirya military complex overlooking the jam-packed streets and homes of Tel Aviv, Vilna’i is overseeing the protection of that vulnerable home front – the construction of a “support network” that is supposed to spring into action if sovereign enemies like Syria and Iran, or their Hizbullah and Hamas proxies, start emptying their immensely expanded missile arsenals into civilian Israel.
To some extent, according to Vilna’i, we are all already at war, and by “we” he means the free world, and by “war” he means the battles against terrorist aggressors fighting from within civilian areas.
The practical aspects of Israel’s capabilities and challenges in this new war environment dominated our lengthy interview, but the conversation also, inevitably, ranged across diplomatic and domestic political issues.
Vilna’i, the bullet-headed ex-military man with the subterranean baritone, is a Labor hawk, an ex-general who came within a whisker of making chief-of-staff and who names Yitzhak Rabin as his mentor.
He’s the kind of Labor pol whom Likud doves cite as being closer to their line of thinking than the strongly pro-settlement- growth likes of Danny Danon and Tzipi Hotovely. And he, in turn – to what would be the dismay of the traditional Likud Right – cites Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu as being likely to make “the right decision” on terms for peacemaking with the Palestinians.
“THERE’S BEEN a drastic change in the nature of war worldwide, and we’re at the focus,” said Vilna’i, as he elaborated on the new environment in which military conflicts now play out.
“We’re currently in World War III. It broke out on 9/11.
It’s a war without conventional fronts; a war without armies facing off against each other.
And the focus of this war is the civilian population. When we are acting in Gaza, for instance, we are responsible for the Israeli population, keeping it safe, obviously. We’re also responsible for the Palestinian population, because they are being used as human shields.
The enemy fires from within them. We respond with maximal caution and get hit with the Goldstone Report.”
He neither sighed nor even paused at the injustice of it all.
“That’s the new nature of war.”
In Israel’s particular context, he said, one critical strategic component that hasn’t changed is the centrality of Israeli deterrence. This is a theme that many of Israel’s defense chiefs reiterate in such conversations – the conviction that, even though Israel did not achieve a decisive victory against Hizbullah in 2006, and chose not to try to achieve one against Hamas in 2008/9, both those conflicts bolstered Israel’s capacity to scare the enemy into holding its fire.
As Vilna’i put it, they emphasized to those Iranian-backed proxies to our north and south that it would be wise for them to think twice before engaging Israel again: “In simple language, we’re the neighborhood bully,” said Vilna’i. “So you don’t want to start with us.
Start with us, and you get whacked.”
Again, in common with many Israeli military chiefs, he recalled Hizbullah leader Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah’s ostensibly rueful public reflection that, as paraphrased by Vilna’i, “If I’d have known what I was going to get [in the Second Lebanon War], I wouldn’t have started.”
In Vilna’i’s assessment, Nasrallah, and by extension Iran, were still licking their wounds at the time of Operation Cast Lead, which is why they chose to keep Hizbullah out of that conflict.
“In 2008, in Gaza, [Hamas’s Ismail] Haniyeh had anticipated that Israeli Arabs would start disturbances, and that Hizbullah would fire rockets at Haifa,” he said. “It didn’t happen.
Israel’s [Arab] citizens understand the rules. And Hizbullah, I imagine, said to itself, ‘We don’t want to get whacked again. Let Haniyeh do this on his own.’” Which begs the question, amidst the latest spate of attacks across our borders, and especially the confrontation near Misgav Am in the North, of whether that deterrent capacity has now dangerously eroded.
Our military correspondent Yaakov Katz noted in Wednesday’s paper that the latest fatal flare-up didn’t come out of the blue. Soldiers from the Lebanese Armed Forces – most of whom are Shi’ite, and many of whom openly cooperate with Hizbullah – have repeatedly trained their weapons on IDF troops at the border in the past year or so. “The IDF has also noticed a radical shift within the LAF top command, which has increased its anti- Israel rhetoric,” Katz added.
“When this is the spirit of the top command, it is not surprising that… the company commander who is positioned opposite Misgav Am ordered his troops to open fire at the IDF on Tuesday.”
Since 2006, Hizbullah has massively strengthened its missile capacity, freely importing weaponry from Syria, and deploying in the heart of the 160 Shi’ite villages in southern Lebanon. In a radical departure from security norms, the IDF last month released precise details of Hizbullah’s deployment in one typical village, Khiam – specifying the locations of command structures, weapons caches, missile launchers and even the improvised explosive devices intended to thwart any IDF ground attack.
The goal was plainly both to prepare the international community, so that the world would better understand how Hizbullah’s ruthless and cynical use of the villagers as human shields would determine the nature of future rounds of conflict, and to make plain to Hizbullah that Israel knew exactly what it was up to – that the intelligence flaws that undermined the 2006 war effort had been corrected. Israeli military sources, indeed, are adamant that while Hizbullah likes to claim that it knows far more about how the IDF functions than the IDF knows about its operations, the reverse is true. The publication of the Khiam specifics proved the point, they say.
For his part, Vilna’i made no grandiose boasts, but he did point to boosted Israeli capabilities in what he said were four crucial components in the new war era, as they apply in the case of Hizbullah.
“First, they know we can hit their missile launch points.
In the Second Lebanon War, within minutes, the IAF, with excellent intelligence, neutralized Hizbullah’s longrange capability.”
If Hizbullah has markedly expanded its arsenal since then, Vilna’i indicated, Israel has markedly expanded its capacity to confront it. “We have wonderful people,” he said. “Working day and night.”
Second, he went on, “we have the capacity to work inside enemy territory, to prevent them firing. Capturing territory. That’s the component that most resembles previous conventional war.”
That’s the component, it might be added, that did not function effectively four years ago, when the political stewards – of a conflict they preferred not even to acknowledge was a “war” – hesitated and changed their minds repeatedly about the deployment of ground forces, and when flaws were exposed in the IDF’s preparation, training, logistics, equipment and more.
The conviction in the defense establishment today is that such failures have been rigorously examined and rectified. Security chiefs also now routinely stress that Israel has made plain it will hold the sovereign state of Lebanon responsible for any cross-border violence and strike back, at Lebanese sovereign targets, accordingly – as even Tuesday’s confrontation indicated.
“We won’t go in that deeply, pursuing each missile,” is how Vilna’i put it. “We’ll strike hard so they’ll realize it’s not worth it.”
Third, said Vilna’i, is that Israel has made major strides in missile interception in recent years. “It’s not a 100 percent capability,” he cautioned, “but it’s important, especially for long-range missiles. We’re the only state that can do this. The Arrow is deployed.”
And finally, he came to the issue of civil defense, his particular focus as deputy minister.
“For a long time, we neglected this because it wasn’t so important. With Lebanon, with missiles hitting even deeper than Haifa, we recognized the new importance.
We needed to find an answer. Ehud Olmert, to his credit, gave responsibility for this to the Defense Ministry rather than the Ministry of Public Security. That was the right decision. From a military point of view, the whole country is the front.”
He waved toward the window and the bustling city.
“Tel Aviv is the home front.”
SINCE DECEMBER 2007, said Vilna’i, the ministry has been legislating, implementing and practicing to protect the citizenry.
“Yesterday I was in Beersheba for a drill: a chemical missile landing in the center of town. I was the general in charge of the Southern Command for five years,” he recalled. “I was in Beersheba during the first Gulf War. We had nothing at the time. We had good people and good will but that was all. Now, there’s an organized command structure. The mayor [Ruvik Danilovich] has answers to all the emergency needs. He has an IDF team supporting him, a police team, a municipal team.”
If war broke out, while the IDF would be doing its utmost to swiftly counter Hizbullah’s goal of firing hundreds upon hundreds of missiles into Israeli residential areas, the home front would be equipped “to ensure routine within the emergency situation.”
“We’re going city by city,” Vilna’i said of the preparatory work. “When a missile hits, we’ll have a network to deal with the damage – to cope with the injured, to make sure there’s water and food.”
He stressed that there was precious little of Israel that would be off-limits to enemy missiles – including Jerusalem. Military sources have indicated recently that Hizbullah has plenty of missiles sufficiently accurate to distinguish between east Jerusalem and the west. Vilna’i was more circumspect, but chilling.
“In a matter of time,” he said carefully, “they’ll be able to distinguish between west and east [of the capital]; next, they’ll be able to identify specific targets [around the country]. They’ll be able to hit strategic targets.
They’ll throw 500 missiles at us – most will hit open areas; others will cause damage. And the impact of a missile,” he said, in his no-nonsense, unemotional tones, “is akin to a bus blowing up, plus the surrounding damage.”
World War II-style bomb shelters were a thing of the past, he noted. The need now was for protected rooms and protected public areas in which people might have to spend a fair amount of time.
“Bomb shelters? That’s a concept from London 70 years ago. Stay down there for a while. That’s the way it was for me in Jerusalem in the War of Independence. In a bomb shelter, there was room to stand for maybe half an hour until the danger had passed. Nowadays, as the Second Lebanon War showed, people may have to spend a month in these rooms.”
About a third of Israeli residents have a protected room, he said, and legislation was in the works to ensure protection for all, “without spending billions and turning the whole country into a construction site.”
As an example, he noted that “there are lots of underground areas in this country. Vast. Here, next to the Habima theater, they’ve just built a five-floor underground parking garage. Well, every floor has an adjacent shelter that can hold 1,000 people. Each city is checking what it needs and the government will work with them.”
FROM THE practicalities of Vilna’i’s job, our conversation turned to the wider context – the diminishing international empathy for Israel in its relentless battle for survival, the superficial misperception of Israel as a Middle East Goliath, and the ostensible international conviction that Israel could do much more to ease its plight by showing greater determination to partner the Palestinians toward statehood.
“So long as we are seen as an ‘occupying people,’ we’re in trouble,” said Vilna’i, who took pains to define Labor as “not a left-wing party,” but rather as “a centrist, Zionist party.
“The world is cynical and not balanced. The UN Human Rights Council has never dealt with Darfur, where there are massacres. It only targets Israel,” he said.
Was he suggesting that if Israel was not present in the West Bank, it wouldn’t have been hit with Goldstone’s critique of Cast Lead? “No, we would have got it anyway,” Vilna’i said. “But the fact that we are seen as an occupying power works against us. Goldstone would have been seen differently.”
So what does he suggest? “I’m not prepared to compromise in any way on Israel’s security needs. We have to take care of ourselves. No one else can,” he began. “The terror threat has also changed.
It used to be cross-border and more recently the whole country is vulnerable to terror too. So terror has become a strategic weapon. And its perpetrators don’t want a peace deal. And we have to face up to it.
“But we also have to look to our place in the free world, alongside Europe, North America, Australia… The occupation plays against us in this. That doesn’t mean we should flee and run. It does mean we have to find the right balances – which is what we’re trying to do with the Palestinians.”
Vilna’i, who is 66, was drafted into the IDF a year before the Six Day War – rising to deputy chief of the General Staff via the paratroopers and the Sayeret Matkal commandoes.
With the passion of one who fought in them, he recalls that after the 1967 and 1973 wars, “the world was amazed by us. We were the extraordinary David.”
He could also have mentioned the 1976 Entebbe rescue, in which he participated, and which underlined Israel’s gutsy, innovative, daring underdog credentials.
“Now we are seen as a Goliath,” he added bitterly. “They forget that we’re still little David – demographically, territorially.”
He said he always reminds visiting politicians from abroad that “you’re sitting somewhere that has thousands of missiles aimed at it, aimed at civilians. There’s nowhere else like this on the planet. Not in Washington, Paris, London or Berlin. In Jerusalem, yes. In Tel Aviv, yes.
People ignore this. They say they’re sick of it [the conflict].
We used to be the heroes of the world. Not any more.”
In this respect, “Tom Phillips is right,” said Vilna’i, referring to the interview I published in this space last week with the departing British ambassador, whose content I had discussed with Vilna’i before we began our conversation.
Except, I noted, Tom Phillips seems to believe that Israel can do a whole lot more to fix things on its own.
Vilna’i appeared to take the point, responding: “Every decision-maker in this country is conscious of his responsibility for the fate of this country. We pulled out of Gaza.
We said we’d be done with it. What developed? The No.
1 terror state in the world. Less than an hour from here.
It doesn’t all depend on us.”
In fact, Vilna’i went on, “every area we’ve left so far, we’ve been hit with missiles from there. And if we relinquish Kalkilya, there’ll be rockets at Tel Aviv. If we relinquish Tulkarm, there’ll be rockets on Netanya. Actually,” he added on reflection, “we have relinquished Tulkarm [to the day-to-day running of the Palestinian Authority], but we’re still militarily overseeing things there.”
His voice, usually so low as to set my tape recorder vibrating, now rose a couple of tones in frustration.
“There are two sides to this game,” he said. “And to my disappointment, the Palestinian side has not handled things right. In Gaza they could have shown the world – to change Gaza into the Hong Kong of the Middle East.
Why didn’t they? Is that my fault?” Still, Vilna’i is forgiving. “Salam Fayyad understands all this,” he said of the PA prime minister. “He’s trying to do [things right] in the West Bank. But the fear is that some extremist terrorist group will take control, as happened in Gaza.”
Were Israel prepared to pull back further in the West Bank, would the PA prove more effective in maintaining control than it did in Gaza? “If this is done in a measured way,” he said carefully, “the answer can be yes, with the stress on the measured process. In the West Bank, they are fighting for their lives [against the Islamists], not ours,” he said.
The PA forces, he elaborated, were “doing well,” by which he meant firmly enforcing law and order. Invoking his mentor, he indicated that PA troops were curbing extremism without exaggerated concern for legal and human rights niceties: “As Rabin said at Oslo: ‘Not Bagatz [the High Court of Justice] and not B’Tselem,’ 17 years late.”
In Gaza, he noted, Hamas didn’t conquer the entire Strip when grabbing power in 2007. “It took over a few key power centers. It literally slaughtered – slit the throats of – the Fatah leaders. It threw some of them off the roofs of eight-story buildings and took over Gaza. The world doesn’t want to remember that. But that’s the fact. So I’m very pessimistic about Gaza. It’ll be a long process.
“The Gaza population already realizes that terrorist control is no good for them,” he asserted. “Abu Mazen [Mahmoud Abbas] sees himself as part of the solution.
The way back is via an agreement of one kind or another.
But it’s complicated. Really complicated. Any agreement [with the Palestinians] needs components relating to Jordan on one side and Egypt on the other. In Gaza there’s a limit to how many people can live there. There’ll be a population explosion in the end. The only solution is via the Egyptian border. Territorial swaps are part of it.
The first brick, which we are now trying to build, is a Palestinian state.”
ON THE vexed issue of peacemaking, Vilna’i is evidently somewhat, but not entirely, persuaded of Abbas’s and Fayyad’s intentions and capabilities. He’s also somewhat, but not entirely, persuaded of our prime minister’s readiness to go halfway to meet any genuine willingness for progress.
“With the Palestinian leadership now, there has been a change,” he said firmly. “It’s not [Yasser] Arafat – who’d say one thing in Tel Aviv and something else in Ramallah.
Ultimately, he was a terrorist in his essence. These are different people.”
Vilna’i goes so far as to assert that “Abu Mazen always spoke about peace. He opposed Arafat on this and that wasn’t easy. With all the difficulties, there is an opportunity here. Tom Phillips is right about that.”
Vilna’i recognizes that Abbas and Fayyad have yet to show a strategic willingness to persuade their own people of the need for compromise. But he also asserts that not all of Israel’s leaders are blameless in this regard. Abbas and Fayyad “understand the need” to tell their people it’s time for peace, he said. “But the question – and the very same question applies to our leaders – is what they’re prepared to tell their people.”
Switching quickly to the Israeli side of the equation, he added: “Rabin, for instance, dared to spell out [the imperative for a two-state solution]. In private conversations, all the leaders of the right understand it. All of them have done, for generations. It began with Menachem Begin.
“But there’s a constant problem on the right,” he elaborated, the Labor politician in him fully surfacing now.
“At big public rallies, they say one thing, and in power, they say something else. That cliché about ‘What you see from there, you don’t see from here,’ and so on. Menachem Begin, as prime minister of Israel, in his greatness, decided to leave Sinai. He had Labor as his security net.
Menachem Begin took a decision as prime minister, not as head of the Likud. [Binyamin] Netanyahu is standing in Begin’s shoes.”
And how does Vilna’i anticipate Netanyahu filling those shoes, come the moment of truth? “Everyone except for a tiny minority on the far right recognizes that the only solution is two states for two people,” he reiterated. “All the discussion today is about the complexities of getting to the two-state solution.
Netanyahu will have to make a decision in the next few months. He’s vacillating and I understand that. He’ll have to decide on whether to extend the building freeze.
He’ll have to decide if he’s Menachem Begin or not.”
Again, which will it be? “If you’re asking me, he doesn’t know himself. He’s smart and he understands what’s at stake, believe me.”
In terms of territorial compromise, Israel wanted to believe, 20 years ago, that it could reach an accord while relinquishing less than 90% of the territory in the West Bank. As the years passed, the assessment became progressively bleaker. What does Vilna’i envisage as the final price? “We’ll have to relinquish a great deal more than people think,” he said. “But that was always the case. There was never an American decision to recognize the settlements.
There were intermittent understandings, but never clear recognition, and the Americans are our best ally.”
Returning to his earlier theme, Vilna’i repeated: “The extended occupation is beginning to work against us, and this international delegitimization can only be offset by a peace agreement. I don’t want to be, as Tom Phillips put it to you, ‘Fortress Israel.’ I want to be integrated with the rest of the world.”
And he signed off with an assessment that, if accurate, will dismay plenty of Israelis and please many others: “The prime minister will have to make a decision and in my opinion, he’ll make the right decision. I say that on the basis of my knowledge of him and of the discussions that are being held. The grand strategy is clear. The question will be how it is achieved in terms of internal politics.
And, by the way, I personally don’t think anybody will be in a hurry to leave this coalition – not Shas and not Israel Beiteinu.”
Israel needs to rethink its Lebanon policy
August 7, 2010Israel needs to rethink its Lebanon policy – Haaretz Daily Newspaper | Israel News.
In the wake of this week’s flare-ups of hostilities in Lebanon and in the south, Israel would do well to reconsider its assumptions about the IDF’s power of deterrence.
By Amos Harel and Avi Issacharoff
The border incidents this week – in the north, and to a lesser degree in Eilat and the area around Gaza – called into question Israel’s operating assumptions during the past four years, since the end of the Second Lebanon War. The relatively low number of casualties, as well as intelligence information indicating the Lebanese Army was responsible for the gunfire in the north, enables the Israeli leadership to keep claiming that what happened this week does not necessitate serious reconsideration of its policies. Even after these latest incidents, the prevailing trend this summer – of maintaining relative quiet despite mounting tensions – still appears intact. But these incidents, particularly the Lebanese sniper fire that killed reservist battalion commander Lt. Col. Dov Harari near Misgav Am, raises the question of whether the stories we’ve been telling ourselves about the Second Lebanon War and its ramifications are still applicable in August 2010.
The Israel Defense Forces, according to conventional wisdom in the defense establishment, employed such great force in the last two wars, in Lebanon in 2006 and in Gaza in 2008, that the Arabs were frightened off, and therefore Hezbollah and Hamas are wary of another round. When GOC Northern Command Gadi Eizenkot elaborated on this idea (in a much more sophisticated way ) at a lecture at Tel Aviv University a few months ago, he was approached at the end of his talk by former defense minister Moshe Arens. You’re right, Arens told the major general, but you forgot to mention the other side of the equation: Hezbollah is also using deterrence – against us.
Ever since the Gaza flotilla affair in late May, there has been a bad feeling in the region. Provocateurs of every stripe have discovered the potential for diverting hostilities into unexpected channels. Fighting need not take place just on the battlefield or under conditions chosen by Israel. Indeed, the country’s enemies have a whole array of reasons for starting a confrontation: to prevent harsher sanctions on Iran; to escape the looming International Court of Justice indictments against senior Hezbollah figures over the assassination of former Lebanese prime minister Rafik Hariri; or to provide a response to the isolation Egypt is imposing on Hamas in Gaza.
 |
A soldier near a Lebanese Army outpost, which was hit during a gun battle with the IDF on Tuesday August 3, 2010. |
| Photo by: Reuters |
On a small scale, there were confrontations already this week. Hamas opened a new front against Israel by firing rockets from Sinai at Eilat. Meanwhile, the Lebanese Army snipers ambushed IDF reservists removing vegetation along the border, on the (false ) pretext that Lebanese sovereignty had been violated.
The report two days ago of an assassination attempt targeting Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad seems dubious. True, Iran is under pressure because of sanctions and the American threat to use military force against it, but its back is not yet against the wall and it has some room for maneuver. And yet, one cannot be certain that all the players in the region will behave rationally. It was Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah who admitted, in a rare moment of candor at the end of the last war, that had he known that there was even a 1-percent chance that Israel would respond with such force to the abduction of two reservist soldiers, he would not have approved the operation in Lebanon.
In private army forums, Eizenkot often presents the following assessment: The Second Lebanon War was a tactical failure that led to a strategic success, and Operation Cast Lead was a tactical success that ended up as a strategic failure. He is referring to the implications of the Goldstone report: The IDF’s use of extensive force amid Gaza’s civilian population drew scathing international criticism, which could tie the army’s hands in the next confrontation.
Meanwhile, on the ground, Israel’s deterrence appears to be eroding. A significant part of UN Security Council Resolution 1701, which ended the Second Lebanon War, has never been enforced: prevention of arms smuggling to Hezbollah via the Syrian border. The incident on Tuesday also illustrated the weakness of some of the resolution’s other directives. The efficacy of the resolution relies on the cooperation of the Lebanese Army and UNIFIL, which deployed in the south in order to block Hezbollah’s presence there.
In this same vein, the photo of the week was taken by Agence France-Presse and published two days ago on the front page of Haaretz: Lebanese soldiers firing on the IDF as UNIFIL personnel in their blue berets look on without doing a thing. This is precisely what Israel complained about to the UN years ago, especially after UNIFIL personnel sat and watched as three soldiers were abducted from Har Dov in October 2000.
Since the 2006 war, the Israeli public has been told that the army is on high alert along the northern border, determined to demonstrate sovereignty over every millimeter of its land so as not to abandon it to Hezbollah’s machinations. But this week, the shooting of the battalion commander who was killed, and the company commander who was wounded, took place outside an IDF-protected position. At first glance, it appears that the forces were deployed in a way that did not indicate the IDF anticipated a shooting attempt. If this was a deliberate, planned Lebanese ambush, why didn’t the army have prior intelligence about it?
After the incident, senior IDF personnel stated with full confidence that it was a “local” initiative by some Lebanese army officers and that Hezbollah was not involved. One would presume this assertion would be based on solid intelligence. However, can it really be that Hezbollah recruited a Shiite Lebanese Army officer, and the organization’s activists in the field were not aware of this? Just a week ago, when the Hariri assassination affair came up again, the IDF discussed the possibility that Hezbollah might try to spark a flare-up on the border.
It’s also hard to ignore the fact that placing the blame (not just the responsibility ) on the Lebanese Army is somewhat convenient for Israel. Thus, perhaps, the IDF’s measured and controlled response and avoidance of a wider escalation may be enough. In any event, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is not keen to repeat the entanglements of his predecessor Ehud Olmert.
The words and the attack
IDF intelligence’s blanket exoneration of Hezbollah ignores the fact that about half of the soldiers in the Lebanese Army are Shiites, as are about a third of the senior officers. In May 2008, a violent clash erupted between Hezbollah and the anti-Syrian camp in Lebanon. Hezbollah started the violence, offering two justifications: The Siniora government’s decision to reject the organization’s requests to create an independent communications network throughout the country, and to dismiss the Lebanese Army commander of Beirut airport security, Wafiq Shqeir, who is considered close to Hezbollah.
“Shqeir shall remain as head of the defense system at the airport. The fate of any other officer who tries to obtain that position is preordained, no matter what sect he belongs to,” Nasrallah announced. And the Lebanese government backed down.
On Tuesday evening, Nasrallah wanted to talk about the unity of Lebanon, the weapon of “resistance” and Hezbollah’s firm determination in its struggle against Israel. The following morning was the incident, which reinforced his comments. In the hours after the shooting, the television stations in Lebanon broadcast songs about national unity and “the country’s army.”
Even the Al-Mustaqbal station, owned by the Hariri family, took part in the patriotic effort. The International Court of Justice was forgotten, and instead hours of airtime were devoted to the heroism of the Lebanese troops.
The Hezbollah station Al Manar reported that the Lebanese soldiers received a clear order to prevent any violation of Lebanese sovereignty – meaning, to shoot at any more cases of tree-pruning next to the border. The A-Nahar newspaper, which is also identified with the anti-Syrian camp, published a cartoon depicting a hand emblazoned with an Israeli flag trying to cut down the Cedar of Lebanon, and a second hand with scissors cutting off the Israeli hand.
Nasrallah, in his fourth speech in two weeks, immediately clarified who Lebanon’s real ally is, promising that his organization would defend the Lebanese Army from any further aggression on Israel’s part. At the end of this speech, he promised another address, on August 9.
The Israeli response to that fourth speech came the next day: Prime Minister Netanyahu – as if he too were being forced to hide in some bunker – distributed a brief pre-recorded statement to the television channels. He recommended that the Lebanese Army (in the north ) and Hamas (in the south ) try not to test Israel’s determination.
“We will continue to respond with strikes after every attack,” Netanyahu declared, but his comments sounded more like an effort of self-justification than a threat. For the time being at least, Israel is choosing restraint.
Hamas: Israel fired rockets at Eilat, Aqaba to justify more Gaza assaults
August 7, 2010(Amazing… Does Hamas think that even its most ardent supporters will believe this?)
5 Grad rockets hit Red Sea port resorts of Israel and Jordan on Monday killing a Jordanian civilian; Israel, Egypt blame Hamas for attack.
The militant Palestinian group Hamas is alleging that Israel fired the barrage of rockets that hit the Red Sea port resorts of Israel and Jordan earlier this week, killing one Jordanian civilian, as a means to justify another assault on the Gaza Strip.
 |
Wreckage of cars damaged by a rocket attack is seen at a hotel area in the Jordan’s Red Sea city of Aqaba August 2, 2010. |
| Photo by: Reuters |
The Soviet-style Grad rockets crashed into the sea near Eilat and killed a taxi driver in Aqaba on Monday, in the second such attack this year. Hamas has denied having firing the projectiles.
Egyptian officials had said following the rocket attack that the salvo was fired by Hamas operatives from Egypt’s Sinai peninsula. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu echoed the Egyptian conclusion, blaming Hamas for the rocket attack.
“Israel will retaliate for every assault,” Netanyahu said Wednesday. “Apparently there were those who understood that, and tried to avoid taking responsibility for these crimes. Three days after our retaliatory operation in Gaza, Grad rockets were fired from Sinai at Eilat and Aqaba by a seemingly anonymous organization. Several months earlier, on April 22, similar rocket fire came from Sinai. We investigated the two incidents – it became clear beyond a doubt that Hamas’ military wing in Gaza had perpetrated both attacks under disguise,” the prime minister explained.
Sami Khater from Hamas’ Damascus-based political bureau said on Saturday the group had “no interest” in firing the rockets and even ruled out that they had come from Egyptian territory.
Khater explained that Israel may have fired the rockets in order to blame Hamas and consequently gain a pretext to launch fresh attacks on Palestinians.
Iran’s Ahmadinejad doubts Sept 11 attack toll
August 7, 2010Iran’s Ahmadinejad doubts Sept 11 attack toll.
TEHRAN, Aug 7 (Reuters) – Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said on Saturday the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks were exaggerated in a fresh broadside at the United States just days after President Barack Obama voiced willingness to talk to Iran.
Well-known for his anti-American and anti-Israeli rhetoric, the hardline populist Ahmadinejad also repeated his denial of the Holocaust, on which the consensus of historians is that six million Jews were exterminated by Nazi Germany.
Ahmadinejad said the Sept. 11 attacks with hijacked airliners on New York and Washington D.C. had been trumped up as an excuse for the United States to invade Afghanistan and Iraq.
Speaking at a Tehran conference, Ahmadinejad said there was no evidence that the death toll at New York’s World Trade Center, destroyed in the attacks, was as high as reported and said “Zionists” had been tipped off in advance.
“What was the story of Sept. 11? During five to six days, and with the aid of the media, they created and prepared public opinion so that everyone considered an attack on Afghanistan and Iraq as (their) right,” he said in a televised speech.
No “Zionists” were killed in the World Trade Center, according to Ahmadinejad, because “one day earlier they were told not go to their workplace”.
“They announced that 3,000 people were killed in this incident, but there were no reports that reveal their names. Maybe you saw that, but I did not,” he told a gathering of the Iranian news media.
There is a published list of Sept. 11 dead from more than 90 countries available online.
A total of 2,995 people were killed in the attacks, including 19 hijackers and all passengers and crew aboard four commandeered airliners, according to official U.S. figures. The United States blamed the assaults on al Qaeda, led by Saudi-born Sunni Muslim fundamentalist Osama Bin Laden.
Ahmadinejad accused the U.S. government of exercising more media censorship than anywhere in the world.
He had previously said the “9-11” attacks were a “big fabrication” and has rejected the historical record of the Holocaust. On Saturday, Ahmadinejad repeated his belief that the Holocaust had been invented to justify the creation of Israel.
“They made up an event, the so-called Holocaust which was later laid as the basis for the innocence of a group,” he said.
Ahmadinejad last week challenged Obama to a televised debate on global issues during his trip to the United Nations General Assembly in New York in September. [ID:nLDE6710SG]
Two years ago he asked to visit the site of the World Trade Center “to pay his respects” but New York police refused.
Washington succeeded in June in getting a fourth round of U.N. Security Council sanctions imposed on Iran to pressure it to suspend its disputed nuclear programme.
Tougher U.S. and European measures have further tightened restrictions on doing business with the major OPEC country.
Obama signalled on Thursday he was open to talks with the Islamic Republic and was seeking “a clear set of steps that we would consider sufficient to show that they are not pursuing nuclear weapons”. [nN05148192]
Ahmadinejad has said he is prepared to return to international talks, which were last held in October, but insists that Iran has the sovereign right to enrich uranium.
Western powers fear the Islamic Republic aims to stockpile the material for possible use, when more highly enriched, in nuclear weapons, and U.N. nuclear inspectors cite indications that Iran is researching how to build a nuclear-tipped missile.
Tehran says it is refining uranium only for electricity and medical treatments.
Israel considers the combination of Ahmadinejad’s Holocaust denial and his pursuit of nuclear technology a potential threat to its existence and has said it does not rule out military action to prevent Iran developing atomic bombs.
A Washington-based think-tank with access to intelligence said on Friday Iran had begun using recently installed equipment to enrich uranium more efficiently, a step it said could be justified nominally on civilian grounds but in fact made more sense in the context of learning how to make bomb-grade uranium. [ID:nLDE6751QM]
© Copyright (c) Reuters
For Arab Nations, the Threat of a Nuclear Iran Puts Israel in a New Light | By Elliott Abrams – WSJ.com
August 7, 2010Facing the threat of a nuclear Iran, the hostile Arab-Israeli relationship is giving way to a more complex picture
Being an Arab leader has its rewards: the suite at the Waldorf-Astoria during the United Nations General Assembly, travel in your own plane, plenty of cash, even job security—whether kings, sheiks or presidents, with or without elections, most serve for life.
But the advantages must seem dwarfed by the problems that face the Arab world this summer. The Shia in Iran seem to be building a bomb, Iran’s ally Syria is taking over Lebanon (again), Yemen is collapsing (again), Egypt’s President Mubarak is said to be dying and the Palestinian-Israeli conflict is back on the front pages.
What’s more, no one is sure who’s in charge these days. The American hegemony, in place at least since the British left Aden in 1967 and secured through repeated, massive military operations of its own and victories by its ally Israel, seems to be fraying. Who will stop the Iranian nuclear weapons program, the Arabs wonder; they place no faith in endless negotiations between earnest Western diplomats and the clever Persians.
Israel is the enemy of their enemy, Iran. Now, the usual description of Arab-Israeli relations as “hostile” or “belligerent” is giving way to a more complex picture. Following the joint Arab military efforts to prevent the formation of the Jewish State in 1948, and the wars that followed in 1956, 1967 and 1973, this is a bizarre turn of events. Israel is as unpopular in the Arab street as it has been in past decades (which is to say, widely hated), but for Arab rulers focused on the Iranian threat all those the Israeli Air Force jets must now appear alluring. The Israeli toughness the Arabs have complained about for over a half century is now their own most likely shield against Iran.
The Arab view that someone should bomb Iran and stop it from developing nuclear weapons is familiar to anyone who meets privately with Arab leaders, especially in the Gulf. Now, the curtain is being pulled back: Just last month, the United Arab Emirates’ ambassador to the United States, Yousef Al Otaiba, spoke publicly of a “cost-benefit analysis” and concluded that despite the upset to trade that would result and the inevitable “people protesting and rioting and very unhappy that there is an outside force attacking a Muslim country,” the balance was clear. The ambassador told an Aspen audience, “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.” By speaking of “an outside force,” Ambassador Al Otaiba did not specifically demand U.S. action; he left the door open for volunteers.
And two weeks ago, the Israeli press carried reports of a visit to Saudi Arabia by Gen. Meir Dagan, chief of Mossad, the Israeli intelligence agency; Gen. Dagan is the point man on Iran for the Israeli government. This follows stories in the Times of London two months ago claiming that the Saudis would suspend their air defense operations to permit Israeli fighter planes to cross Saudi air space en route to an attack on Iran.
All this will be denied, of course, as it has always been, but Arab-Israeli (and for that matter, Arab-Palestinian) relations remain far more complicated than headlines suggest. Even in states where there are no politics as we know it—there are no elections or the outcomes are decided by fiat in the presidential palace—all politics is local, and concerns about the Palestinians take a back seat to national and personal interests. The minuet now being conducted by Arab foreign ministers with the Palestinian leader, Mahmoud Abbas, is illuminating.
The issue is whether the Palestinians should move to direct negotiations with Israel, in place of the desultory “proximity talks” that have been led by U.S. envoy George Mitchell. Mr. Abbas has been very reluctant to make this decision, fearing venomous criticism from Hamas and wondering if direct talks would actually lead anywhere except to a further crisis down the road if and when they break down. Mr. Abbas has been laying down preconditions that make talks harder and harder to begin, asking in essence that the U.S. guarantee an outcome he likes on the central matters (refugees, borders, Jerusalem) before he will sit down at the table. Despite heavy American and European pressure, Mr. Abbas has been unwilling to decide anything. In fact, reversing years of effort by his predecessor Yasser Arafat to escape the tutelage of Arab states, he threw the ball to them. He would do whatever the Arab League told him to do.
But the Arab foreign ministers, meeting two weeks ago in Cairo, proved to be as wily as he. They decided to endorse direct talks, but with preconditions—and they left the timing to the Palestinians, thus leaving Mr. Abbas on his own. Their decision was to make Mr. Abbas bear any blame associated with the decision, while they ducked and returned to their hotel suites. They are for peace and talks with Israel, and they are helping the Americans, and they are backing their Palestinian brothers, unless of course things go sour, in which case it will be clear that Mr. Abbas made the wrong decision to enter (or not to enter) direct talks. All this under the guise of “Arab solidarity.”
There isn’t much solidarity this summer. For Syria, the only issue right now is regaining hegemony in Lebanon, and Syria is aligned with Iran and Hezbollah. Syrian President Bashar Assad visited Beirut a week ago for the first time since Syrian troops withdrew from Lebanon in 2005—a fitting symbol of the return of Syrian power.
But Syria’s border with Israel remains dead quiet, for the regime seeks no direct confrontation. The last time it moved to assert a leadership role in the region, by the secret construction of a nuclear reactor with designs supplied by North Korea, Israel bombed the site to smithereens in September 2007. So Syria arms Hezbollah, menaces the Lebanese and watches to see how the Americans will handle Iran. There will be no serious negotiations over the Golan Heights until the Iran issue is settled, for any Golan deal would require that Syria break with Iran—and such a move depends entirely on whether the regime there is rising or falling in influence.
For Lebanon, divided as ever among Sunni, Shia, Christian and Druze, the main concern is the forthcoming decision of the international tribunal investigating the murder of former prime minister Rafik Hariri in 2005. Will it name Syria or Hezbollah, the Shia terrorist group that controls much of the country? And how will Hariri’s son Saad, now prime minister, balance the need for stability against the desire for justice?
The fact that Mr. Assad of Syria arrived a week ago in a Saudi jet and accompanied by the Saudi King, Abdullah, shows Lebanese that Saudi support for their independence is a thing of the past. The Saudi message was clear: Make your own arrangements with Damascus and do not count on us. Until this week, the Lebanese border with Israel had been quiet since the 2006 war—Hezbollah and its Shia supporters were hurt badly enough to avoid a repetition. For months there have been rumors of war this summer along the Israeli-Lebanon border, but that was never in the cards. Hezbollah, whose well-trained terrorists and rockets aimed at Israel’s cities are supplied or financed by Iran, could attack Israel if Israel bombs Iran’s nuclear sites. Thus Hezbollah’s forces are both a deterrent to an Israeli attack, and a way for Iran to strike back at Israel if an attack occurs—an Iranian second-strike capability. The ayatollahs need Hezbollah intact and ferocious to scare the Israelis, so another Israel-Hezbollah war that might badly wound the Shia group is the last thing Tehran wants right now.
The incident last Tuesday, when Lebanese Army snipers shot into Israel, killing one Israeli officer and wounding another, is still not fully understood. It appears to be the work of the Lebanese commander in that area, a Shia considered close to Hezbollah. Perhaps the attack was his own nasty idea; perhaps Hezbollah ordered him to do it, using the Lebanese Army to change the subject away from the tribunal. Either way it is a reminder that Lebanon is not a normal country with an army under government control. It is a battlefield largely controlled by Syria and Hezbollah, and unable to determine its own fate.
For Egypt, there is one worry: Mr. Mubarak’s health. With a presidential election coming in the fall of 2011, will his 30 years in power (since Sadat’s assassination in 1981) end with a free election, or will the ill, 82-year-old Mr. Mubarak demand another term or the installation of his son Gamal as his successor? Meanwhile, Egypt’s dominance of Arab diplomacy and its overall influence in the region are declining steadily. The Arab League is still headquartered there, but it was symbolic of Egypt’s diminished status that the key figure in the foreign ministers’ meeting held there last week was Hamad bin Jassem of Qatar, the rich Gulf sheikdom with about 350,000 citizens, not Ahmed Aboul Gheit of Egypt, with a population of 80 million.
At stake in the succession crisis in Egypt is not simply who will rule the country, but whether a new president will maintain Egypt’s chilly but reliable peace with Israel. Here too there are shared enemies, in this case Hamas and other Palestinian radical and terrorist groups; Israel and Egypt have maintained together (though with Israel shouldering 99% of the blame) a blockade on Gaza since the Hamas coup there in 2007.
The Egyptian regime feels no love for the Israelis, but there is significant security cooperation between the two countries; Egypt’s rulers see the Shia in Iran, not the Jewish state, as the more dangerous threat to Arab power in the region. Egypt’s decisions in late July to bar an Iranian Red Crescent ship carrying aid to Gaza from entering the Suez Canal and to prevent four Iranian parliamentarians from crossing the border into Gaza are the most recent proof of this Egyptian attitude.
Whatever Egypt’s concerns about Iran, fears are far greater in the Gulf. Seen from those shores, the Palestinians are a constant drain on the pocketbook and, with Al Jazeera stirring things up through constant broadcasts depicting Israeli violence and Palestinian misery, a source of popular dissatisfaction. Israeli-Palestinian violence is poison for regimes that are concerned above all else with survival, and the “peace process” is a much-sought antidote. Everyone loves conferences that suggest “progress,” though as the decisions at the recent Arab League meeting show, everyone will seek to avoid the hard decisions that serious negotiations might necessitate.
The Palestinian issue has been with them for decades and may last decades more; the rise of Iran is new and pressing, given its proximity—and the existence of a Shia majority in Bahrain and a significant Shia population in Saudi Arabia’s oil-rich Eastern province. It is not difficult to think of Iranian pressure, money and even guns leading to riots and violent uprisings.
The Gulf regimes have long relied on American protection, and the U.S. maintains large bases in the UAE, Bahrain (the Fifth fleet’s headquarters), Qatar and Kuwait. For these regimes and for the Saudis, Iran is a constant threat and the issue of the day is who will be, to use the old British phrase, “top country” in the region. Repeated American offers to negotiate with Iran, and statements from Joint Chiefs Chairman Admiral Mike Mullen and Secretary of Defense Robert Gates respectively that an attack on Iran would be “incredibly destabilizing” or “disastrous” do not reassure them. They want Iran stopped. They are not sure the need to do that is understood as well in Washington as it is in Jerusalem—and at Israel Defense Forces headquarters in Tel Aviv.
Perhaps the enemy of my enemy is not my friend, if he is an Israeli pilot. In that case, all gestures of friendship will be forsaken or carefully hidden; there will be denunciations and UN resolutions, petitions and boycotts, Arab League summits and hurried trips to Washington. But none of that changes an essential fact of life well understood in many Arab capitals this summer: that there is a clear coincidence of interests between the Arab states and Israel today, in the face of the Iranian threat. Given the 60 years of war and cold peace between Israel and the Arabs, this is one of the signal achievements of the regime in Tehran—and could prove to be its undoing.
—Elliott Abrams is a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations.
Think tank: Iran begins enriching uranium more efficiently
August 7, 2010Think tank: Iran begins enriching uranium more efficiently – Haaretz Daily Newspaper | Israel News.
Institute for Science and International Security says Iran now using second set, or ‘cascade’, of centrifuge machines at its Natanz plant.
By Reuters
Iran has begun using extra equipment installed earlier this year to enrich uranium more efficiently, stepping up its nuclear work despite United Nations sanctions, a Western think-tank said on Friday.
 |
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad visiting the Natanz Uranium Enrichment Facility in 2008. |
| Photo by: AP |
The Institute for Science and International Security said on its website that Iran was now using a second set, or “cascade”, of centrifuge machines at its Natanz pilot plant. It did not disclose the source of its information.
Iran has been producing low-enriched uranium for some time and announced in February that it had started enriching uranium to a higher, 20 percent, level to make fuel for a medical research reactor.
Analysts said the single cascade of machines Iran was using for the higher-level enrichment was inefficient because it left over a large quantity of low-enriched uranium alongside the highly enriched material.
The International Atomic Energy Agency, the UN nuclear watchdog, said Iran had subsequently installed a second cascade of centrifuge machines but had not begun using it.
A Vienna-based diplomat with knowledge of the IAEA investigation of Iran’s nuclear program said the Iranians had been preparing the second cascade of machines for use in recent weeks.
Use of the second cascade allows leftover material to be re-fed into the machines more easily, obtaining its full potential and making the work more efficient.
“ISIS has learned that Iran is now using the second cascade at the Pilot Fuel Enrichment Plant at Natanz to recycle the tails from the first cascade,” ISIS said in its note.
ISIS said the use of the second cascade meant the plant now needed less low-enriched uranium (LEU) than before to produce the same amount of 20-percent enriched uranium. It did not mean the output or enrichment level would increase, ISIS said.
Western powers fear the Islamic Republic aims to stockpile material for possible use, when still more highly enriched, in nuclear weapons. Iran says its aims are purely peaceful.
Western diplomats have said in the past that the second cascade could be reconfigured to enrich uranium to the higher level needed for use in nuclear weapons, a concern echoed by ISIS.
“If Iran enriches to weapon-grade uranium, however, it is expected to use the same type of procedure,” ISIS said.
“Thus, Iran’s current actions, while superficially justified on civil grounds, mainly make sense in the context of learning how to make significant quantities of highly enriched uranium efficiently.”
Tehran has said it was forced to enrich uranium to 20 percent purity after the breakdown of a deal with Western powers and the IAEA, under which it would have sent 1,200 kg of its low-enriched uranium abroad in return for fuel rods for its medical reactor.
It tried to revive the fuel swap in a deal with Turkey and Brazil days before a key UN Security Council meeting in June, but the deal did not prevent the Security Council from imposing a fourth round of sanctions on Iran over its disputed nuclear program.
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